Category: Longform
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End of Term 2
Here we are at the end of the second term of my masters. In fact, the end of the taught part of the whole thing. Teaching is finished. In the summer term, which starts a month today, We have a series of lectures from various writing teachers and people from the writing and publishing fields. But no more seminars, no workshops, unless we, the students, organise them ourselves.
I have two 5000-word pieces to submit in a month‘s time – one for the Creative Nonfiction module, and the other for the Writing Workshop. After that it‘s just solid writing and editing until I submit my dissertation in September.
That‘s not quite the whole story. I will also have two meetings with my dissertation supervisor. Or actually, supervisors, because we have been assigned two. The reasoning seems to be that more people seeing our work is a good thing. I can certainly see the sense of that. But at the same time I wonder whether we‘ll lose the advantage of continuity. What if the first one recommends some changes, I make them (or at least, integrate their suggestions with my own ideas), and then the second recommends their opposite?
Oh well, it probably won‘t happen, and I‘ll deal with it if it does.
As for the two pieces I‘m submitting in a month, right now I have the required number of words for both. So I have a month to manipulate them, structure them, and make sure they‘re the best words. A process we writers call ‘editing.‘
They Don't Call it 'Fastmail' for Nothing
I was opening a ticket with Fastmail (not a problem, just a query), and when I hit ‘Submit,’ the confirmatory email was in my inbox before the next web page finished loading.
It’s a really good service which I highly recommend, and if you were to sign up using the above link, you’d get 10% off your first year. I would get a small kickback too.
Break away from big email!
Astral Zen
Phase one complete, for me. I’m not long back from the vaccination centre (a vacant unit at the Westfield shopping centre, slightly weirdly) where I got my first dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. I can feel my immune system surging, boosted with superpowers, and a strange, unearthly calm descend upon me.
I exaggerate. But it feels pretty damn good to have taken this step. I don’t get the next one until June, and it’s not like we’ll be out of the woods even then; not even personally, and certainly not the country or the world. Especially given the panic over a statistically meaningless set of blood clots, and the news today that the UK’s supply is going to be temporarily constrained.
But considering that it’s only just over year since we learned about this virus and the terrible disease it brings, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the scientists and doctors who were able to develop the vaccines so quickly. Not to mention all the NHS staff who are getting it to people.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things, 2020 - ★★½
Charlie Kaufman lets us down, by being deliberately, viscerally confusing, to the point of meaninglessness. Yet I find it quite compelling after the first twenty minutes or so.
Ultimately empty, though.
Corona Vu
This article was in yesterday’s Independent. I felt like I had travelled back in time to last May:
Crucially, the report, which was written by independent experts, concludes that NHS guidelines failed to consider airborne infection, a key way the virus is transmitted.
– Sean Russel in the Independent, NHS Covid guidelines ‘fundamentally flawed’ and need replacing, says nursing union
It further says:
But research now suggests that airborne transmission – where tiny droplets of saliva from people talking, calling out or coughing can remain suspended in the air – can be a particular problem in poorly-ventilated rooms.
– As above, Independent article
‘Now’? Research now suggests that it’s airborne? We’ve known that since at least June of last year. In fact, I first posted about masks, and about going out with a rudimentary one, in early April!
How can NHS guidelines be so ludicrously far from what we understand? It would be comically far if it wasn’t so serious.
