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Monday, September 16, 2013

Cry Freedom!






Our first day of freedom and, I am not joking, without You-Know-Who there is a different and more tranquil feel to our place of habitation.  Long may it continue.  At least one hopes for the bulk of the next ten months!

They are gone.  Enough about they already!

Yet again for the bulk of my time in the pool I was the only one breaking the waters.  And, as opposed to yesterday I (I) was the fastest in the pool today.  I obviously have to get used to the timetable which I can now, in my fashionably retired way, follow. 

I need to ensure that I am swimming when those who are fully retired are swimming and not in the odd periods in the day when toilers in the chains of employment are able to slip their restraints and dive into the water and rip my self respect from my flailing limbs.

I also seem to coincide with vast numbers of students from the school next door to the leisure centre who take up the majority of the outside seating for the duration of their school breaks.  This is now the major disadvantage of the leisure centre: it is virtually impossible to go there without having clear visual and moving reminders of school. 

The new playground runs the length of the leisure centre main building and whatever time I go there it appears to be one class or another’s turn to wander about in school uniform and able by their mere presence to strike at the very heart of a truly retired person!

Today has been a really fine day and I am hoping for many more during the autumn and winter months.  All I ask is that the weather is fine enough for me to sit outside on the Third Floor so that I can work in the open rather than in the rather cramped quarters of the Tea Room!

My new course material has now been “in transit” for a week and I am expecting it at any time, while at the same time dreading that the Spanish Post Office has lost it again.  I will leave the requisite ten days and then contact the OU at once; better to have two sets of material than to have none at the start of the course.

I have dipped into the forum for my new course and have sampled the barely controlled hysteria which seems to be the default setting for those souls brave enough to tempt the Muses and attempt Creative Writing!  One of the keys for success in the OU is the composition of the group of students that you are landed with in your tutor group.  If you are lucky then you will find people on your wavelength and others who are able to push you forward.

The last two courses have been with students who are in Europe and most of them are not British.  I am not sure what difference this is going to make with Creative Writing.  Some of the non-British students have incredible fluency in English, but I am not sure that they will be considering Creative Writing as the next stage in their studies.

It will be very interesting to see who else is taking this course.  We, in Europe, are linked with the North of England in the tutor group as a whole and so I expect that the majority of people taking the course will be from there rather than in Europe.  As this is a second level course there will be a higher level of entry so that may limit the numbers of people taking the course around me.  We shall, as we say, see.

My essay still has not come back and its delay (she does have another two days before the limit of the OU is broken!) is irritating, I find it difficult to get deeply into my revision with the outstanding piece of work unresolved.  Still, everything should be sorted by the end of the week.

On Thursday I am touching base with an ex-colleague for an evening chat – and I should also be doing my revision for the start of the Opera season which also starts next month.

All to do!

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