Freedom

I've been enjoying my new freedom and the great feeling of coming home and not having to do anything. The fact that I'm doing lots of things I've chosen to do just makes it all the better really!

It was a really nice feeling last Friday to hold my bound dissertation before it went in the post. That might sound a bit odd, but after all he work and time I've put into it and the course in general, it felt like the culmination of two years study. It took me by surprise, but really I've thoroughly enjoyed all the study, even if at times it's been a pain having to put other things on hold to write an essay or get my head round some tricky ideas, but it's been worth it. I think I'm going to pass. As far as I can see there's no reason why I shouldn't.
So it's in now, and I just wait for the marks to come back. Even that doesn't feel as onerous as it once would have done.

So how am I filling my time? Well, this week has been pretty good really. I've written part 2 of The Soap of Fatal Death audio play (me and Si are doing alternate episodes this time) and that's been good. As I've mentioned before I've always had a lot of fondness for the story and so revisiting it and tweaking it has been good fun. It was strange to think that last night I couldn't sleep because I just had ideas going round my head about it. I was trying to work out a solution to a tricky piece of plotting that was easy to do when it was a short story, but not so easy to get around on audio, and it meant that the scenes had to be juggled around at the end of the episode, which made it trickier still as it still had to come to the same great cliffhanger.
The solution was quite a neat fix I think, even if I do say so myself, even though in post production it's going to be quite hard to put it all together, still I'm hopeful! Aren't I always?

Tuesday night Stephen came to stay. We hadn't seen him for a couple of years before July and here we are with two visits in a short space of time! It was good to chat with him. He's ever so nice and very easy to chat too. We went out for a lovely meal at the Yorkshire Rose (we always have good meals there) and then me and him sat up watching Doctor Who and the Idiots Lantern. Still a bit of a favourite that one.
As Steve was at work on Wednesday, I entertained Stephen before he went off to see his sister in Reading. After a lot of chat and a lot of tea we watched Horns of Nimon together, which he'd never seen. It's odd to think there are some fans out there that haven't seen all the stories. It's been so long since I fulfilled that dubious honour, that i I forget that there are others who haven't. He really enjoyed it, so that was good. It was just a very pleasant morning and really we have to make the effort to go down to Bournemouth and see him now. Just another person on the list we really need to go and visit. Ah well!

And I won a competition! Oh yes! I sign up for the mailing lists of many of the bands I like, as you get the tour dates in advance and stuff, which often makes it worthwhile. Anyway, last Wednesday I had an email from the Scissor Sisters site saying if you're one of the first 200 people to respond to the message, you could win two tickets to their gig in Trafalgar Square this Saturday. It'd been a couple of hours since the message was sent, but I filled the form in anyway, and would you believe it, Tuesday afternoon I got a message back saying I'd won a pair of tickets! WOW! So we're off to see them live tomorrow evening, which'll be great I'm sure! I'm really looking forward to it!

Happy times and places!