great finale

What a cracker of a day lots of things were flying round in a half formed miasmic cloud and are now consolidating into a promising reality. Moving from that generative phase of effervescent tentative abstracts towards cohesive and cogent realities happens in jumps and leaps - from excited chaos ideas coalesce into strands and clumps and eventually shades of shape and form emerge and bang crash wallop ideas become concrete. Bids need to be written, timeframes, inputs, outputs etc need to be considered, we are almost underway, we have a good idea what the train will look like and a fair idea about the journey it will take - a good close to a valuable trip but I still ache to be home.

Strangely empty

What a wonderful job I have, two new undergraduate degree pathways in development, a new Masters pathway being worked on; all embracing the Ultraversity approach to work based learning, a rebuild and revalidation of our current BA LTR pathway our innovations are being recognised by the University and Mark and myself aiming to develop a media rich academic peer reviewed journal publishing project that will enable both undergraduate/recent graduates and more experienced academics to use creative technologies to disseminate their learning. Stepping beyond the usual constraints of MS Word and text rich media starved papers releasing the creative voice through a fusion of rich expression is something long overdue in academic circles. All sorts of exciting developments underway, the team I work with is stunning I don't have words enough to express my admiration for them and some icing on this cake today we got our shiny new MacBooks clean, crisp and wonderful machines...but still I hanker for my home and my family, the hens, Wildmite and the smell of eucalyptus and there is an emptiness in my soul I am not used to feeling when I am away. I should right now be out at the Atlantic having a meal with my colleagues and Maureen and her husband who I have not seen for a long time. Maureen is very special and was a PA to everyone at the Ultralab; organising us and nurturing us with efficiency I have not met before or since but I just can't face an evening out..sorry M...some days are good some not so good.

Thoughts from the UK

Back in the UK again following a great flight out we went near enough to see our house and Graham and Liz's then headed over the Picos de Europa that were looking lovely with a capping of snow...we must take a treck over there soon. Landed in Stansted in the dark, grey and raining, missed my buss by about 5 seconds and had to wait an hour for the next one. The keys to my room did not fit my room and I was greeted by a used bar of soap and a nice little shower hat. We managed to heat the kitchen by turing the cooker rings on and my room heater worked some of the time - not much has changed in student accomodation since i was a student in the 70s it seems. The smell of takeaways was overwhelming in Chelmsford - they don't do them in Galicia really well not international ones, I had a Chinese take away and eat it with a teaspoon oh what fun.

I am lucky to have a great set of colleagues and really looking forward to getting down to some creative meetings later today but to be honest I would far rather be in Galicia, there are so many people here every whre feels crowded...and I am missing my family so so much :-(

A walk at Praia Morouzo, Orteguaira

We took a wander around the dunes and one of the beaches that first atracted us to this corner of Spain. The first slide might take a few moments to load, if you click on the slide show it goes full screen. Ortegueira is situated close to the top left on a map almost on the North Western tip of Galicia there is a complex estury with a whole host of environments and some lovely wildlife and beautiful beaches. This was what it was like mid November 08

bonfires mist and the gatito

Every evening Rowan asks if we can have a bonfire, I try not to have too many but we did have a lot of cleaning out to do as underneath the woodpile was an accumulation of all sorts of horrible organic rubbish that I did not fancy composting so it went up in smoke. It is hard to balance caring for the environment against boys doing the kind of things boys need to do.


We had another lovely misty start and it is now looking to be a hot day with clear blue skies again.

Our gatito of many names is getting more and more friendly, we are so glad Geraldine managed to trap her and bring it over here, the next stage of the plan is to entice her into the house and stop her using the hay / sawdust downstairs as her toilet.