Flashbacks

As we grow older, so much of our daily lives from the past can become a blur, but occasionally something will come back in vivid detail. This week, I made an effort to prepare my own lunch rather than buying it or getting it from the college cafeteria. Thinking about what elements to include, I suddenly could envision with perfect clarity what I ate nearly every day of high school:

• A bagel and cheddar cheese sandwich
• Yogurt
• Fruit -- usually an orange, the peel going into the empty yogurt pot
• Large cookies

I even remember keeping the plastic spoon to be washed and reused. (Once, when I was in elementary school, I'd taken one of the real family spoons and absentmindedly thrown it away; never again!)

Recently, in search of something to watch before bed, I found a BBC documentary on the disaster that enveloped Pompeii. Earlier the same day, I'd been reading about the planned new mini-season of The X-Files, and together these facts sent me back in time -- because my brother had a disturbing obsession with TV productions about disasters and alien abductions. I am four years younger than he and a self-confessed wimp, so this was a truly unfortunate thing for my sensitive psyche.

Sometimes these small-screen dramas were downright laughable, like the one about The Big One, an earthquake that finally rips Los Angeles free of the mainland -- or does it just sink into the sea? I can't remember. Others were more upsetting. And with the miracle of VHS tape, we could repeatedly watch "Miracle Landing" (thank you for the title, internet), a recreation of an actual flight where the top of a Hawaii-based airplane rips off and they have to keep flying because there's nowhere to land. I specifically remember a passenger with a strip of metal adhered to the side of his face. Another one, unimaginatively entitled "Crash Landing," starred Charlton Heston as the pilot. (Confession: I had conflated these two in my mind until just now.) Maybe it was my brother's ambitions to be a journalist that drew him to the dangerous and alarming, but I've never understood why these things actively excited him. They don't seem to have permanently scarred me, but this week I tasted once again the combination of fear and fascination. And some home-made lunch.

The gift of time

The best possible way to spend
a Sunday afternoon

It's spring break, which means that choir has disappeared from my weekly schedule. I've sent my passport off to be processed for yet another visa, which means that I'm stranded in the UK for a while, and do you know what my daily schedule looks like? I go rowing or erging at some point during the day, and the rest of the time I sit at this laptop tinkering with documents. Some are job applications, one is an article long overdue for revising, one is a friend's PhD chapter, which I'm proofreading.

But overall, there is a ludicrous abundance of time to take things at a leisurely pace. Sunday, for example, was a perfect gem of a day. In the morning, I had a magical outing with Cantabs, the town rowing club I've joined. The boat was so well balanced that we could work hard but feel the reward of a beautiful glide. After a cheeky nap, I then had a very different kind of outing with some folks from college who are still in town during spring break. Half men and half women, we paddled gently to the end of our usual stretch of river, hoisted the boat out and around the lock, and paddled a bit further to a pub in the town of Waterbeach. It wasn't quite warm enough to justify how long we sat outside to consume our burgers, pints, and desserts, but we refused to slink inside when the sun was shining. We then rowed home, careful not to upset our now-very-full tummies. A four-hour lunch? Why not. I spent the evening watching something interesting on TV and got into bed thinking, "This was a good day to be alive." Simple pleasures, and enough time to enjoy them.

Feeling positive

Well, here it is: the final copy of my dissertation, bound by the venerable J.S. Wilson & Son bookbinders, who have been in business in Cambridge since 1830! I'm sort of afraid to touch it, actually.

To add to my cheerful mood, spring is definitely drawing on. It's hard not to feel optimistic about life when the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and little flowers are forming their annual skirt around the big tree on Trinity Hall's Latham Lawn. I am spending my afternoons writing job applications, which normally depress me terribly. But somehow I'm feeling positive anyway.

Friends, let us rejoice.

One month ago yesterday, I had my viva, and it was quick and painless.

I haven't written about it yet, partly because so many friends have asked how it went that I'm tired of my own report, and partly because the idea of the viva still makes me nervous, even though it's over and done with. They began by saying "We enjoyed reading this, we learned a lot from it, and we're going to recommend that it pass with minor corrections. So you can relax, but don't relax too much." We then spoke very pleasantly for an hour and a half. I answered some questions better than others, but they were on my side, which was hugely helpful. Minor corrections = fixing typos and odd inconsistencies, so they were easily done over a couple days.

The English Faculty's degree committee approved me on February 26th, in accordance with what I'm told were very positive examiners' reports. Today the university's Board of Graduate Studies should have done the same. I now have a month to hand in a hardbound copy that will remain in the University Library foreeeeeever! So, I spent my afternoon finding an endless stream of minor formatting problems as I attempted to create a PDF containing my entire PhD. It now exists -- hold your breath until I get it to the printer!