Skirting Vulcan’s cough I return to the forge

Ash cloud tinged sunset over the River Severn, 15 April 2010

I promised you a post, but this is not that post. This is just a warning to say that that post may be delayed. I have had a lovely time in the USA, meeting many great people and many useful people and a fair number who were both, being guided through the experience by generous bloggers and others, swearing at early-morning geese and thankfully discovering a source of decent tea, buying books and flirting with publishers, and maybe having the odd drink here and there. All this will be fully recounted, I promise, at least those bits of it fit for publication here. And I am even fairly functional after the experience of transatlantic flying, having managed I think to convince my body simply that I have a had a series of long nights short on sleep, which is true, without it much caring when that sleep was.

However, I return to find harassment from my book’s editor, two more sets of proofs in my INBOX with an e-mail apologising for their ineluctable urgency, a job to apply for and, worst of all in several ways, the need to mobilise resources in aid and recognition of an important academic who has been a huge help to many many people including me, and who has now been diagnosed with a fatal health condition. (I can’t give more details about this; those who need to know do, and this sort of thing doesn’t belong on the open Internet.) I also have a swathe of people I need to e-mail and of course, a load more things to blog about… It will all happen, but please bear with me if it doesn’t happen promptly. And thankyou to all the people who had kind words to say about the blog and my work (even to the one who told me they’d downloaded my thesis and been surprised how good it was, given the blog…) and who helped make the conference so much fun. Ye shall have your write-up! Just, not straight away, sorry…