The News Minute//Vacancy: Poet Laureate wanted for tuberculosis

Just recording the piece I had published www.thenewsminute.com in February on the blog.

http://www.thenewsminute.com/stories/Vacancy:%20Poet%20Laureate%20wanted%20for%20tuberculosis#.UxdLfyh94aK

London, one of the world’s leading financial and cultural centres, is also known as the ‘tuberculosis capital of Europe’.

You may already know this, however it is a piece of health information that I like to pass on to as many people as possible.

I’ll be honest, I’m not doing this as a way of performing a sort of personal public health service, at least not in the first instance. What I’m looking for is a level of knowledge or awareness in the people around me.

What I get, repeatedly, is surprise.

Yet the description of London as the ‘tuberculosis capital of Europe’ dates back as far as December 2010 and, a brief Google search reveals, it has been used in UK headlines ever since.TB in badgers is more talked about in the UK than TB in humans, though the human version is on a par with HIV and Malaria as one of the top killers in the world.

Historically TB is thought to be one of the oldest diseases we have – with human bones from as far back as the Neolithic era containing traces of the bacteria. It was rampant in the UK in the 18th and 19th Century, across all classes of people including doctors and poets, giving it something of a Romantic reputation.

Advances in the development of a vaccination and antibiotic treatment of TB has enabled the UK to become complacent about a disease that for most people is now consigned to the history books. As Head of TB Surveillance for Public Health England, Dr Lucy Thomas says: “TB is a preventable and treatable condition” which is only life-threatening if untreated.

And yet. There are nearly 9,000 reported cases of TB in the UK. Whilst the latest report from Public Health England (PHE) shows that rates of TB have stabilised the number of cases is still significantly higher than the rest of Western Europe.

It is a disease these days of the dispossessed. Despite the mythology that all British cases are imported the UK Government state that eight out of ten Londoners with tuberculosis in 2012 were UK-born or had been living in the UK for at least 2 years prior to their diagnosis.

Those infected with TB are however likely to be living on the streets where a persistent cough, night sweats and weight loss are low priority on their list of concerns. Identifying people with the disease is hard enough, ensuring they complete the minimum 6 month course of treatment required is a challenge; knowing who else they have been in contact with is nigh on impossible.

Let’s be clear on a few things here. The nearly 9,000 reported cases of tuberculosis in the UK is tiny when you consider the global picture of 8.6 million new TB cases worldwide in 2012.But the latest, ugliest monster in the global village is the development of new, drug resistant strains of the disease. We’re not staring down the barrel of an epidemic right now in the UK but as MP Andrew George says “TB does not respect borders, and drug-resistant strains of TB pose a major risk to the health of the British people.”

TB was once a disease that we believed we could wipe out completely by the 1980s. Quietly, however, it has crept back into our dark, unseen and unloved corners, where poetry is not, as yet, to be found.

New beginnings or wanting to play out in the spring sunshine

March is a disgruntled month.  It overreaches, excitedly leaning forwards towards sunshine, warmth and long lazy days.  Mamma Winter reins it back, unmoved by tantrum clouds and dark stormy tears.

I feel much the same, disgruntled and ready to move forwards.  Moreso perhaps because the first part of this year, as I realised a few days ago, is all about endings.  Six weeks from now I will no longer have classes; ten weeks from now assignments from this term will be handed in, exams taken.  One final portfolio project to complete over the summer months and my MA will be completed.

And, with all the eagerness of a small kid just home from school, I'm heading for the door ready to go out to play without so much as a backward glance.  Tantalisingly the new writing life is breaking through the dull, damp top soil and gleefully I have been digging around in the mud to unearth it.

Last week I finished the first draft of a play I've been meaning to write for nearly two years.  I began work as a columnist on The News Minute, a new English language Indian news aggregation website, and had my first piece published.  A blog I wrote for a client has resulted in him receiving responses that could lead to new business.  The written word, in its myriad formats, is squarely front and centre in my life.

The end of the MA may be nigh but it's not actually here yet. There's plenty of daily plodding required before it is. Yet my eagerness to run forward and play out with my writing has me rushing around generating long excitable lists of things I want to do.

I want to re-edit some of the radio recordings I did last year and turn them into packages that I can publish on my *cough cough* still under development website.  (I want to develop my website). I want to grab hold of the access I currently have to filming equipment to make more short films on things that don't necessarily fit the narrow confines of my course requirements.  I want to start work redrafting my newly completed play.

Time vanishes before I properly get a chance to catch its tail and like the moody month of March I am reined back by Mama Winter.  She tells me I have to come home now, have a bath and get straight to bed. She says if I carry on like this there'll be tears before bedtime.

I can't say I'm thrilled by the prospect but I know there's sense in focusing on what is right now.  'Doing' has never really been my problem; it's the 'not doing' that I struggle with, doubtless stemming from the youngest child fear that if I don't stay up late and do everything there is to do then I'll be missing out on something Really Great.

And so I head off to pack away my lego and instead crack open McNae's Essential Law for Journalists,  pulling out my notebook ready to take notes.....

....in multi-coloured felt tip pen, of course.

Confessions of a closet environmental fascist

In the process of my journalism training I too have stood next to higher-than-usual-water, in wellies, with a camera, discussing 'extreme weather'.

I can't say it's an official rite of passage.  It did however only take 35 minutes of standing out in the wind, rain, hail and slimy-almost-but-not-quite snow for me to develop a greater (if grudging) level of respect for all the journalists we see on the telly standing in flood water at the moment.

I've read a lot around the subject of climate change.  Historically because I used to be something of an environmental fascist.  More recently to back up the validity of our 'piece to camera' homework and today because of writing this blog.

What's clear to me (from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 'Climate Change  2013: The Physical Science Basis - Summary for Policymakers' document) is that the temperature of the earth is hotter now than it was in 1880 (~ 1° C), that the arctic ice is melting rather rapidly, sea levels are rising and that these things are having an impact on our climate.  Additionally these changes can be linked to the increase of C02 that we've been merrily pumping into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

My reading also suggests that the future is a dark uncomfortable place, that we have slipped past our moment in time when we could've done anything to stop the inevitability of extreme weather as the norm by 2020, or the mass migration and environmental refugees this will create.  Top names in climate change science predict that conflict and war are on their way.

I checked in with my own mad scientist to get his view on the situation.  He cheerily agreed with the darkest assessment of the future and we had an interesting discussion about what would happen when bread reaches £10 per loaf.  It was dismal to say the least.

But the big question that isn't being answered for me, the thing I think we're missing here is this - what on earth (apart from stop buying houses in flood plains....) are we supposed to do about all of this?

In the not too distant past I used to be fundamentalist in my eco-beliefs.  I wouldn't buy something if I  couldn't reuse or recycle the container it came in.  I bought local, organic, fairtrade, seasonal.  I did not go into supermarkets anymore than I could reasonably help.  I ate a lot less meat.

As I look back at it now, it was a kind of mania, driven from the right place, a place of heart, of wanting to make a difference and make the world a better place.  It was nonetheless a mania.

It was also a glorious time in my life.  I lived in a transition town and was involved in environmental groups and activities. I was part of a community.  We worked hard and cared passionately about our campaigns but we also we worked together, we had fun, we made things happen - perhaps only at a small local level but it was a start, it was something.

I am something of a lapsed environmentalist since moving to Bristol.  I do the recycling but I confess I shop at Sainsbury's, watching my budget more carefully than the country of origin of the products I buy.

I feel a bit wearied by it all I guess.  In order to avoid the hopelessness and helplessness that I feel in the face of something as big as climate change I just get on with my daily life as best I can.  But I'm niggled by it.

I want the establishment to stop pushing out climate change deniers who are wonderfully distracting and cause us to focus on them rather than on asking awkward questions of our politicians about funding and future plans.  I want to know what I can do that helps today.  I want to know what I should be pushing Stephen Williams MP to be doing on my behalf.

And I believe that the media, our fourth estate, our establishment watchdog, ought to be better placed to provide that kind of public service.


'The uncertainty of our times is no reason to be certain about hopelessness.' (Vandana Shiva) 

Related links
http://www.ipcc.ch/
https://www.sustainablecrediton.org.uk/

Be mine, valentine....

On Valentine's day a couple of years ago I awoke to find a neighbour had left me a plastic red rose under my windscreen wiper on the car and a note scrawled in felt-tip pen saying 'It may be plastic but at least it will last forever' followed by 'call me' and his number.

Mortified (he was a nice guy but a) twice my age and b) my neighbour so this just felt creepy) I threw the note away* and tried my hardest to avoid all forms of contact with him.  Not my most grown up response perhaps but about all I could muster at the time.

I'm not sure I've ever been swept off my feet on Valentine's to be honest.  The mad scientist and I had a lovely time last year - though again not without incident.  We'd agreed to have 'a quick beer' after work with some colleagues of mine. This had (perhaps inevitably) snowballed into 'a few beers' which in turn meant we had to push our dinner reservation out by an hour or so.  All was merrily in hand however as we skipped home to get ready to go out for the evening.  

Shaving my legs at this time was probably not the wisest of things.  I did think that I'd nicked myself slightly when all the water running down the plughole turned red but bunged the pre-requisite bit of loo-roll onto my ankle and skipped off to my room.  I carried on getting ready thinking little of it until 5 minutes later I had a panic-stricken boyfriend hammering on the door to check I wasn't hemorrhaging to death as apparently the bathroom looked like I'd had a nasty run in with Norman Bates.

I'm not sure I entirely pulled off my 'killer' outfit that evening, hobbling down the hill in heels I could barely walk in.  It turns out the bloodied and bandaged ankle is not really compatible with the intended sensuality of sheer stockings, but still we had a lovely night, if more fun and funny than hollywood high romance...

Now the thing is I'm totally down with the cool kids and all the usual arguments against Valentine's day - it's a commercialised faux 'event' that has been hijacked by hallmark and the chocolate/champagne and flower companies.  It's unnecessary - we don't need a 'day' to say 'I love you' (feel the thunderous shudder of all businesses engaged in extracting money from you for weddings at this statement).  It causes undue stress and anxiety, accentuating loneliness and the stigmatism of being single or being in an unhappy relationship. It emphasises a homogenised version of what is socially acceptable - that we course through life a la Noah's Ark in male/female pairs, having sproglets and continuing the promulgation of the human race (to the eventual destruction of this beautiful blue planet....).

I hear ya.  I'm all there.  And yet.  I stumbled across a Valentine's card that my dad wrote to my mum after more than 25 years of marriage. He had signed off "I never want to be without you, our never ending love affair, with all my love, your sweetheart...".  Guess what? Yeah, all my cynicism melted. Pathetic huh?!

But I do think it's possible to skip or navigate the commercialism of Valentine's day.  In my family we've long since had a tradition that Valentine's is about more than romantic love - it's perfectly normal for us to send cards or give each other flowers simply because it's nice to do something nice for each other. So why not tell your best friend you love them and write them a haiku to celebrate (being careful not to create your own Cameron Diaz-esque confused rom-com love triangle of course)?  Or do something nice for yourself.  Or take a bucket down to the Somerset levels and try to shift the flood....

My other advice is - avoid razors after consuming alcohol.  For some reason they don't include that as a warning on the back of the packet.

(*I'll confess, I did regret throwing his number away when, a few weeks later, he and his son threw a 72 hour house party complete with poptastic anthems being played on repeat at high volume whilst I tried in vain to use the weekend as a quiet retreat from the madness of the working week.)

Time Tracking: Or 'At my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near'....

My good friends over at the appropriately brooding and philosophical Darkstuff Towers started a conversation last month about Time.  Specifically they asked where does it all go?

As I live with a physicist you can imagine time is something we talk about quite a lot:  Does it exist? How does the space-time continuum affect us? Is time-travel really possible?  When will dinner be?

But I've been thinking about time in a more pragmatic and self-reflective way over the past couple of weeks and specifically in relation to how much time I spend writing.

When I started out on the path to freelance freedom last October I made a commitment to myself that I would start each day by spending an hour creative writing.  I was conscious (based on what I know of my literary heros) that I needed to develop a writing routine and I felt the only thing standing between me and said routine had been 'having a proper job'.

I failed on day two.  Starting that day in particular by writing would have meant I had to get up at 5:30am *shudders*. A form of trauma for a morning sleepyhead such as me.

I decided therefore to move the goal posts ever so slightly and commit more simply to writing 'somewhere' within the day, everyday.  Guess what? I failed in that endeavour too. Creative writing (unpaid) got squished out most days by copy writing (paid) or by uni work (external deadlines) or bar work (yeah, money again) or the need to sleep (damn the human body for its sleep related weakness).

In no time at all I was back to my old pattern of fitting writing in, in fits and bursts wherever I could, daydreaming about islands of time in which I could muse and scrawl at will and beating myself up about not being disciplined enough.

About a fortnight ago, I decided to go slumming in the self-help section of my local e-book store.  I was specifically looking for an answer to the question 'how to get a daily writing routine'.  I came across a bundle of websites and blogs filled with advice about writing a thesis (duly passed over to the mad scientist in the house) but more importantly (for me!) I found Cathy Yardley's 'Write Every Day: How to write faster and write more' which turned out to be exactly the ebook I needed.

Yardley is a commercial writer who has published seventeen (let me repeat SEVENTEEN) books, two of which she wrote in one year whilst holding down a 40 hour a week job.  Fortunately she is also human and, despite having experienced some heady heights as an overachiever, she has hit some rather painful writing block lows too.  In combatting those lows she has tried and tested pretty much the full gambit of self-help lore.  Moreover she's boiled it all down into a handy and digestible set of exercises to help get the writerly person get writering again.

It's not just relevant to writers though.  I mean how many of us can actually answer the question 'where does all the time go' with any level of precision?  Knowledge is of course power therefore the first exercise Yardley recommends is time-tracking - writing down or recording by whichever means/device you fancy, everything you do and how long it takes you to do it.  Simple? Yes.  Obvious? Yes.  Done before?  From work point of view, yes, but never applied to my whole life.

The results were revelatory.

Time it turns out really is relative.  Tasks that I became absorbed in like sewing or reading and 'felt' like I'd only spent 20 minutes doing turned out to have eaten closer to 45 minutes or an hour;  other necessary-but-irksome tasks like washing up or tidying the house 'felt' like they'd taken at least half an hour or 40 minutes but were in fact more like 15 - 20 minutes in length.

Because I was measuring myself I found my behaviour changed.  I accessed social media a lot less for example.  I also became more focused on what I was doing.  Each time I scrawled down that I had finished one task I had to make a conscious decision about what I was going to do next which meant I had an increased clarity about the task I was undertaking.

In all areas, as a result of scrawling my actions in a notebook (carried around with me like a life support system) I was much more effective in all the tasks I did.  Total win.  Totally recommended.

Yardley quite sensibly explains it's only by knowing precisely how we're spending our time that we're able to figure out whether we've got issues with time (how we manage it), energy (over-subscribing ourselves), fear (being blocked) or  process (knowing how best to do what we need to get done). Or a little bit of each of these.....

Reading the book and engaging in the exercises I've come face to face with some inner monsters.  I've realised for example that I measure myself against one particularly hyperactive period in my life when I rocked a 16-hour-day corporate lifestyle, sat on three or four local committees, performed in plays, was teaching myself guitar and learning to surf, whilst also finding time to write poetry, read a book a week and go on regular hikes around the countryside with my dog.

I will never be that active again.  Never.  And actually I really don't want to be.  So I need to stop saying 'Yes' to everything in some belief that my superwoman alter ego self of five years ago is going to resurface in my life.

I also learned however that I have actually succeeded in developing a writing routine.  My blog.  I turn up at the page and write once a week every week and have done for nearly five months now.  I've learned a ton about my writing process and I'm as committed to blogging now as I was when I started.  Reading Yardley's book helped me recognise that my success in this area is probably because 'writing a weekly blog' is a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely (e.g. SMART) objective, as opposed to the much woolier 'write every day' one.

So having spent a week time-tracking I'm now moving into defining my time into 'containers' - not building a to-do list from hell (at least I hope not) but being really specific about what I need to get done, including EVERYTHING that needs to get done (including having good buffer zones around activities) and scheduling in time to write. Every day.

I'll let you know when the first novel is out ;).

(Gosh is that the time??? Better run.....)

Welcome to Ridley's Reading Rooms

This is the first in what I'm thinking will be a monthly feature where I share with you my reading highs and lows of the past month.  It won't be everything I've read (over three hours today reading up on the laws of defamation....I will spare you the details) but certainly it'll be a brief review of the stuff I choose to read....If you have any thoughts or feedback on any of the books, I'd love to hear from you.

So I kicked January off by reading one of the books I got for Christmas.

The Testament of Mary is a first person narrative by Mary, mother of Jesus, and her reflections and recollections in the time that she lived following the death of her son.

The novella is irritatingly scattered with well-known scenes from the New Testament.  Toibin seems keen to avoid filling in the blanks of the life of Christ as witnessed just by Mary - even to the point that Mary exits the kitchen when her sons group of 'misfits' gather together, so that she has nothing to say about the early disciples except that she finds them foolish and cruel.

The strongest 'retelling' by Mary is of the events she attends or witnesses in person - such as the wedding at Cana and the meeting with Lazarus who has been raised from the dead.  Here Toibin looks at the 'miracle' of resurrection from a more practical point of view - what must it be like to have died and returned?  Mary's empathy for Lazarus, her descriptions of him, alone and utterly isolated, as well as her confusion about what has happened are eloquently expressed.  Less successful are the scenes where Mary is being 'told' about miracles such as Jesus walking on water.

On the one hand recollecting familiar New Testament events is in keeping with the actual Gospels themselves as each one tells parts of the same story from a slightly different point of view.   On the other hand, the hinted at and darker political story of Mary being held half prisoner and milked for her recollections is far more interesting and not fully explored.

Ultimately the book failed for me because I was not convinced by Mary.  At times I felt she was closer to Mandy Cohen from The Life of Brian than a mother dealing with firstly outliving her son and then with having to live in fear for her own life because of his status as a prophet and the son of god.

My second read of the month was also a Christmas present from a friend.

The Power of Now is a book about spiritual enlightenment and how we can achieve it for ourselves.  Tolle tells in the preface how he experienced his own dark night of the soul in which he felt he could 'no  longer live with himself'. In that moment of darkness there was a flash of logic for him - who was the 'I' that could no longer live with 'him'?  Was he in fact therefore made up of two selves?  Having had his mind thus twisted into this very zen conundrum he set about understanding the 'self' beneath the 'self'....Still with me?  Excellent...on we go.

Tolle suggests that we are in fact made up of two parts - 'mind' and 'being'.  'Mind' is the noise, the endless chatter that you hear in your head. Tolle believes we allow 'mind' to dominate and that this domination of 'mind' over 'being' is the seat of all unhappiness, suffering and pain in our lives. Tolle points out that we can only live in the present, in the 'now', but the chatter in our heads is mostly about the past or the future, places we cannot physically 'be'. He recommends we listen to the 'noise', find the silence underneath it and thus inhabit the 'now'.

January is typically the month for detox and that reaches into the area of the soul as much as the stomach. Which isn't to say The Power of Now doesn't have a value.  Tolle makes a lot of sense, even if he sometimes feels a bit repetitive.  The plethora of books on the subject of mindfulness available at any good bookshop today suggests we are living in society that is overworked, overwhelmed and in need of some spiritual solace.  You could do a lot worse than reading The Power of Now if any of those thoughts feel familiar to you, though I would recommend the orange version 'Practicing the Power of Now'.  It's the same material just packaged in a more succinct, user friendly way.

Stargazing was my charity shop find of the month!  It is the memoir of an arts student who dropped out of college in 1973 to become a relief lighthouse keeper for six months. It is a beautiful book which tells the story of lighthouse keeping, captured just before lighthouses became fully automated.

It is the story of a most diverse group of men (all lighthouse keepers were men...) living a very peculiar, routine and quite solitary life.  Lighthouses were always manned by three people at any one time so the men didn't live alone, but someone needed to be awake and to tend to the light throughout the night - the hardest and most solitary shift being the 'Rembrandt' night watch which began at 2am and ran through to morning.

Hill captures the characters of the men that he spent time with on a number of lighthouses around the coast of Scotland and in particular captures the spirit of storytelling that seems to be the unifying characteristic of all the light house keepers.

Whilst Hill ultimately returns to art school the time working on the lighthouses provides him with the space and solitude in which he is able to develop into himself through learning and living in a world in which routine and discipline are central tenets.  Hill's experience is a Romantic one and the book left me with an absolute nostalgia for peopled lighthouses and a craving to go live in one for a while...

So it felt serendipitous when my second charity book shop find of the month Lighthousekeeping turned out to also be set on a lighthouse, Cape Wrath, off the Scottish coastline.

Our hero Silver is orphaned at 10 (in 1979 literally just before the lights stopped being manned!) and sent to live with the lighthouse keeper Pew as an apprentice.

The story is a wonderful Winterson work of magical realism and so it complemented perfectly the factual book I'd been reading just before.  It revisited tales about the Stevenson family - engineers who had lighthouse building and design in their blood since the first lighthouses were built.  It included stories about Robert Louis Stevenson and the way in which lighthouses had played a part in his early life, potentially influencing the stories he wrote.

Through stories about the very Victorian character of the Reverend Babel Dark, who was born on the very day the lighthouse at Cape Wrath was completed, and his connections with RL Stevenson, Darwin, and Molly O'Rourke Silver experiences love and loss whilst trying to figure out what her own story might be.

For Winterson 'lighthousekeeping' as a profession is a euphemism for storytelling - which fits beautifully with Hill's description of 'real' lighthouse keepers as compulsive storytellers.  Through reading Lighthousekeeping I'm reminded what a great author Winterson is and am keen to read much, much more (I mean everything) that she's written.

So that was January at the Reading Rooms.  The coming month is likely to feature some (but almost certainly not all) of the following books.......

I hope you pop back for some more tea and book chat next month.  Happy reading y'all! xxx

How to survive an MA (and run a half marathon)

Term officially started today for us MA Journalism students at UWE.

Not so much with a bang as with a thin, mildly depressed, whinging noise.  The computer systems were down; the grades we'd been awarded for the work we handed in before Christmas hadn't been issued to us despite our lecturers working like the clappers over the break to ensure we had them back on day one of the term; the email about the change in both the time and the room for our seminar today had only gone to about half the class so a whole bunch of people couldn't make it. M-I-S-E-R-Y prevailed. Resigned misery at that.

And we're not alone.  Our tutors are equally harassed and harangued by it all.  On one module, despite our MA course leader saying he DIDN'T want us to do an essay in the same semester we have a pretty critical law exam, because the system says we're supposed to hand in a piece of work this term we now have to do an extra piece of work......'Computer says no' has nothing on this.

The thing is, some of this is simply the sort of bureaucracy you have to expect from any large organisation that has been made 'lean' or has been 'six sigma'd' to within an inch of its life.  Energetic drives to automate the heck out of processes, find efficiencies within the system and cut out the fat of humanity tends to leave a trail of the disgruntled and the dysfunctional in its enthusiastic wake.

Beyond that though, some of this is even more simply about just doing an MA.  I have friends who shot out of university and straight onto MA programmes.  It's a harrowing experience.  There's no room to settle in, get comfy, enjoy the ambience of being at university.  It's about producing work and hitting the right mark immediately.

I have other friends who have, like me, undertaken their MA part-time.  It's a different type of battle.  Constantly weighing off work priorities with studying ones. The giddy highlights are finding yourself in the library of a Saturday afternoon and wondering how come you don't normally have this sort of time on a weekend to spend surrounded by books and loveliness.  The lowlights are however much, much darker.

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to quit the course.  I really can't.  Even Dave, who mostly has to pick up the pieces of my 'make-this-madness-stop-now' ranting would struggle to give you a meaningful number.   Last term was significantly better than the previous academic year in terms of work/life balance - I became fully self-employed and halved my working time (and consequently income) so I could do justice to the course. It has been decidedly less stressful even if I'm poorer for it. However there were times when if you had said to me words to the effect; 'you're on the last lap of the race, one more semester and you're done, just hang on in there kiddo' you would actually have been taking your life into your own hands.

But the race analogy works well.  Whichever way you do an MA a lot of it is about stamina and in any race much of that is about your mental attitude.  When I wanted to quit last year, it was mostly out of fear that I couldn't do it, I wasn't good enough, I was a fool to even think of doing such a thing.  This year is quite different.  As I was embarking on the course last year my old boss, an extremely astute person, passed a comment that it wasn't that I needed the MA for the skills it was imparting to me, so much as for the confidence I personally would gain from having the piece of paper to back up the fact I really did have those skills.  Note the closeness of this observation to my frets of failure last year.

Oddly enough the course has already given me a level of confidence that I didn't have previously.  It is the confidence to say I am so over further education.  That isn't by the way to say that I haven't learned a huge amount during this course. I have, absolutely.  It's not about the course.  In some senses it's about the love affair in my head that I've had with education since I left it full-time years ago.  I have romanticised it to the highest degree and, like most secret crushes, the reality of it has fallen wide of the mark, nicely grounding me.

Doing an MA (certainly part-time) is a lot like middle distance running.  I'm reminded of Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running who says that having a mantra to get you through a long run is essential.  A favourite that he quotes resonates with my experience of doing the MA: "Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional". He goes on to explain: "Say you're running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can't take it anymore.  The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself."

This is true of anything. It's not what we do, it's how we do it that counts and when doing anything over a sustained period of time simply continuing to do it, to be motivated and focused is the real challenge. I see fellow students beside me who are equally over education.  They are absolutely gagging to just get out there and start doing journalism 'for real'.  I see other students who have near as damn-it decided that journalism isn't for them but who, in the face of the challenge of completing the course come what may, have raised their game massively and are producing some incredible work.  I see other students who are absolutely blossoming as they soak up everything the course has to offer.

My own mantra for the last twelve weeks of classes is 'Sod off voice of doom'.  It isn't particularly philosophical. It isn't elegant and it definitely isn't graceful. I figure however it IS the tough line I probably need to make it through to graduation.