still alive

sorry for the huge delay since the last post. i've had a few people ask when the thesis will be finished and therefore, will i post again soon.

so the news is, the thesis is almost finished. it's with a friend who's proofreading it at the moment, i get it back tomorrow and then have a week to get it as perfect as possible. it gets handed in on the 29th of this month, and then i will have finished my study!

however i have had a bit of a life outside of the thesis. to fill in the blanks from the last month ... i went to wales to visit my relatives there shortly before i left bristol (ages ago i know). I was meant to spend the weekend doing some walking around different parts of wales and bag a few more peaks. The few days before i went were a bit wet and nasty, but we were hoping that it would clear, and the forecast was that in the afternoon the showers would clear, the cloud base would rise and it would be pretty decent weather for getting up a 770m peak. well that didn't happen.

this is me on the top of the peak. i'm sure the view would have been lovely if we had been able to see anything. This peak is up near Snowdonia, and i was really looking forward to seeing some of north wales. We saw whatever was 100m in front of us and that was about it. I was soaked (as you can possibly see) and we decided not to climb the second peak that we were meant to tackle that day. We got slightly lost on the way down and ended up scrambling over a few stone walls and jumping lots of rivers. It was all rather interesting and not an experience i am particularly keen to repeat. However I do want to climb that peak again, or at least the second one we were meant to do, just so that i can see the view and maybe get some photos. The second day in wales was a little drier, but not much, so we went to Hay-on-Wye and spent a lovely afternoon browsing through all the second hand book stalls. A much more refined activity and more suited to the weather.

For the last few weeks i have been in London, writing the thesis while staying with my cousin here. I've managed to take some time off at weekends, so among the things I've done, i have been to Buckingham Palace and seen the state rooms. this was actually much better than i expected. while it was very crowded and it was at times difficult to see the objects clearly, or read the labels the audio guide that was provided was very informative and interesting, and allowed you to travel through the rooms at your own pace. I was much more impressed than I thought I would be, and while its not something i would go back and do, it is something that i might recommend to people who were interested in stately homes. I think the visit was made more interesting as it was just after a big television event where a team of archaeologists had spent the august bank holiday weekend excavating gardens at three royal residences, buckingham being one of them, and from the small bits i had watched i picked up a bit more history about the development of the site and the palace. so putting that into context was interesting.

I've also been to a chelsea match. Finally got to a premiership match. It was a decent game, chelsea won (no suprise there) and played okay. The second half was a bit messy and not as interesting as the first, but still, it was a premiership match and it was very good football. Very happy to have seen that.

Finally I've been planning a trip to spain as my treat for finishing the course. The women's hockey world cup is being held in madrid, starting next week. so for two weeks in october i'll be travelling through spain - starting in madrid where i hope to see a few days of the hockey. I'm really looking forward to it and i'm sure i'll have lots of photos to post when i finish that trip.

That's about all the news for the moment. I'll post again when i've finished the thesis.