MaW’s Blog

MaW has been busy. MaW has also, it seems, taken to writing about himself in the third person.

Enough of that. I went on holiday to the Lake District. Some photos in the gallery (not many, I’m too busy to muck about with tweaking and uploading lots, and you probably don’t want to look at them anyway. I did pick the best ones though).

I’m still preparing for my ABRSM grade 5 treble recorder exam, which is in early December.

It’s nearly time for National Novel Writing Month to start! This year I’m one of three Municipal Liasons for England::Nottingham region, so there’s more to do on the organisational front. MLs are of course also expected to reach 50,000 words, in order to set a good example. I’m aiming for 60,000 this year, but we’ll see how it goes. I hope I can do it, because if I don’t I suspect Paul will be terribly displeased — more so than he was last year after I completely failed to blow up any planets in my novel, even after we spent an enjoyable afternoon discussing how you could blow up a planet with a ferret (we thought maybe a ferret travelling at 0.99c might do it on impact, but nobody actually sat down and worked out the energy requirement. It’s quite possible you’d need several ferrets).

So this year I have a basis for a plot, I even have a preliminary title, and I’ll be sticking bits of in-progress stuff up on the NaNoWriMo page here from time to time. Maybe even the whole thing like last year, if you’re very, very unlucky.

What else? Oh yes. I’ve started lessons with the Latin, Ballroom and Salsa society at the University — Latin and Ballroom lessons, that is, the Salsa classes are different. It’s fun but quite difficult, and I’ve stepped on far too many toes. I think my feet are too big, and I feel the need to only dance with girls who are wearing steel toecaps for their own protection.

Of course, it’s difficult because quite often we’re both making mistakes, so even if one of us dances perfectly we still end up stepping on each other’s feet. Sort of a lose-lose situation really, but hopefully that will fade with more practice.

It’s a shame I can’t make the practice sessions, but they rather clash with recorders. Recorder lessons are now on Mondays, followed once a fortnight by a Monday consort, nice and small, good people to play with, great music to play.

Wednesdays is Collegium Musicum — first concert this year is in late November, lunchtime again. Nowhere near as scared about it as I was this time last year. I guess that’s what experience will do.

Thursdays is dancing, as mentioned above.

Saturdays throughout November are devoted to NaNoWriMo.

So I’m a bit busy for the foreseeable future. I also have a nifty little software project to write some time, but that’s not really going to be on the map until at least Christmas.

Oh yeah, and an interim report for my PhD. Gotta fit that in somewhere too.