Matthew Walton’s Blog

What a contradiction, but it’s true. I like going places, I like to see things and meet people. I also like to stay at home, stay in my comfortable surrounds, and be geeky with my computers. At the moment I’m in travelling mode, and some of it’s good. Yesterday I went to Cardiff to see Luke and Jenny, two friends of mine from the old Netland White Tower site, get married. Luke’s nearly as tall as I am, and having just passed his PhD subject to minor corrections he’s clearly having a good week. It got even better when Jen arrived in the back of the hall, adorned with a stunning wedding dress that showed off her perfect figure and flawless shoulders to perfection.

Jealous? You bet! But I wish them every happiness, and intend to go over to Boston, MA and see them some time next year, for they will be making their new lives in the States.

Tomorrow the real stress starts: an 0638 train from Nottingham takes me to Bristol for the Automated Reasoning Workshop. At least I should get a good dinner in the middle of it — the restaurant where we’re having the meal looks gorgeous. I return to Nottingham on Tuesday, and have a few days of relative peace before turning out again to the Midlands Graduate School in Leicester, another four days causing me to have to miss the April meeting of the Society of Recorder Players, something I’m displeased about as due to the holidays I’m currently deprived of the opportunity to play with other people. I can’t wait for life to return to some semblance of normality.

Around all this I also need to finish off some other things, and somehow find some time to sleep and not go mad.

I cannot wait until May.

Living in Halls is tricky for another reason — music. Not the stuff my computer reproduces for me for hours on end, because I can turn that down or listen using headphones if necessary. I’m talking about the music produced by recorder when I’m playing it (yes it is the same sort of recorder people learn at primary school, and yes it really is a real instrument for which there is real music). Whether that’s actually music most of the time is debateable. I’m having lessons because I’m not very good.

Of course, everyone knows that to get better at an instrument you have to practice.

But where does one practice when the walls aren’t very soundproof and you’re sure half the building can hear you and is giggling, or storming to your door in a rage to beat it down and kill you? I have a lesson tomorrow and I’ve not done what I should have done. This is not going to go well if it continues, as I won’t be improving at any kind of rate at all.

What am I going to do?

So I’m four weeks into my PhD. I could say a lot. In fact, I could complain a lot. I could complain about living in Halls (and I have done repeatedly to my friends here and on the Internet, sorry guys and girls but it does help to share these things). Really I’ve been lucky — lucky with my flatmates, who aren’t really all that irritating and are mostly clean and well-behaved with remarkably good taste in music (i.e. I’ve not heard much of theirs and they’ve not complained about mine). No fire alarms in the middle of the night yet despite the ominous behaviour of people in the rest of the building. I don’t necessarily like them, I don’t like how they shout their way up and down the stairs, how they smoke outside my window, how they sing and shout in the car park and play football in it.

But they could be worse.

The thing I like best about this is the freedom. Being a PhD student gives me considerable leeway with regard to what I’m doing and how I go about doing it. To be honest I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I’m told that’s perfectly normal at this stage. The atmosphere in the department is very relaxed most of the time, everyone’s very nice and I like going into the office. Would be better if the desk was the right size for me (as usual I’m too big for everything) but it might suffice for a while. The possibility still exists to get something better, as that hasn’t been investigated yet and so nobody’s said no to me yet. Not sure if health and safety regs cover me as they would if I was an employee of the department, and I know I don’t have the status of a staff member for some things, but in other things they’re treating me like one so who knows? I shall of course investigate every possibility I can.

Supervision meeting this week. Maybe I’ll have a better idea where I’m going after I’ve had it. Louise has been extremely helpful and facilitating so far, may that continue until I’ve passed my viva.

Although it might be tempting for some of you to think that I’ve been lost in a temporal anomoly for the last week, it’s really just because I haven’t got around to writing anything yet. And that’s got a lot to do with not knowing what to say.

Living where I’m living is okay, but I still don’t like halls. Doors banging, people skateboarding outside as I type this, drunken shouting and clamouring — even Postgraduate students aren’t above this sort of thing. Thankfully my flatmates are nice, but one room is still unoccupied and I live in constant apprehension of the fire alarms going off in the middle of the night. That’s unreasonable, I know, but it’s there.

The PhD thing, however, looks like it’s going to be great. Lots to do, and I will attempt to post more often about what’s going on as I’m trying out two new societies this week: Latin & Ballroom and Mussoc. Mussoc is the music society, they’re rather large and I’m going along to their early music group so I can play my recorder (badly). They also teach the viol, which could be interesting to have a go with…

Well, time for a relocation. I just got off the phone to Accomodation Services (wonderfully helpful, although the poor woman sounded a bit stressed. Judging by the time it took me to get through to them, she’s got good reason to and it’s not even half past ten yet) who confirmed my accomodation is all sorted.

So I’m moving to Nottingham tomorrow as planned. Whew. That’s a relief. Time to pack some clothes.

Online-ness will be erratic for a while until I can get the network point in my room activated, so I might be even quieter and more boring than usual for a while. Not that you’ll notice…