New Year's Eve, Old Style

This week - between the end of teaching and my departure for Japan - was meant to be fantastically productive, but...

It's not that I haven't been working. The time has been taken up with multiple tasks that are legitimately part of my job, but of the kind that tend to get thrown at me unpredictably at short notice, gobbling time as they go. Looking at drafts of student dissertations, editorial work for Children's Literature in Education, admin around the Roald Dahl conference this June: these are all useful, necessary and at times even enjoyable things, but they're not what I'd been meaning to do - which was mostly to get on my talk for this event. I have a plan, and lots of notes, but a block of time to put them all together is still wanting.

Oh well, it's time to put thoughts of that aside and get packed. This year, like last year, I'll be blogging - hopefully with pictures, if I can bend the technology to my will. Also like last year, the forecast is a bit gloomy. I will apparently be accompanied by my personal British microclimate, a bit like a Mario Thunder Cloud, displacing sunshine wherever I go. But forecasts have been known to be wrong, and I hope to be carrying sunshine too, if only the form of my disposition.

Anyway, I leave on Saturday. This is my route, if you're interested, travelling north and east from Kagoshima to Tokyo.

New Year's Eve, Old Style

This week - between the end of teaching and my departure for Japan - was meant to be fantastically productive, but...

It's not that I haven't been working. The time has been taken up with multiple tasks that are legitimately part of my job, but of the kind that tend to get thrown at me unpredictably at short notice, gobbling time as they go. Looking at drafts of student dissertations, editorial work for Children's Literature in Education, admin around the Roald Dahl conference this June: these are all useful, necessary and at times even enjoyable things, but they're not what I'd been meaning to do - which was mostly to get on my talk for this event. I have a plan, and lots of notes, but a block of time to put them all together is still wanting.

Oh well, it's time to put thoughts of that aside and get packed. This year, like last year, I'll be blogging - hopefully with pictures, if I can bend the technology to my will. Also like last year, the forecast is a bit gloomy. I will apparently be accompanied by my personal British microclimate, a bit like a Mario Thunder Cloud, displacing sunshine wherever I go. But forecasts have been known to be wrong, and I hope to be carrying sunshine too, if only the form of my disposition.

Anyway, I leave on Saturday. This is my route, if you're interested, travelling north and east from Kagoshima to Tokyo.