Mixed reaction...

I am back! And I am alive! Just about...

Was a very productive meeting - and was actually a meeting so I did 'fess up... Straight away actually, I made the mistake of proclaiming how tired I was when I got in and he asked why that might be then - and so I dropped the bomb with a lot of lip chewing and big apologetic eyes. He just said 'Ah...' and we started talking about what we were going to do about the work, timewise and he did let me know that apparently I am his pride and joy (!!?! yay!) and that he is waiting until I get my PhD to retire... He is about 70 and it is a great source of joy for me that he isn't going to retire on me, but a massive source of pressure that I am the reason he isn't retired yet! Apparently much against his wife's wishes! SOOOO if I wanted some motivation I have got bags of it now. Poor Sup, I can't be rubbish and make him wait years to retire. He must have been eyeing up next Sept like the finishing line of the race... except now I have added at least six months to it! God; actually, I feel awful.

The most scary thing is that he wants me, not entirely unreasonably, to have my first draft done by xmas (and baba - coming on 21 Dec as my most recent guestimate). My FIRST DRAFT. DONE. Oh. My WORD. I have got sooooooo much work to do! About 60,000 words?!! But it is a good thing really, and he said that too - it is good to have a strong deadline to work for and it is such a deadline that I have been missing these past few months. So I now have a *lot* of pressure, a *lot* of work and, happily, a baba at the end of it.

Bad news though - have to go to India really. Just for a couple of weeks (will go for a month, may as well make something of it, I don't hate it that much) to tidy up ends and just do a follow up visit. I just *need* to. And so I will - with DB, and this time LB!! :D It will be a month, I will actually look forward to it I think and being there can get a tan and chill a bit and do lots of work. It will be cool (well, super hot actually).

Oh my god, he said that he is going to organise my 3rd monitoring meet (basically the 'you're nearly done' meeting) for the end of the year too. So I really am finishing! This is the Year! Righty, am on it. First, organise when likely to be fit to go to India; second read books, read, read, READ! Finish reading in three weeks - 18 May, then write! Write, write write.

I really wouldn't be surprised if this tacker is soothed when it's born by the sounds of me reading Foucault or debating different fieldwork methods. 'Post modernism' will be its first words (if it's wise it will say 'stay away from post-modernism, you know no one likes it'...) Poor mite.

x J