Tuesday 9 February 2010

The Baking Mojo...

seems to have struck me with its mighty hammer and is now holding me in its thrall. A plan to entice folks to the meeting today with home-baked confectionery had me in the kitchen for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, pinny in place, and rolling pin at the ready! I made rocky road traybake, lemon and poppyseed shorty and caramel shorty! 


What scares me is as I was baking I was adjusting the recipes in my head - improving them! This is scary! I have already baked a lemon tea bread this week as well as a buttermilk raisin and walnut cake! I am indeed very popular just now! I got the recipes online at http://allrecipes.co.uk/ but I would use caution as they were far from perfect and need a little jiggling with. I wouldn't use the caramel shorty recipe again as I have made much nicer shorty! Oh and don't buy the caramel in the carnation tins! It is nowhere near as unctuous as homemade caramel! 






Due to a lack of attendees at said meeting today there was plenty left over to bribe my office mate with and the PG secretary - now everyone knows that the PG Secretary is the person you have to keep on side - s/he is your best friend!!! :D Luckily ours is an absolute treasure! 


*Oops slight sideslip into a day in the life of a domestic goddess there - quick smart back to academia! *


Feedback on the chapter was relatively positive. The bulk of it is* very good* but the introduction and conclusion are (and I quote) " far too generalised, speculative, assertive and unsupported to be presentable " - oh that doesn't sound good.


The plan is a rewrite of these parts of the chapter. The problem appears to be I am taking it for granted that the reader has a perfect grasp of the contextual matters which I discuss - so I need to be more emphatic and expansive about this aspect of the chapter. I am awash with information that what is common knowledge and what is more specialist knowledge has become rather blurred in my mind. I am hoping this is a relatively easy thing to sort out. 


Another spot of good news is I have been selected to take part in an internal teaching review panel for the School of Art History. This involves reading policy material the school has in place, attending a few pre review meetings and a pre review dinner, and then a day of reviewing with some feedback. And it pays! Well nothing to yell home about - I will not be absconding to Bermuda or anything like that - but it has a renumeration which is a bonus as when I applied I had no idea that this was the case. Hopefully it will be a useful experience and it is certain CV filler that is for sure! And this is becoming evermore important as the Ph.D biological clock ticks louder and louder, viva,viva,viva.....and then EEK! A JOB! 


No news yet on the two abstracts I put out for the two conferences in June. But I am off to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester (the birth town of British Suffrage) on Wednesday and will be popping in to see one of my closest friends along the way in the Wirral! Should be a good trip. Don McCullin is also exhibiting the largest exhibition of war photographs ever staged in Britain - which given my interest in war should prove interesting though it is slightly outside my area of expertise. http://north.iwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.24321 

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