A pause in proceedings

This blog is about to be paused for a while for a holiday. If anyone is interested in 'my other blog' - concerned with travel - its at http://fromthesilversea.blogspot.co.uk/. I'll be posting every few days to let people know how we're getting on.

But I can't just ignore the work, as term is starting and supervisors likely to be assigned soon. Everybody else has probably had their holiday and is raring to go (??). So I'll load my laptop with my Cohen lyrics (and  also the albums themselves, which are irrelevant to what I'm doing but we might enjoy a bit of Cohen en route) and some scanned pages from the stylistics textbook and some papers I've downloaded. When there's nothing else going on, I'll be able to keep my hand in.

Back soon.

Work or play?

Last night we went to the Cohen concert at Manchester Arena. I don't like the Arena - its too big and slightly grubby. The stairs are too steep for me without a handrail and there are no handrails. But we had brilliant seats - side-on to the stage in the lower block and on the end so we had a clear view. The performance from Cohen and his singers and instrumentalists was mesmerising - he is now funny rather than dreary. Despite his 79 years, all the energy on stage comes from him and he is still dancing after three hours on stage.

But he's trying to ruin my dissertation. He changes lyrics - 'famous blue raincoat' ended with 'sincerely, a friend' instead of 'sincerely, L. Cohen'. In 'Amen', instead of just distorting his vowels to get 'sober' to rhyme with 'horror', it became 'goddamned' horror. Is he not thinking of the linguists out here?

We go on holiday soon and its wardrobe planning day. I'm going to try all my best outfits on.