fishers, surfers and casters

I’m now in a cafe on Piccadilly Circus; it has free Wi-Fi and power points near the tables, so I’m a very happy man. Have been in the UK since Saturday night. I’m staying with Cam, who’s has a really lovely bunch of housemates (all Aussies, in fact I think the entire suburb is Australian), and an even lovelier new girlfriend named Emma.

On Monday I flew to Edinburgh, and bugger me that is a breathtakingly beautiful city. I stayed with my old friend Milja (another Porticus Fellow) and caught up with my long lost cousin Carmel. God it was good to see her – she left home when I was very young and travelled the world, settling in Scotland, and I only saw her briefly a few years ago at a Christmas function. So this time we packed two lifetimes into one conversation.

I couldn’t shake the feeling I was at the very end of the earth, but what a lovely end it was. Checked out the universities and if there might be any postdoc opportunities there; and passed my card around.

Today I’m looking forward to seeing Katharine Moody from Bristol, who’s doing similar research to me. We’ll pretend to be all macadamic and whatnot but mostly we’ll just muck around and complain about being students. It’ll be cool.