It’s been over three years since I wrote a blog post although I have added site pages and worked on the Mabinogi Blibiography. Much has pappened and big changes in process. SO this is a catchup poats.
CHANGES The blog will stay but the rest of the site is being transferred to a wiki system (dokuwiki) which is quicker and easier to manage. It also handles footnotes without needing an additional addon.
This matters because the site has been invited on to the UK National Archive as ’an important part of Wales documentary heritage’ (early 2017). So I have to think of long term survival, making the site system sumpler. As you can imagine I was delighted and chuffed to bits.
The blog becoming more separate means I can enjoy adding whatever I damn well please to it. That’ll be fun. More faces of Shan.
I’m gradually transferring the rest to the new version.
PREVIEW http://mabinogistudy.com/index/doku.php
Now to catch up since 2015.
End of 2016 I nearly died of exploding appendix. Not fun.
But after about 3 months I was back on track busy with my beloved Rhiannon and Mabinogi research. My shaky health was actually better than for many years. Hurray!
I wrote some historical fiction about Rhiannon too, a new departure for me.
Rhiannon the Cat aka Magnyffica, finally gave up biting me (almost) a habit which had been tricky as her fangs are like a sabre tooth tiger (Maine Coon). She’s so sweet though. (Am I lovesick? Of course I am.)
In 2017 I did a lovely series of articles for Pembrokeshire Life magazine, a different topic every month. Quite hard work and a lot of fun with my own chosen illustrations. I hope to have the articles archived on here one day.
In September my main supervisor retired but was willing to continue to mentor me. The university left me in a terrifying limbo without any arrangement for a whole month. Ugh. University bureaucracy is the pits.
I took 6 months off from the PhD starting October intedning to organise another income arrangement because the current one is too exhausting.
My beloved was becoming very tired through that year. We thought it was just ageing, natural enough as we advance through our 60s, although he has always been superfit.
Then Samhain (Oct 31) he zoomed through A&E and landed a cancer diagnosis. YUK. Poor darling, but it was hard on me too as I had to run the business, do hospital visits, do medical research, manage how much he and the Boy knew about it so they gradually understood with as little terroor as possible, and all the rest. MacMillan’s are marvellous. After four months the man himself is stable on immunotherapy but I collapsed with exhaustion and dire flu.
2018 There was an interesting week when we were snowed in, all three very sick indeed barely able to stager to bathroom, plus cats had a bug too. Food ran out. Snow outside so no question of going out. Sainsbury’s then let us down – twice – canceling food delivery. None of us were strong enough to go out. Interesting times. Sainsbury’s sent a £10 apology: contemptible.
The 6 months suspension period had been gobbled up by disasters. The university has the peculiar idea that I have to ask permission to stop working for a bit. Do they really think cancer requires their permission? Anyway telling them to suspension needs to extend another 6 months has again left me in limbo without any clear status. One dept. demands I register again while another handling my notification is silent for 6 weeks. Hohum.
Of course I haven’t completely stopped working. I just can’t do the full flow. Also my health went decidedly wonky as the flu has taken 6 weeks of convalescence on top of the fortnight of peak grottiness. Etsaana the black queen never left my side for the worst of it for a whole month, dear sweetness. Tal is firmly bullying me to exercise and all the rest so it’s slowly coming back. I’ve been comfort buying on ebay many pretty things.
Decided I am too isolated – the disaster story of running out of food was a bit much and no friends near to help. So I am making attempts to connect socially but for an eccentric hermit of formidable powwer that is not easy.
Heigh ho that’s it. Rhiannon still rides me hard. There have been many many insights. The folders are fat with notes. I am trying out Zim Wiki as a desktop database – I must have tried 20 database solutions over the last 5 years.
Thank heavens for the state pension or I don’t know how we’d have survived. But I am planning to drop the day job in another two years. That means the last year of my PhD I can be free almost full time, and forge ahead with THE BOOKS – and this website. Onward!