My goals for this year...

My plan this week was to get myself organised for the year ahead.  For starters I set myself the easy task of putting everyone’s email addresses in groups in my contact folder.  I pressed the wrong button and deleted half of them which then required a help! email to the rest asking for them back..  The next job was to write my case discussion ready for next week only to find I have run out of white printer paper so it has to be on girly pink – not my colour really!

I have set myself a goal this year  to balance things better between academic work, income generating  tasks, socialising and creative stuff.  Taking a break from the computer, I spent Saturday with my daughter in a tiny village in West Sussex. A walk from her flat  always seems to turn into a  veritable feast.  Last time I came back with sloes to make our Christmas sloe gin, rosehips to make jelly and blackberries and elderberries to mix with apples for a delicious crumble. This time we munched on grapes scrumped from the vineyard up the road, and I returned with sweet chestnuts to mix with brussel sprouts, onion and bacon in white sauce – one of my favourite warming dishes.  Another treat is nettle and potato soup but I have to remember to take the marigolds out with me! Nettles don’t grow in Australia and for years I only knew about them from reading books. I discovered what they were when, on my first job in the UK as a strawberry picker in Kent,  I squatted behind a tree for my ‘comfort break’…not a pleasant experience!