I’m sort of running at speed trying to stay in one place at the moment. I have two SACs (School Assessed Coursework) next Tuesday and I’m grateful to not be working the Good Food & Wine Show this weekend as it gives me plenty of time for study, my hip pocket nerve isn’t so happy but I’ll worry about that when I need to. I have two essays to write on Tuesday which need some studying time. I’m not worried about the English one as that’s on Death of a Salesman and my English teacher is pretty good about forcing information into our heads but this will be my first essay for English Language and my stomach is feeling the nerves on this one. I’m reasonably certain I’ll be fine on the day as that seems to be the norm nowadays but I’ll worry and put in a lot of work boning up on the metalanguage which is probably what will make it alright.

We’re also planning a holiday and while I’m sure I’ll have internet connection most of the time and even time to write some days I’m really not happy with blogging on the iPad. I’m about to start planning and scheduling some of articles so they just appear as if by magic on the right day. You’ll definitely get the female science fiction authors as some of those names are already in my schedule and I only need to do the research and writing, when I finish my current book for English I’ll start reading books again and work on scribbling some words about them.

And that’s the other thing. We’re about to start studying Stasiland by Anna Funder, it’s a great book but I’m finding it challenging to read…not for all the normal reasons though. The book is well written and is relatively easy to read but I’m finding myself swamped by memories after only a page. Funder has written about life behind the Berlin Wall and what things are like now it’s physically gone. I’ve been to Berlin, in fact, I was there about the time she was finalising this book so some of the images in my mind are almost exactly what she would have seen. I’ve been to some of the places she mentions, on my desk at the moment are the photos we took at the time, it was in 2001 when digital cameras weren’t really a thing so they’re physical photos. I’m planning on scanning the photos and creating a powerpoint presentation to help them, I’ll put in a photo of the map we have on our wall of Berlin which includes the Wall with outlines of where people would have died trying to cross it, a little confronting so if I put the presentation up I’ll have to preface this image with a disclaimer. What also distracts me with this book are memories of the cold war and what life here was like, I was very much aware of the Wall and what it symbolised despite not remembering a time without it.

I’m also putting some time into getting things done for the function on the 28th June. Victorian Discworld is getting together with the Glen Eira Council and running part of their Storyteller Festival, just a small part but it feels like a mini-Nullus to me and will be very exciting. As I’m head of the committee I’ve sort of found myself rather busy.

I could have found some actual book type information to write about but I did want to mention why I have no book reviews, they seem to be my go-to when there’s nothing important to write about but I’ve run out as I’ve been too busy reading Stasiland (it will have taken about 10 days to read) to read any other books or to deal with any of the issues on my list. Yes, I have a list of things I want to write about, some require more research, some require me to actually read the book (or books) and some require me to actually write some questions and email them to the person concerned, but I have a list.