I have vague recollections of a song that was sung when I was at school all about the month of May, I can hum the tune (badly I suspect), but can’t remember many of the words, except it included a line about being the month of ‘rejoicing’. This May has been a good month for me, so perhaps the tune is appropriate. Busy as ever, though, with various research projects being particularly active, including the ‘Connected Communities’ work, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I also became involved in a small local research project to evaluate an initiative providing hot meals in schools for older people, as part of the Excellent Ageing project in Lincolnshire.
On a different note, with a team of colleagues I started on the Global Corporate Challenge on 19th May. This is a pedometer based walking challenge where we are engaged in a virtual team walk around the world for 16 weeks; wearing a pedometer each day and entering our own daily step count on-line each day. It is fascinating how wearing a pedometer makes me not only realise how sedentry my job can be, but also gives me the motivation to take the stairs rather than the lift and to get out jogging and walking more than I had been. It’ll be interesting to watch progress over the coming weeks.
Then at the end of the month, I had a short family break away in West Wales, whilst the weather was somewhat unpredictable, it was great to spend time with my family, just enjoying each other’s company and time together.
I am writing this entry at the end of yet another busy month. I didn’t take any leave over the Easter period, but spent much of the time working on the proofing queries and indexing work on my current book for Sage Publications; this feels as though it is really coming together now.
Also at the beginning of the month we completed the data collection work on the research project that I have been working on with colleagues, funded by SWAP the Higher Education Academy subject centre. The final data collection work took place on a full day with students and stakeholders at the University’s Riseholme Campus, where the sun shone and spring was definately ‘in the air’ – I took this photograph of a tree in bloom at the campus, it was so beautiful.
April also saw my Mum’s 88th birthday and a lovely family celebration – as can be seen in this photograph.
March is one of my favourite months of the year, for lots of reasons, mainly though because it really seems to hail the start of spring and all that comes with it. Workwise, though, it has been as busy a month as ever. I have been heavily involved in a major revalidation project within the School that I work, this has been challenging, exciting and rewarding, but mostly, time-consuming! I was also involved in work to develop and implement the University’s first ‘Festival of Learning’ at the end of the month, this being linked to our ‘Student as Producer’ initiative. At home I enjoyed a lovely ‘Mother’s Day’ weekend when my daughter and I had a ‘girlie’ weekend away doing a whole range of ‘girlie’ things; we had great fun! 
