it seems to be in the post...

Two and a half weeks since the last post and trying to work out where the time has gone.

Mostly blowing and grinding, preparing frames, photographs, website and written work for a series of deadlines last week:

• A tutorial with both my supervisors seems to have gone well - I get the feeling they are happy to let me just get on with it. Which is sort of nice and sort of worrying.
• Installation of the latest work at the Ceramic Art London fair. Need to work out how to frame / mount them - rickety cast plaster rings is just not going to do it but I could not bear to grind flats on them just yet. While looking out over the valley beside a lichen-covered standing stone above Orchardleigh, a fellow student called to say that a woman was interested in buying the work. I asked if he could take a phone number so I could call back while I dithered. But within five minutes, Kevin sent a text to say she had gone. Hey Ho. 
• Meeting with the Czech glass expert / importer and gallerist Leo Duval. Nerve Wracking. He seemed to think the work was fine (phew) but wants to see bigger lumps on black shiny plinths so they make more impact and command higher prices. Feeling some resistance - but I know he has a point. 
• Hosted a tour and demo for the wonderful crystallographer Brian Sutton and his team. They seemed to enjoy it and we had a great time talking about all the parallels between their research and mine.  I think there is a real chance we might make some work together for Somerset House. How amazing will that be!
• And I finally made the birds for the Dublin Exhibition - compositions of branches and leaves on transparent acetate -assembled, they make pockets of absence: my experience of birds and of kindness is of a strange song falling gently through an invisible place if I can only stop long enough to hear it.

Plus a talk for the 'Ignite' programme at the RCA, the ArtNerds reading group, a fashion show at London Glassblowing, a boozy private view, dinner with Charlotte and Priscilla at the Chelsea Arts Club, a tutorial with the incredible glass caster Colin Reid, and a flying visit to Haslemere for my dear sister's birthday. Preparing also for a meeting with Paul Martin and his team at Bristol University to make fruit fly embryos and dividing cancer cells for their public engagement work.

I have been awarded a bursary to go to Corning in New York State this summer, joined the Badcox Dining Circle, been offered two more half days paid teaching at Bristol Royal Infirmary and invited to enjoy the pine groves of Porquerolles for a long weekend in April.

My aunt has finally found a house that will become her home, my little adopted sister is buying a place with her new old love and all their children, my god daughter's hair is almost down to her waist and my brother is safe and well after his op in Singapore.

At home in Frome at last - time to switch this thing off, pour myself a glass of something and light that fire