Things to come

I'm getting impatient now. The whole family's getting impatient now. My younger brother, C, and his wife, S, are expecting a baby. It was due on 10th February so it's now six days late. We know it's a boy, but we want to meet him and get to know him. Mind you, it'll be a little while until I do get to meet him as C and S live in Cambridgeshire, so a bit of a trek from Newcastle. Of course, I don't mind travelling, but it's not like I can just pop down the road and drop by for half an hour, and C and S can't cope with my dietary requirements (especially not with a new baby - their first child - to look after) so I need to stay in a self-catering place nearby. There is actually a lovely, small place I stayed in when I went down for C and S's wedding last spring, though of course it needs to be available when I want to go down. Anyway, I digress. The baby hasn't even made it out of his cosy nest yet ... although I do appear to have bought it rather a lot of 'Welcome to the world' presents - lots of clothes and a few other bits. Come on baby, I'm waiting to meet you and welcome you!

It's quite amazing that C is going to be a daddy. C is quite amazing. He's the person I admire most in the world. I can't go into details of his life as I haven't asked him if I can share them with my blog readers (and I don't imagine he'd be all that keen on it, if I'm honest), but he has had the most extraordinary life of anyone I've known. More extraordinary than most I've even heard of or read about. Some of it almost unbelievable. So all I will say is that he was adopted (as I told you in a recent post); has some learning difficulties; was expelled from school at one point; got back into the education system in the end and managed to get some qualifications; got some employment, but was very unsettled and flitted about somewhat; went off the rails and involved in some quite heavy stuff; got out of that, only to fall back into it again a while later; found an ingenious way out; and is now completely out of all of that, working in a responsible job, gaining more and more qualifications as he goes, lives in a picture-perfect cottage in a picture-perfect village, with his wife who's a consultant pathologist, and a son six days overdue. When he was about nine none of us really expected that he'd ever be able to live independently, let alone get to where he is today. He is a marvel! He is inspiration itself! He can be as infuriating as he ever was ;oP

On a completely different subject, I'm already thinking ahead to next academic year. I know that I still have three to four months till I finish this last course for my undergraduate degree, and that I'm only on the second module of my postgraduate certificate, but I need to be thinking about what's next. I know what I want to do next, and that's the MA in creative writing at Newcastle University. The other day I found out that if I do well enough in the PGCert then I will get automatic admission onto the MA! Hurrah! Of course, first of all I have to 'do well enough', and I'm yet to get my EMA back from my first module, so I've no idea if I'm on track for 'well enough'. Oh, and I have another EMA to do in a month or so for my current module (which I'm absolutely loving!). I'm doing the PGCert over two years so I have another module and a portfolio/dissertation to do for it next year, but each module is only six weeks long and that's not going to keep me adequately occupied over a year. I'm trying to find out if it'd be possible to top up my credits and do more towards the MA/start the MA in September, but I'm not sure how that would work or if it's possible. I'm waiting to hear back from them about this. The thing is, if I'm going to start the MA or top up postgrad credits then I'm going to have to look into funding. The MA is £4450. I've never had that much money in my bank account at any one time, let alone have a spare £4450 lying around to hand over to a university. I need to start looking at applying for grants from trusts and charities and educational councils - anything I can think of. I know there's a directory of grants etc so I'll check that out again when I can get to the library. I did so a while back and it looked like there may be a few places I could apply to, but from what I remember you have to have confirmation of a place on the specified course before you can submit an application. However, the problem with this is that when you accept a place on the course you're committing to the financial outlay, so you kind of need the money available before you accept the place. A difficult situation. Still, it's exciting to be thinking about the possibility of these things, and I'm sure that I'll work something out if it's meant to be. I suppose it comes back to 'It Couldn't be Done'. When the time comes I'll do it!