Marseilles…

What a busy life I must lead to have neglected the blog so long, or what a crazy life perhaps? An omission or perhaps not knowing where to start?

University has started with a bang and a feeling of being rather old compared with those occupying the metropolis that is our campus. What a diverse bunch of people we are, all growing up through our local education systems to then be launched, as it were, onto an educational establishment (often far away from home) that isn’t school? I cracked under that pressure over twenty years ago, my colleagues – although postgraduate – seem to be thriving from student life.

After 21 years as a distance learning student campus life is a definite shock to the system. The noise, bustle, misbehaviour – and that’s just the swans on campus! All seriousness, we seem a good bunch on the course and the tutors are well and truly human with just the right amount of weird thrown in.

I write this epistle from my balcony in France on the last night of my holiday, thankful that the thunderous rain of yesterday stopped on cue at midnight. I have been in the pool, by choice; along the beach and watched parrots fly through the palm trees. All is well I hear you say? Wish that it was.

A rip through the fabric of my very being has had to be made. The music that keeps me going is, well, going in favour of more time for health, Dad and my studies. Email upon email continue to arrive asking me to change my mind, each one slicing into an already broken heart although their meaning is truly sincere and heartfelt. A sacrifice had to be made and something had to go, although I feel like a large part of me has died.