As I neared the end of the BA(Hons), I realised that I didn't feel ready to finish my academic studies or my artistic exploration, applied to join the MA Fine Art and was very grateful to be offered a place. I'll start what I know will be a very intense and challenging year, in several ways, at the end of September. A previous MA student told me that you have to 'hit the ground running and then run faster'! That already makes me nervous as despite my best intentions, I have done very little work so far over what started out looking like a very long and potentially productive summer but has, in the way of holidays, already done a good job of disappearing up its own backside. We seem to have been away almost non-stop in one way or another since Free Range ended and are off again to Brittany in the camper for 2 weeks before the start of the new term, which seems very close now.

I have a long reading list with one of the books resembling a small bungalow. The one, of course, that I ordered from Amazon to be delivered to my daughter, Tess, so that I could read it during my captive time on the 10.22 from Paddington to Hereford on return from my stay with her. I love that journey... Usually I love that journey. This time I had the book and was all set up when I realised with horror that I'd left my laptop bag, complete with laptop, accessories, password book (there's a lesson in there somewhere) and a large sketchbook on the No 35 at Brixton Station. Consequently, with lost property offices closed on a Saturday (never lose your property on London Transport during the weekend), I spent the whole journey instead expecting the worst and frantically trying to close bank accounts, change passwords, get advice from Apple, becoming angrier and more stressed by the minute as, whenever I did manage to connect to a human being following unimaginable amounts of option button selection, the signal would die or even on 2 occasions at the crucial moment, a tunnel would appear apparently from nowhere and it was back to square 1! I hadn't even remembered that there were tunnels on that route, let alone quite long ones that removed any chance of the painstakingly achieved connection still being live at the end. It turned out that I was very fortunate; my bag was picked up by an honest and helpful man who tracked me down and kept it safe until my daughter could collect it...One of the most welcome emails I've ever received was the one from Charlie informing me that his dad had found a bag on the bus and was hoping to reunite it with its owner. A hero. And isn't it wonderful when individual people give you renewed faith in the human race?

I am now trying to finalise my research plan for the MA as we're required to have a solid proposal to work from. At the moment I'm torn between a couple (both of which would relate to my recent work). A lot of coursework reading and internal enquiry will be going on through Brittany...