The wo that is in grant-writing

Horrible, horrible process, this writing of grant applications. I realise I have no head for figures, and can hardly bear the wretched negotiations over money and prospective contributions from the university for a grant we don't even have yet.

I've just spent a stupid hour re-formatting my ten "best" publications.

Grrrr.

But then I thought my neighbour had switched on the bathroom light, which I can normally see from my study. I looked up and there's two thirds of a big white moon with soft clouds floating gently across. Time to nip out into the garden for a good look, then finish this section and go to bed, leaving the blind up so I can sleep in the moonlight. Sigh.

Man in the Moon

In our new upstairs bedroom, cunningly built into the old roof space, there are several windows that don't have any curtains or blinds on them yet, so we wake very early. It's a little easier, now that daylight saving has begun, but still extraordinary to wake in bright daylight around 6.00 am, after the relative gloom of the old downstairs room. I guess we'll put blinds or something up at some stage, but for the moment, I'm revelling in the pure bright light of spring, flooding one half of the room very early in the morning. I can lie there and look out at the chimney pots and tree tops and the enormous Norfolk pine two doors down.

But this morning I woke in a little alarm, feeling someone was watching me. It was about 4.00 a.m., well before sunrise, except for a bright moon, just on the turn to gibbous, shining directly onto the bed. I looked up, and for the first time, I think, could really see the man's face watching. It was too uncanny to dwell on, so I just went back to sleep, but the vision stayed with me all day, reminding me of the beautiful moons we had seen in the desert.

I mentioned it to a friend at work and he started musing about how lovely it would be if our planet had more than one moon. I mentioned that trashy movie Stargate, with its vaguely Egyptian styling, and the three moons that fell into position for some significant thing or other. He confessed he had even watched the trashy TV series, and, emboldened, I admitted I was watching Idol. But we all have our weaknesses, and this wasn't one of his, so we couldn't have a proper Idol conversation. But if you are watching, you might want to check out blandcanyon for a hilarious running account of each show. Brilliant.