Yesterday morning, before I was even fully awake, I saw the sun hitting an old goose egg half shell that's been on our kitchen window for four or five years, and was seized with the inspiration, however corny, of thinking how perfect an eggshell was for symbolising a new job, a new start - with maybe the potential for a sideways comment or two about how the summer's second batch of Western Bluebirds may be on the point of hatching. However, by the time I was fully awake, I realised that I was harboring a monstrous migraine, and spent most of the day behind darkened shades of one kind or another, emerging only to take various administration-related phone calls of the kind one really doesn't want, or bargain for, on Day One of New Job.
So - yesterday's egg, below, had to go uncommented upon, and I substituted an unearthly sunset - there was a dark orange sun briefly visible this evening, but it's hazy and cloudy and, yes, intermittently raining: the monsoon season seems, mercifully, to be stuttering into life. And the migraine has of course meant that all those academic equivalents of New Year's Resolutions (answer all emails immediately on receipt, if possible ...) have already fallen by the wayside. And it turns out that I come up short when I ask myself what advice I'd give myself - what I might have learned during the last ten years (at least starting a new position is a whole lot easier when one actually recognises the vocabulary of academic life, this time round. It would be wonderful to think that I could come up with some magisterial wisdom, but frankly, if I can keep my teaching notes filed in an orderly fashion I'll be very happy.
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