in celebratory mode

... at least, I felt celebratory, until the Internet told me that my version of Chrome didn't support this blog (it did, yesterday), and shifting to Safari, it didn't want to upload a photograph ... eventually I dragged this image of my passionfruit margarita onto this page, but who knows if it will stick, or if you'll be able to see this, or or or.  

But, out at dinner, glasses were raised: most improbably, and with much gratitude, I've landed an NEH Fellowship for next year (I heard two days ago: was told I could tell people today) - which is all rather unbelievable.  Unbelievable, not out of false modesty, but because I put in the application last March, and I thought that the chances of anyone being successful who wasn't writing about the birth of the Constitution were slim.  This is to work on my wayward, chromatic, Oxford History of English Literature 1880-1910: a deliberately unorthodox volume in its conception (and it's been a long, slow time in that conception).  I think, though, that it must have sounded like a suitably safe topic ...I'm certainly looking forward to having the time to write it, and if anyone out there was a reader for the proposal, thank you, thank you, thank you.