Fond Farewell

When I started this blog I wanted to explore the borders of public and private. It seemed like quite an adventure. However, what I have learned in the past days is that there is a serious side to this. As is my wont, I set out full of hope and excitement and in joyful expectation of the learning that lay ahead, little imagining the mischief some may make of this. I wish wisdom would join me as a travelling companion. Or even common sense. I was aware that 'putting myself out there' would expose me to critical scrutiny but I did not anticipate it would also expose me to personal scrutiny and attack. This has been salutary.

This blog was an academic production - even the posts about my life outside study and the academy were included because I felt they contributed to my project. It was a way of 'doing' reflexivity. I have looked again at my aims and I am pleased with them and I have learned a great deal by addressing them. I will certainly include an account in my thesis of my blog-keeping days and how it has expanded my understanding.

As you may have gathered by now I will no longer be keeping this blog. I did consider keeping it because, in the end, a bit of venom can actually act to fortify one's immune system. However, I did a posting yesterday and was aware that the happiness and joy I had felt in keeping it was no longer there. I actually closed it down for a day or so. But what I have decided is to leave it there in cyberspace so I can use it in my thesis - tinkering with it now and then to keep it 'active'. I'll close it down when my thesis is done.

None so deaf as those that will not hear

My good friend N (and she is a great friend), also doing a PhD at 50+, described doing conferences as 'talking at a load of bored academics who then grill you mercilessly'. I must say that has also been my experience. It has also been the case that I get questions that totally floor me because they seem to have nothing to do with what I was taking about. What I have come to realise is that most people bring their own frame of reference and will ask questions within that paradigm (I have tried to avoid this word but, darn it, it is spot on here). So for example, my work is situated within what can broadly be termed 'narrative research'. So I was once asked about what 'genre' I thought the stories I am writing belong to. Well that threw me coz they don't belong to any genre. I would be horrified to think I was shoe-horning these rich and wonderful and complex tales into some pre-ordained framework. I was even more horrified when it was suggested they were 'fairy stories'. When I got back from conference I spent days researching this 'genre' and could not comprehend what might have prompted this observation.

What this tells me is that when writing my thesis I will have to make sure I explain my view that stories are stories. I do think that we draw on prevailing cultural discourses to tell them and these in turn are dependent on even broader historical circumstances (or 'zeitgeist' if you will). We also tell the stories according to certain specific collaboratively generated but individually enacted scripts (Ivor Goodson gives the excellent example of the script of the 'scholarship boy'). Taking account of this turns life stories into life histories in my view. And this is a country mile away from saying this turns a story into an example of a particular 'genre'. How disrespectful to the storyteller.

Academic Time Travelling - part 2

I have never been one for wishing my life away - time goes too fast as it is. But right now I find myself wishing I could go forward in time. The 'circumstances' and 'situations' to which I sometimes refer in this blog are overwhelming me at the moment. At times I worry I'll never complete the PhD coz there is too much else to distract me. But I will. I find myself doing the same thing as when my mum died - shut everything else out and focus, focus, focus. So I wonder what kind of dried out old prune I'll be at the end of it?
On a much breezier note I've spent the day thinking about my quilt which will be the visual representation of my methodology. As well as a lot of visual work I've also been writing about whatI'm doing and writing so I get a clearer idea about what I'm doing. I haven't yet got as far as ordering any fabric but I'm getting close - then comes the sewing. That will be fun. But the more I do it the more I appreciate the similarities between doing the thesis and doing the quilt and although I sometimes rue the day I decided to do it, it becomes more and more apparent why I did and that following through on this will enrich my project no end.

Academic Time Travelling

I'm going back in time, to the 70's in England to be precise. Several things have converged to make this happen. Firstly not only am I 50 this year but loads of friends are too of course. I'm very proud of the fact that I still have friends from school and that we still get together from time to time. Now Belinda has sent out invitations for a 70s-themed party - 'pop on your platforms and boogie on down'. So I'm off shopping in cyberspace for a suitable outfit. I knew I should never have got rid of my yellow and purple smock dress and matching platforms. Secondly, at our last supervision meeting, Pat (Professor Sikes - the most amazing person and a wonderful teacher. I totally love her, have total respect and am totally in awe) suggested trying to call up the 70s zeitgeist (coz I'm talking about women who went to uni then and was looking for a way to 'contextualise' the stories they told). So I'll be talking to my friends, surfing the net (get me!), getting out the old photos, watching 70s films (like I ever stopped watching Saturday Night Fever) listening to 70s music (again - like I ever stopped). I already have a pretty good idea what the 70's zeitgeist was for me and putting that across is going to be difficult. I have no idea how to do it. Not least because it wasn't any one thing - it shifted and changed. But, thinking about it, what links the strikes and blackouts to punk, flares to feminism is that it was a time (perhaps - I'm thinking aloud here) when there was a thirst and a hunger for change without any clear idea of how to satisfy them. There was a restlessness about the 70s, a boredom too, and the co-existence of tired old ways with a kind of mad trying on of anything that seemed to break with those. There wasn't much focus to the 70's I don't think, but it was the decade I grew up in and it's going to be hard for me to stick with the zeitgeist and not slide down into nostalgia and sentiment.

Riding the Rollercoaster

In an earlier post I likened doing my PhD to riding on swings and roundabouts. This still holds and in fact, staying with the fairground theme, I would now like to add the rollercoaster to the mix. I have just finished the second of the two papers I committed to, on topics I knew very little about. When I agreed to do them I was obviously riding high. Doing them was that dizzy drop to the depths which is where I find myself now, although my previous two posts are clear expressions of the giddy exhilaration I felt after completing the first paper. Now I just feel a bit deflated, a bit flat. I have been told I don't sound myself.

I think the problem is that I have had to take myself away from my passions - my PhD research and my thesis. I've had three weeks in which I've had my mind on other things (although both papers have been useful to my project - they are not entirely unrelated). How will feel once I have to stop doing it altogether?

I am also concious of the clock ticking. My institution has introduced new rules and if you don't get your thesis in after 3 years there is a cost implication. I am trying to be calm and measured and to stop dwelling on the worst. Nor do I want to climb to the top of the rollercoaster - just want to find my feet on solid ground again.

Drain clearing

I had a really productive weekend, helped by the fact that I managed to sort out a lot of paperwork that had piled up. Even more signifcantly, I looked my financial situation in the eye, something I had been dreading. But having faced it square on, I realised things were not quite as bad as I thought, at least not in the long term. I had been telling myself that I didn't have time to sort these things out because I had too much work to do, but in fact I was bogged down with work because I had these worries on my mind and this was draining my energy. Now my drains are clear, all is flowing nicely again and all is well in my world. Lovely.

Life's rich tapestry

I've had a hard week. I've been writing a paper I wasn't ready to write. I've had to truncate what is usually a leisurely process. It was a chore not a pleasure. I've still not finished it but somewhere along the way I finally 'got' what it was I was trying to say. But this should have been worked out in other ways - here or in my journal or in a conversation of some sort. Not while I was writing the paper.

OK whinge over. It's Saturday morning. I've retired to my bed with a cup of peppermint tea and my laptop and... yes... THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON. I am, to use the vernacular of the day, living it large.

Doing alright for northern trash

Jonah played me this the other day and I thought it was fab. Roger Davies sings about the area I am from and I know he articulates the feelings of many of us in his songs. I was born in Huddersfield, moved away when I was 18, came back ten years later and have been here ever since. Recently I've been thinking about moving away again - something to do with turning 50, getting restless and bored and making fresh starts etc. That may still happen - much will depend on what turns up after I finish my PhD (something I've started to think about recently). But now if I leave, it will be with a heart full of gratitude not because of ennui and I also know if ever I hear this song it will awaken strong emotions. I'm becoming more and more interested in using different media to represent my research and hearing this is helping me to understand why. The title of this post is also that of another RD song and says so, so much about class identity, the 'classing gaze' and recognition.

On a different tack - M. I wanted to respond to your comment but my emails come bouncing back.

Displacement Activities

Well I've been up since 5.30 this morning (third day in a row - trying to catch up after spending two days in emotional turmoil at the beginning of the week - don't ask) and am still un-showered and in my dressing gown. It's come to a sorry pass when I regard getting dressed (or keeping clean) as displacement activity. Just before I started my PhD my supervisor warned me not to let it become 'an obsession'. She also reminded me yesterday that there is more to life than study. I hear her ... now all I have to do is listen.

I'm just a girl who can't say no

Almost a month since my last post. Where does the time go? At the moment I feel like taking time out to do this is both an indulgence and a necessity. It's an indulgence because I have two papers to write for various meetings and conferences in June, both on topics I know very little about. However, one of them (on Sen's Capabilities Approach) will prove useful for thinking round my thesis and the other (on the ethics of video-narratives, following on from the workshop I did) is something I'm very interested in. And also I am becoming ever more aware of the need to get some things published coz next year at this time I'm going to have to be thinking about jobs. Hence the title of this post. I did actually say no to some teaching last week - now that really was going to be too much. Ordinarily it might have been OK but the offer co-incided with a very challenging time for me in my other life as a mum, wife and ex-wife. I do tend to get teeth-gnashingly frustrated when I can't devote my whole self to my work and then I remind myself that one of the reasons I don't have much time for anything else is the the way academic life impinges on everything else. It is very hard not to conceive of work as making first claims on my time. When I worked in financial services I was able to take 'time out' because, for one thing, the office was shut and we could only take files off site in exceptional circumstances. This was a huge blessing and I miss being able to do that. So doing this blog is necessary because it sends a signal that there is more to life than theses, papers and conferences.

Ragpicking and Quilting

I continue to surprise myself. After a great deal of frustration I have now managed to change the template on my blog. And of course it was easy peasy lemon squeezy. This is a metaphor for learning of course - or learning as I understand it - where a bit of hard graft and thinking I'll never 'get' it is followed by the satisfaction of getting there anyway. Whether in this digital age, where everything moves so fast, this kind of learning model still has any relevance I don't know.

Anyhoo - I have chosen a sort of quilting theme (there wasn't much choice but this does fit in with my thoughts really). Having thought this is not an appropriate metaphor for my methodology (I used it when doing my MA dissertation), I have recently realised that in doing my thesis I'm still making a patchwork quilt - picking up bits and pieces and turning them into something else, hopefully something useful and beautiful. Quilting is of course a feminist metaphor and one I feel content to return to. This time I'm going to try to actually make a small quilt with a view to then presenting it at conferences instead of a written paper - the time feels right. Although I doubt my handicraft abilities, doing this blog when I thought I wouldn't ever be able to, has given me the confidence that maybe it'll be OK. I feel I have to try.

Swings and roundabouts

I haven't posted anything for a while because all my time has been taken up with stuggling with some of the ideas I've had about my thesis. It's been a bit of a business and seemed to take over my life. I don't recall doing anything for the past three weeks other than think things through, write them down, delete them and start again. However, on Monday I began a paper for a seminar that I had to do as part of the department's research training programme. I started by trying to give an overview and a bit of background to what I've been up to, which prompted me to return to my aims, objectives and research questions. In turn this prompted me to do a stock-taking of where I am. To cut a long story short, I then was able to clarify and crystallise some of what had been giving me sleepless nights. When I tried to find a metaphor for this process I came up with the title of this post. It's amazing how I seem to swing away from thoughts and concepts and theories only to return to them later. Or when it seems I have been aimlessly and unproductively going round in cirlcles I discover that I have been observing what is around me which has given me a richer perspective overall.

To put some flesh on these somewhat esoteric bones, I was writing and deleting paragraphs in my paper when it suddenly dawned on me that, actually, at one point ,I had known what I was aiming for. So, after returning to my original aims, I started writing in earnest, pulling out books I had read and returned to the shelf and notes I had made and then stuck in a drawer (being me, all alphabetically order and filed). I was still amending the paper when I delivered it on Thursday. Obviously it had its 'follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies' but it still made fundamental sense to me. I can now stop wondering what the heck I'm doing. And actually, I have always known. All that has happened is that I haven't stayed rooted to the spot. I've been on my travels but now I'm back with some of my old familiar ideas. I look forward to settling down with them and a cup of tea to negotiate how my adventures can be woven into our relationship.

What this means in practical terms is that the paper I'm doing for the DPR conference at the beginning of April suddenly seems do-able, although is miles off what the abstract said it would be. Hey ho.

Becoming a PhD student

I've been on a workshop! And I, yes the person who is still amazed she can switch a computer on and never learned how to work a video recorder (remember those?), have now made a series of short 'movies'. I have taken Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' as my inspiration as I am obviously a Puritan at heart. I assure you, it was an aesthetic and methodological decision and not just coz I am rubbish at technology. In fact I have rather taken to this moviemaking malarky.

During the workshop we were asked to reflect on the critical incidents that have peppered our research journey, our becoming a PhD student. I also used it as an opportunity to do something for the blog. And it has certainly given me much food for thought on what I am prepared to reveal as well as raising certain ethical issues (of which more later). In short it dovetailed with all the issues I was hoping to work with by having a blog in the first place.

This is the first clip and I talk about how my journey began.

Tuning in to the zeitgeist or blissful ignorance?

My supervisor sent me a paper the other day (Jones, K The Qualitative Report Volume 9 Number 1 March 2004 95-112 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR9-1/jones.pdf Mission Drift in Qualitative Research, or Moving Toward a Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies, Moving Back to a More Systematic Narrative Review - which I think it also strayed into how to interpret and analyse too). What follows is an edited version of an email I sent to her about it (done with her permission of course).

I included some of the methods touched on in the paper even in my initial research design (this makes what I did sound quite grand) eg going back to participants with issues and questions that other participants brought up. So although they have never met eachother participants have in fact talked to eachother. Likewise, I also set up conversations between participants and 'the literature' by asking their opinions on specific theories and analyses, particularly around class, and got their takes on those. I am also a great one for'grey literature' (that is stuff that is not written with scholarly intention but from which a great deal can be learned - in my case I look at Aimhigher websites a good deal)).

I'm never sure whether to be glad or disheartened when I read that there are actual labels that can be attached to these methods. Have I had my finger on the pulse of the academic zeitgeist when I come up with these ideas myself? Or have I simply failed to do enough reading? Is this kind of labelling of methods a more fruitful academic enterprise than simply doing and describing what you have done? Is it a useful shorthand? Or is it a throwback to, a remnant of, positivism? In the end I justify my approach by way of the term 'compelling methodology' which is very grand because sometimes my justifications are very practical ones. It was hard enough for example for participants to find space in their lives to see me - trying to get nine of us together at the same time would have proabably been impossible. And sometimes they are fundamental to my approach - it is the person's story that is the beating heart of the analysis - not their view on any particular issue. And so sometimes my decisions are both practical and central to my research philosophy.

So thanks for this - in the end I think the old adage of having the courage of your convictions is probably a useful one.

I went on a course last week which has led to my making 3 short video 'movies' about my research journey. I am hoping to put these on the blog next week.

Privates on Parade

I've been ruminating quite a bit on the notions of 'public' and 'private' since my last post, particularly as I am writing a paper to present at a conference (DPR8 'Power and the Academy' Manchester 6-8 April http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr/). My paper asks 'what is needed if we are to re-imagine the academy?' and assumes the desirability of public spaces in which new knowledge is produced. However, what I did not appreciate when submitting my abstact was just how complex the notion of 'public' has become. Digital technologies have both expanded and fragmented meanings of 'public' so we live in an age of a 'global public' and also of 'intimate publics' (to borrow Lauren Berlant's term). This has added a whole new layer to my thinking on 'what's in a name'. It's also why I picked the title of this post (originally of a stage play and film - a satire not a 'romp') because it too has many layers of meaning (beyond the more obvious double entendre), and epitomises the situatedness of those meanings. How would such a title have been read, for example, in the 1940s? Or by someone whose first language wasn't English? Or for whom the term 'Carry On....' is incomplete? But what I found particularly pertinent was the allusion to what is revealed/revealable and when and where and by whom. Is the notion of global/intimate the same as public/private or does the former override the latter? And where does secrecy come into it? I have always had problems with 'secrecy' but had largely managed to resolve these by putting a clear conceptual boundary between 'secrecy' and 'privacy'. So with reference to my names I have no desire to keep them secret but I do want to keep them private (and in part this means I reveal them when, where and to whom I decide). However, the shifting lines between public and private are impacting on a distinction that has long served me well and I am being harried out of my comfort zone. No bad thing.

What's in a name?

When I was doing the MA in Educational Research at Sheffield (yes another one - the Women's Studies one was not recent enough to count as prep for doing a PhD - luckily because the MA Ed Res was a total joy from beginning to end and managed to turn me into a halfway decent researcher) we had a session on de-colonising research. Dr Jennifer Lavia started the session by asking us to think about our names. And I've been thinking ever since. You see I used to be known as Yvonne Jovanka Hermine Novakovic. But since getting married in 2005 I am Yvonne Downs. Being adamant that I am a feminist, changing my name and 'taking' my husband's name was no small matter. There was a reason I felt I wanted to, but to be honest I wasn't really sure what that reason was. I just knew I wanted to change my name.

Likewise, chosing not to be public about my middle names was motivated by something I was not able articulate. My son Jonah asked me recently if I didn't like them (no, I love them) or was embarrased by them (he's 17 and so is easily embarrassed. I'm 50 and my threshold is somewhat higher). I haven't lost or dropped my middle names - I just no longer have them on official documents (although they crop up now and again for example on my 'O' level certificates). After Dr Lavia's seminar I was able to think more deeply about what's in a name and had reached an understanding of my motivations but it wasn't until last week that I finally articulated them.

Talking to one of my participants (we often stray beyond the boundaries set by the research topic) I told her that I became tired of having to enter into a conversation every time I gave my names. This was more than simply having to spell them every time, tedious as that was. No, what got to me was having to reveal aspects of myself in answer to the questions they prompted. 'Novakovic? Where is that from? From my dad. It's Serbian. (At one time to say Serbian was akin to saying 'from the devil himself', such was the demonisation of Serbs in the media 'reporting' on wars where there always have to be good guys and bad guys). No, not from Serbia. From Croatia. (How come? Oh God which century to start in?). And Hermine? My mum's name. No she wasn't English. Austrian. Why was she in England? (How far back do I go, what details will satisfy, what assumpions are you making, how much do you understand, when will this ever end?). Am I English? (I often felt sorely tempted to answer this in full, but then just gave the yes that made life so much easier). And on and on and on. (Why didn't I just say mind your own business? Well sometimes, often, I needed these people to do things for me and why antagonise them? And they meant no harm - curiosity is not a crime and anyway, I was brought up to be polite).

This is just to give a flavour of what answering the question 'what is your name' could occasion. As Dr Lavia pointed out - a name says not only much about you, it says much about your history and the context in which you are you. It is a densely packed case. And now, more than the relief of no longer having to 'disclose' parts of my 'self' to strangers in settings incongruous with intimacy, I no longer have to implicate others (my parents particularly) in the formation of that self. In answering questions about my name I was simultaneously saying too little and too much. So I have restored those aspects of me which I wish to keep private to a private sphere, problematic as the notion of a private sphere may be. It irks me sometimes that no one questions Yvonne Downs because it says much about the workings of power, which was kind of where Dr Lavia went in her seminar (but in a far more nuanced and sophisticated and critcally astute way - I don't wish to do her an injustice). But most of the time I hug to my chest the knowledge that in saying my name I am not giving myself.

'righteousness and antagonism too often prevail'

The above quote comes from Daphne Patai (When method becomes power (response) in A Gitlin (ed) 1994 Power and Method: Political activism and educational research p64). I have been returning to some texts (on methodology where that is understood as being a very broad church) that I read some time ago and often refer to. I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of what was actually written instead of basing my interpretation on what I had last written about them. Daphne Patai expresses my feelings about some (most even) of the writing on methodology really well in the quote above. Unfortunately her paper seems to be written in the same spirit of righteousness and antagonism that she criticises. I won't bore you with why I take issue with her opinions, but it amazes me that discussions about methodology seem to unleash the beast. I refer here both to what is said and how it is expressed. Here's an example (there are so many it's quite hard to choose) .

Sara Delamont says 'I don't believe in interviewing' ... because she doesn't trust interview data... because people lie and delude themselves. (Confessions of a ragpicker in H Piper and I Stronach Educational research: Difference and Diversity p89). Well yes they do, but surely the point is that your methodology and the methods that support this have to be those which are demanded by what you set out to do. There is no way I could have done my study using the observational method that she terms 'proper fieldwork'. She could have made her point without rubbishing what other people do but that doesn't seem to be the way it's done in debates over methodology (I choose my words deliberately here - I could equally have said in the bun fight over methodology). Now I have a lot of time for Sara Delamont and learnt so much from 'Knowledgeable Women' (1989) and I was quite shocked (and, I have to say, disappointed) to hear her being so dismissive.

I'll probably be accused (again choosing my words deliberately) of relativism here but why can't supposedly intelligent people state their case without demolishing others? To my mind this shows a lack of sophistication that I find quite staggering. The 'debates' here remind me more than anything of the 'bickering' that my sons used to indulge in a while back ('is' 'not' 'is' not' 'is' 'not'). I got bored of it then and I'm still bored with it now. It makes me want to leave the room or shout 'that's enough' or 'grow up'.

That's why reading Stanley and Wise (Breaking Out 1993) and Stanley (Feminist Praxis 1990) was such a refreshing change. Others may disagree but to me their approach may well resonate with other accounts and epistemological, ontological, theoretical and methodological stances and certainly leaves me in no doubt about where they are 'coming from' but somehow they are also able to be 'generous' in their reading of other positions, perspectives and views. I first read these texts when I did an MA in Women's Studies at Bradford University way back in 1990 (the 1983 edition of Breaking Out obviously) and they blew my mind. I have since then developed my own thoughts and am not quite so awestruck (not quite) but I still have the utmost respect for the way they do it. We are academics not the 'nodding dogs' you get on the parcel shelves of cars but being critical is not a byword for being nasty. Or maybe it's me that needs to grow up.

Philosophy becoming practical

If you've read my profile you know that I am concerned with ensuring that what I do in my research supports my research philosophy (which kind of came to me while I was doing my MA rather than being something I consciously developed but which has definitely been of huge significance and relevance since). Having submitted it to a number of interrogations, I concluded a while ago that life history research would be the way to ensure I was faithful to this idea of 'praxis'. And I still believe this is the case. However, I did have a bit of a wobble the other day (yes another one).

My supervisor sometimes asks me to be a 'critical reader' for some of the stuff she writes. I always feel this is more to my benefit than hers but I picked up on a point which led her to respond that life history isn't for everyone. They might not feel comfotable with, indeed might not be able to handle, all the stuff that comes up. So I had a big think about how I was 'doing' my life history research. I have sometimes been concerned that I can be quite 'hard' when participants cry for example. Now in 'real life' I am known to 'fill up' at the drop of a hat. It concerned me that I was maybe doing the kind of thing I abhor - along the lines of stop crying and give me the data. However, thinking through the question 'who might life history be for?' as a research methodology, led to the realisation that the reason I didn't cry in the research interviews was because I was doing what I had been trained to do as a life coach, that is 'holding safe'.

Now I have been very quiet about being a coach since re-joining the academy in 2006. There is so much rot on the telly that comes under this heading which I would be mortified to be associated with. I found it tiresome to constantly explain what I was doing when I was doing it and it is a relief not to have to get in to that any more. And I also feel that academics can be most disparaging, particularly when it is about something they have the luxury of not needing to know anything about (a kind of metaphorical loosening of the intellectual corsets). So I keep silent. But I know now that if I had not had this background and the practice of creating a space in which people feel comfortable to talk I would not have heard the stories I have heard. Of course there is a danger that participants reveal more than they intended. I hope I can mitigate this possibility by asking them to check transcripts and amend as they see fit (although amendments have been rare so I'm not entirely convinced this is a useful anti-dote).

The point of the blog today - when I should be transcribing - is that I now feel quite resolute in my conviction that, regardless of what I produce in the way of a thesis, at least how I produced it will be congruent with what I set out to do. And that gives me a very warm glow.

Pushing the boundaries

The dates say it all. I knew I would not be doing a daily post but it is quite shocking to find that well over a month had elapsed since my last post. It was in part the Christmas factor - it creates a fair amount of work in a timetable that is already overburdened. Something had to give.

However, it reflects to a greater extent my struggles with my work. Perhaps it is inevitable that there will be lows, times when I get lost and wonder what exactly I am doing; times when looking again at my research questions and my (evolving and shifting) aims and objectives serves not to remind me where I am heading but to question why I ventured forth . While I have never (seriously) contemplated giving up, I have had what might be termed a crisis of confidence.

Anyway, after some effort to recall how to access it, I am now re-committed to my blog.
Resuming this blog may be taken as a sign that I am now restored to something approaching equilibrium. I have been working again with transcripts of the stories I have heard which has served to anchor me again in the reasons I decided to research this topic. This for me adds meaning to the term 'grounded theory'. I see it not as a pointer to a set of rules and regulations to be followed in the analysis of data and production of knowledge, but as a way of feeling more grounded, more certain of my ground. I had at one time lost my footing and been spinning into the stratosphere.

One of the things I have been struggling with was finding time and space to concentrate on my work. Things just kept crowding in. I won't say too much more about this here coz I am emailing a colleague about this, also a 'mature' (as in cheese?) PhD student. And by mature we mean 50s not early thirties. We are hoping to edit our correspondence into a journal article because we feel our experience has not received sufficient critical attention. The experience of older women in general seems (curiously? understandably?) under-researched. I know the women who have shared their stories with me have done so because there was nothing out there yet that they could connect with. My supervisor, Professor Pat Sikes, has written that stories make us feel connected. It's not that we have lived what we might read, more that we could have lived it. When I read that I cried because it was the time when my mum was nearing the end of her life and I felt quite lonely. This in turn served to reinforce my belief that emotion and cognition are not different beasts.

I fear I am now rambling which is my sign to stop.