Just got back from a rather busy few days, but it began with a very nice surprise. I woke up on Thursday morning to find a letter from the tax man saying that I had been paying tax that I shouldn't have paid in 06/07 and they have issues me a rebate in excess of £400! Thank you very much Mr. Tax Man, that's going straight into my travel fund.
I then got in the car and drove to Mum's as she lives in an area of the country that made it easier to get to one of my MA research participants. On the Saturday, I drove off to meet said participant and conduct my first BSL interview. Thanks to the support of the BDA I now have a full Deaf research corpus of around 6-7 people. I also made a random acquaintance who proved to be a perfect fit for the hearing group. I interviewed him whilst I was at it, however I am slightly worried about the hearing corpus as it's proving really difficult to find people :( Still, as one Deaf lady pointed out 'the hearing world is larger.' So, if I’ve managed to find enough Deaf people, I should be able to find enough hearing eventually.
I now have the unenviable task of sitting down and transcribing the video and audio interviews - which takes forever. Still, it'll be worth it.
Also saw my brother, Bill, and nephew, Damian, at Mum's.
Got back today to find the half-chaps I ordered have arrived. I developed the sudden urge to start riding again the other day, and found an absolutely lovely stables out towards Port Talbot. They were really friendly and run a two hour hack on Saturdays and Sundays. I'm planning to go tomorrow. Only problem being that I’m terribly allergic to horses - so's my mum! I didn't used to be as a kid. Used to go riding every week for many years, but in the past few years it's been unbearable.
However, I’m going to brave it. I'm dosing myself up with antihistamines. Apparently, high doses of vitamin C are extremely helpful, plus cider vinegar! So, I’m going to take everything and see what happens. I haven't been on a horse since New Year's Day, when I went and helped a friend muck-out her stables and had a bit of a play afterwards. It was a wonderful day. My Nana died at Christmas, so I was a bit low, but the whole sky was filled with rainbows that day.It was just lovely spending that time doing some hard physical labour and getting close to the animals. Love the smell of horses, even if they do make me red, itchy and give me gunky eyes!
So, all done. Feeling much more relieved now the dissertation is coming along. Bit tired from doing a mad dash across the country, though. I have more travelling to come this week. It's weird the ways you can find to distract yourself. Last week I wrote a 16,500 word story for fun in four days. Yet I struggled to come up with 1,500 words for an introduction to my dissertation. Strange huh?
Abashfully, the story was for a slightly geeky fan site about Pitch Black/The Chronicles of Riddick. I am not at all proud of myself, although the site manager did say that he really liked it and that it was 'very well written' - I’m not so sure about 'well', but it was certainly written lol It's funny, I seem to be at my most creative when I have something else I should be doing. Last time I had an essay to write, I wrote a three act period drama instead...ho hum.
I indulged by downloading an online book about writing movie scripts the other day. It was on a whim. But then, on a whim, I also downloaded a script formatting programme - it's really quite good fun. Transcribing interviews isn't that dissimilar to writing character dialogue. Certainly makes you more aware of the way people naturally speak.
Must not get too distracted, though. Must focus on degree! Must...not...watch...DVDs....
Oooh, look! My Tesco's DVD rentals have just arrived! :))
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