It feels like summer is coming to an end. It's a bit chilly this evening. It's not light outside after 8.30. They are announcing the contestants for this year's Strictly Come Dancing. (Andy Murray's Mum? Oh dear.)
So what have I managed to do this summer? Well, the proofs of the book are done, I hope, so I will receive at some point in November or so the first copies. (Is it a bit sad to be really excited about that? Well, I don't care. I am.) And I've been working on some new lectures for next term: a chance to get back into some of the nitty gritty of the Nicomachean Ethics. And a lecture for the Cambridge Festival of Ideas in October. There's the various bits of admin, refereeing, and examining too. But not a tough summer by any means.
I think I tend to underestimate the time I have before term. I think it's because the kids will be going back to school in a couple of weeks and it's hard not to feel as if that really is the beginning of term and the end of the vacation. Anyone who's an academic in the UK and has kids will think of July and September as golden times: term has mostly finished by July and doesn't really get going until October so these are the two months when the children are back at school and the wrangles over childcare go away but the madness of the university term hasn't really hit.
This September, I'll be busy as part of a team arranging and then participating in a conference in Cambridge but it's still, despite Michaelmas looming, one of my favourite times of the year.
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