One of the irritating things about being an academic is that when summer rolls around you find a lot of people say things like "So, you've got the summer off then?".And the answer is "No, I will be working bloody hard earning my tenure."
But if I learnt one thing last year it was that you have to make some proper holiday time for yourself where you can leave your home and work offices, not check your email, and avoid your family.
So I'm going to Halifax to visit Queenie in August. People keep telling me that Halifax is a great town, the Dublin of Canada. I'm looking forward to a week of cafe's, vintage clothes stores, gossip, drink, music and maybe even dancing.
I'm so excited I've already got my holiday reading sorted out. I will be bringing Mmm. Chiang Kai-shek's biography and a pulp novel about the Soongs. I'm fascinated by Mme. and her sisters. I'm beginning to consider her something of a role model: intelligent, beautiful, rapacious, and she wears great shoes. Look at the photo. There she is at the Cairo summit in 1943, wearing peep-toes with huge bows. That's style. Shame about the husband, though.
