Home in Perth

Hi guys,

I got back from the conference last night feeling very energised having had such a fantastic time! It was a 3 day conference, 9-7, including an hour of 'practical' stuff each day - I made chain mail and played Viking games, but decided to skip the bread grinding! The papers were very diverse, with lots of Anglo-Saxon stuff, especially poetry, plus Byzantine, Pictish, Irish, Scandinavian, and quite a bit of church stuff, especially iconography. It was great to hang out with people with similar interests again (a definite highlight of Uppsala!), although Anglo-Saxonists are slightly odd... I'm looking forward to next years, especially if my local uni pays my airfares and accomodation again :-) It's in Sydney next year and I'm hoping to convince a young and promising French archaeologist who will be visiting me to give a paper so we can see Sydney together...

I'll now turn the paper I gave into an article for hopefull journal publication. And I'm also doing a review of The Cross Goes North for a journal. Then I plan to turn my rune essay into an article - I'm just waiting to get hold of the recently published corpus of Scan runes in Britain. And of course apply for my phd to perth and melbourne. I've already been told I'm gauranteed in Perth and I like the idea anyway - partly as they just paid for me to go to the conference! - but also as it would probably be better for Aurore and I here. I hope to have Alex as an external supervisor, so the local uni doesn't matter so much. And UWA (the one in Perth I'd go to) really want me and have lots of money - travel grants, pay you to publish, have a paid teacher training program etc And then I'll quit work at the end of March! :-)

Before then I'm going to France for two weeks to visit Aurore for her birthday and Valentines - it will be fantastic, and how romantic is that!!!

Next weekend I'm off to the 'outback' to visit my grandparents so I'll post again then!

cheers