Plans for escaping in July are going well. A few minutes ago I paid for then sent my GTTR application off. When I started writing this entry this morning I'd just sent my application to my referee, the most awesome Prof. John Bryan. I then had to get back to work, but it was only a matter of minutes it took him to provide me with a reference for my application. In fairness I had already primed him about 10days ago when I enquired if he would act as a referee for me. As I'd already given him an explanation as to what I'd been up to since leaving University, and then why I wanted to do this course I don't think he really needed to read my application to know what I wanted to do! That, and he knows me rather well. When he replied to my original email about this, he said: 'It's good to hear from you, and what you are doing. It sounds as though the middle years with music specialism would be well suited to your skills and interests, and I'm very happy to act as a referee for you.' Which makes me oh so very happy that he agrees with me (and was willing to be my referee).
In short, huge kudos to JB. Whatever happens now is out of my hands. Hopefully I shall be invited to interview then offered a place on the course and thus with any luck sometime in September I shall be talking to you from Canterbury.

In other news I will not be voting in next weeks general election. I know this is a surprise but there are valid reasons why I will not be voting. Actually, I cannot vote. As I'm not in Britain next week on election day I applied for a postal vote. I had it sent home, thinking that it might be there when I was back last week, so I could vote then and get someone at home to post it off for me, but alas no. I flew back here on Tuesday and my postal vote arrived at home yesterday. I'm led to believe they posted them out 2 days before that. Either way, it makes no difference whether it was sent here or home, because I still wouldn't be able to use it. Usually things should take a week to get between here and Britain, but for some reason its been taking 3 weeks to get to Vienna from Britain, but only a week to do the return journey. It doesn't matter whether it took a week or 3 weeks though, because if they only posted them out on Tuesday there's not a chance in hell I'd get it here and then be able to get it back in time to vote. So, now I not only have a voting card but I also have my voting papers at home, 1000 miles away from where I am. I suppose now I don't need to work out who I'd vote for, and that if the country goes tits up I can quite safely blame everyone else :D

Talking of Britain, when I was sat at the gate in Amsterdam Airport Schiphol waiting for my connecting flight back out to Vienna I ended up talking to the man sat next to me. He was a British older man. We hadn't really been talking a lot but he turned to me and said that I shouldn't go back to Britain and that I should, and I quote 'get yourself a boyfriend, or girlfriend, whichever you prefer.' I have to admit that this did take me somewhat by surprise as all he knew about me was that I was British and worked in Vienna! Essentially what he was meaning was that Britain is screwed and if you can get out, get out and stay out. He also said that climate change was happening now, regardless of what other people were saying about how it is but isn't yada yada yada. He said he was a geologist and climatologist and then he said that the world was getting warmer and every summer was going to be longer and hotter than the year before. He also said that in 10 years time the world wouldn't look and work the same as it is now and that the price of air fares will rocket. I don't know how much of this to believe but it definitely got me thinking about things! Problem is, most of what it got me thinking about was other weird conversations I've had on 'public transport'. Remind me to find out the wild boar story when I'm at home.

Can't remember if I was going to mention anything else now or not. I can't even remember what I was going to mention when I started this earlier but oh well. Serves me right for trying to do two lots of work at once I suppose. I will try and keep you posted on things and I hope to bring back the randomness entries I used to do, but you'll have to bear with me for now.