R Cawkwell

The tutor has taken them home today to mark over the weekend. I really hope I’ve got a reasonable mark. Most of my class mates like my poem. Someone called my reflexive piece ‘very intellectual’. I can’t help it. How else was I supposed to say ‘it just happens’ for a 1000 words?

Continue reading “Uni Week 7: Disturbing news”

Timorous wee beasties. Not. Annual cold and ‘flu on behalf of my beleaguered respiratory system.

We sincerely thank everyone who gets vaccinated for the ‘flu and who doesn’t cough their cold viruses at us. Tissues at the ready, if you please.

Morning all. I couldn’t sleep so I got up. I have to leave to catch the bus in 75 minutes to get to uni for the day. I’ve got my first assignment to hand in and I need to hand in my financial assistance request form. I’m also coughing nicely. It’s this cold, it won’t go away. I also had my flu jab last Friday; the swelling on my arm has finally gone down.

Continue reading “Timorous wee beasties. Not. Annual cold and ‘flu on behalf of my beleaguered respiratory system.”

Uni: Week 6 – we had a visitor!

Today started off spectacularly: I managed to catch the slightly earlier college bus and got to Grimsby by nine, took a stroll to the train station and didn’t feel rushed when buying the ticket and getting over to platform three. It was lovely. My plan was to get a table seat and do some writing on my way to Lincoln.

Continue reading “Uni: Week 6 – we had a visitor!”

NaNoWriMo 2016 has begun

And I’m not doing it this year. I want to focus on finishing my novel and editing the first two if I get the chance, plus I’m helping a friend by editing her novel and I have that MA to study for.

However, as a treat I’ve written a poem. I came up with this one early this morning, blame lack of sleep if it’s terrible.

I have questions, by Rosemarie Cawkwell

I have questions, about the universe mainly.…
I’ve always wanted to know, but no one will tell me,
If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding in to?
If I stood on the bow wave of spacetime, what would I see?
Anything? Nothing?
The Void?
What is the Void, Nothingness, Infinity?
If I stood in the Void, which isn’t possible,
I know,
And looked back at our Universe, what would I see?
A perfect sphere, uniform,
A ball of spacetime rolling through the Void,
Or a splat spreading out at different rates.
Would I see other universes rolling through the Void?
Bumping in to ours as both expand?
I have so many questions, and nobody will answer them for me.

I actually have spent at least two decades trying to work out what the universe is expanding in to and I’ve yet to get an answer from anyone. I’m reading a book at the minute called ‘The Substance of Spacetime’ (I’ll be reviewing it next week, possibly, depends on how busy I get) and I still haven’t got my answers.

Good luck to everyone doing NaNoWriMo this year, I know that some of my fellow MA students are also taking on the challenge whilst studying and I wish them all the best.

Review: ‘Haters: Harassment, Abuse and Violence Online’ by Bailey Poland

Published by: Potomac Books, University of Nebraska Press

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9781612347660

Price: £14.99 (via Amazon.co.uk)

Continue reading “Review: ‘Haters: Harassment, Abuse and Violence Online’ by Bailey Poland”

Review: ‘Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes’ by Gerald N.Callahan

Published by: Chicago Review Press

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

ISBN: 9781613736548

Continue reading “Review: ‘Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes’ by Gerald N.Callahan”

Uni week 4: Guess who’s sick!

That’s right, it’s me. It’s another cold and the cough has returned. I wasn’t up to going in this morning; my anxiety was playing up as well. I really didn’t want to go to Lincoln for the day but I forced myself to get the bus to Grimsby and then get the train from there. It doubles my transport costs but I wouldn’t have managed the walk to Habrough station without an asthma attack or coughing fit. Continue reading “Uni week 4: Guess who’s sick!”

Review: ‘The Other Einstein’ by Maria Benedict

Publication date: 18th October 2016

Published by: Sourcebooks Landmarks

BLURB

A vivid and mesmerizing novel about the extraordinary woman who married and worked with one of the greatest scientists in history.

What secrets may have lurked in the shadows of Albert Einstein’s fame? His first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Marić, was more than the devoted mother of their three children—she was also a brilliant physicist in her own right, and her contributions to the special theory of relativity have been hotly debated for more than a century.

In 1896, the extraordinarily gifted Mileva is the only woman studying physics at an elite school in Zürich. There, she falls for charismatic fellow student Albert Einstein, who promises to treat her as an equal in both love and science. But as Albert’s fame grows, so too does Mileva’s worry that her light will be lost in her husband’s shadow forever.

A literary historical in the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein reveals a complicated partnership that is as fascinating as it is troubling.

My review

This was a really good novel, told in first person past tense, and narrated by Mileva Maric as she goes from an incredibly intelligent and optimistic student to a tired housewife with two young children and an absent husband. Obviously it is fiction but the book is well researched and delves in to the private lives of the Einsteins. Mileva Maric was an amazingly talented physicist and mathematician who was forced to give up all her work for her marriage and was probably instrumental in the four 1905 papers that made Albert Einstein’s name.

The writing was really fluid and easy to read. The only problem I had was with the occasional information dumps that didn’t quite fit into the plot.