the end

Tomorrow, I leave for an undisclosed European destination where I will don Academic Regalia and parade to solemn music, line up in a gorgeous old-building-setting, and eventually walk forward when my name is called. I will return to my seat bearing a document of some sort, which I hope is beribboned, with stamped insignias and flowing calligraphy, on parchment.

Instead, it will probably be a cardboard tube, with a laserjet-printed A4 sheet telling me that my certificate, "suitable for framing", will arrive by mail in 30 to 60 days. This is Ireland, after all. They are not known for speedy anything, let alone mail delivery.

I had not been looking forward to this journey until I received the following email from a fellow postgrad, who was a year ahead of me:

Did you book your gown? A. calls it the "McDonalds" gown. Very apt really. Do take lots of photos and send us one. We should start a gallery, last year I know for the first time a photo of the Seniors was taken for wall hanging, just like the Medics do traditionally. So hope to catch up, and so happy for you. Well and done and enjoy the pomp and ceremony (there is lots of that, but you might be familiar having worked in Law?), it's well earned and it is quite a spectacle.

So who knows? Perhaps you'll get to see a picture of the little-p 'prophet' in the McDonald's gown. . . . What do you think?

Anyway - I am suddenly excited to be going, and that's a gift.

Yesterday, the bluebird of happiness came calling. I was sans camera, and didn't want to miss bluebird time to go get it so there is no photo this time. He sat on the back of a chair out on the portico. Then he fluttered up against the window. Then he flew to a hole high in a snag tree I'd never noticed out back in the woods. Then he flew back and fluttered at the window closest to me. Back, then, to his home.

I know now where the bluebird lives.