Wednesday

Early start for a Scholarly Connections meeting. It's so difficult to find a time when everyone is free that I decided to try offering breakfast. Five colleagues gave brief presentations about their current research and it all went quite well in terms of informing everyone about the different areas of work, especially for our new economist colleagues. And the breakfast wasn't bad although my fried egg sandwich had a runnier yolk than I'd anticipated. Several people seem slightly miffed that they weren't asked to present their work but in 45 minutes there wasn't room for everyone. I'll try to organise a couple of lunchtime meetings along the same lines over the next couple of weeks and see what happens.

Lots of conversations, mostly with anxious people about issues that aren't being properly managed but a delightful chat with a very good friend visiting for an exam board which cheered me up. A personal development review meeting with a newish colleague who is doing all the right things but researches in an area with limited publishing outlets so is inevitably progressing slowly.

Email discussion about statement I drafted after yesterday's profs meeting. Finally got the go-ahead to submit my funding bid - very pleasing to click on "Submit" at last. Our research manager has been brilliant in sorting it all out for me.

An internal call for funding applications is good news but will mean more work for me, helping colleagues with their bids. I think I'll encourage everyone to have potential bids tucked in a drawer ready to pull out when opportunities like this come up: at least they will have done some of the thinking in advance. And it's really good practice for less experienced researchers and those who haven't much experience of bidding. Perhaps I'll give a talk on bidding just for our department as I've done for the grants panel workshop in the past - it could be tailored to applications to the accountancy bodies.

Accepted an invitation to an event to be run by ICAS and BDO at the beginning of next month: "Principles not Rules: a question of action". Much of the most important thinking about financial reporting, auditing and corporate governance has come out of the profession in Scotland, as the Cadbury history shows. Good speakers and a London location convenient for evening travel.

Very interesting book arrived from local library: "Economics of Good and Evil: the quest for economic meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street" by Tomas Sedlacek. Apparently it's been made into a play in the Czech Republic. My bedtime reading for the next week or so, I think.

Email cleared as far as possible. I can see that some colleagues are not planning to send me their research output information until the last possible moment before the deadline I set on Friday. This means that I shall have to assemble the information over the weekend in order to get it to the research office by their deadline. I must remember to set a much earlier deadline next time.

Shall spend the evening sorting out papers so that I can get a clear run at chapter 6 tomorrow. WILL NOT LOOK AT EMAIL UNTIL I'VE WRITTEN IT!