Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

Welcome. Come on in. Today you will get nothing but smiles from me and a cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Why am I so elated. I shouldn’t be but I can’t help myself but come Monday the smile will be wider. On Thursday, I finally declared my thesis finished to as best as I can make it. I attempted to put it through the plagiarism checker but failed as the document was too big. I went into a spiralling decline but the research office suggested I remove photographs from the creative artefact (my memoir in other words) and try again. By Friday I had done this and it went through.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you that I had secretly been fearing the plagiarism checker. I’d read too much about memory not to know that you can plagiarise and not know that you have done so. If you see something often enough then it can be put into memory as your own. Luckily, this had not happened to me. The check came back showing 5% similarity score of which 3% was to my own work published either in scholarly magazines or in smaller parts on this blog. All of these I had acknowledged. The other was to other peoples work that I had quoted and referenced. Nothing at all to worry about. I would have submitted apart from the fact that you have to wait 24 hours before checking a document and submitting it for checking again. I also have been told to reinstate all photographs and save it as a pdf and put it through again. Putting the photos back in is time consuming and had I known that I would have to I would have saved a document with them in. Sometimes I can be an idiot.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you that due to an altercation I had on Sunday I have decided to go elsewhere to have dance lessons and on Tuesday I trialled a new venue which I enjoyed immensely. The teacher was well organised and ran his dance in a way that all participants were given equal shares of dancing with partners, plus he teaches what is called in Queensland freestyle dancing. This in NSW is the accepted way of dance where each couple does there own thing within the rules of the dance on the floor. In Queensland the common form of dance is what is known as sequence or new vogue or old time dancing where everybody dances the same steps going around in a circle such as in a Pride of Erin. This has always been my least favourite style of dance so I was thrilled when we started off with a quick step.  I look forward to going again.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you that the sunsets down on the river at the moment are just spectacular. We went down this afternoon and met some friends and had nibblies as the sun went down.

© irene waters 2016

© irene waters 2016

© irene waters 2016

If we were having coffee I’d tell you it’s time for you to visit someone in the northern hemisphere as I’m about to put my head down. Hope you have a lovely weekend and thanks for sharing coffee. I’d love to know about your weather, books your reading, films you’ve seen and how you spend your time. Thanks Diana for hosting our coffee mornings.