It seems every time I tell myself I’ll be better at blogging, I get worse. It’s with more than a bit of embarrassment that I realise it’s been almost two months since I’ve posted here. Here’s a brief list of what we’ve been up to since my last post.
Anthroenology has done two short, but very rewarding periods of fieldwork. In September, we were in Austria, and in October, we spent a few days down in Sussex & Kent. I’ll do summaries of those sooner or later. I also had two things due for WSET. One was a ‘Course Work Assignment’ (as they call it). That was a 2500-3000 word essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the bulk shipment of wine (think tanker trucks). That was the second part of Unit 1 for the Diploma – wine as business. Plus I had to study for and then take my re-sit on Unit 6 – Fortified Wines. Not sure how that went. I’ll find out in 2 – 3 months.
Having finished those doesn’t mean that I get much of a break from WSET. I start the second year in January, but we have three exams lined up. In March we do the sparkling wine and spirits equivalent to the Fortified Wine exam. In June is the killer – Unit 3. That’s still wine – basically, what you think of when people talk about wine. That’s the big one. Unlike the ‘small units’ (4, 5 & 6) you can fail half of Unit 3 (tasting or theory) and only have to retake that half. All of that means I really should start studying now.
I also realised that we missed Anthreonology’s second birthday. If we go by blog posts, we started on 30 September, 2014. From what I can tell from looking at the edit dates on various pages, we launched on 21 September. The first day of Autumn. So maybe I’ll go with that instead. At any rate, I should have some cake to celebrate. And some sparkling wine.
And, of course, life continues, which takes time away from here.
I won’t promise another post soon – see the first paragraph. But I do have topics lined up. I will post eventually on the two field trips. I have also been meaning to do a post on anthropological fieldwork in general. What actually goes on when we say ‘we are in the field’? It’s not quite as straightforward to a non-anthropologist as it might seem.
That’s it for now. Hopefully, it won’t be quite so long until I post here again.