Good news

This is what I wrote at the end of April:

'I managed to make a big decision in the last day which has repercussions. I decided not to accept a job in Saudi Arabia that was looking mine for the asking. It would have provided me with enough to finish the PhD comfortably. By staying I risk not being able to manage it, though the probability is still fifty fifty.'

And now I can say that what I would have had by working in Saudi Arabia for the year, that is the financial capability to pay for the rest of my PhD, I can now do without having to have made that compromise. At the start of September my boss in the college allowed me to occupy his house for the price of merely covering the running costs, and now - yessterday - I have heard word that I will receive a full maintenance grant (including fees paid). And I'm delighted. Now I can see the 'way through the woods', so to speak. I got happily drunk in the pub, talking philosophy all evening with a ex-student of mine who is passionate about Heidegger and who had just driven me back from an open lecture in UCD on the problem of evil that we both attended. And there was a fittingness about that being the time that I received my letter, delivered to the pub(!) as it was by my good friend Ann who helped me to celebrate. As Oscar Wilde says 'Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it takes a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.' So thank God, and now I can work.