How did you manage juggling your PhD, your part-time lecturing and your two sons?

With difficulty but my sons had got used to my studying as an undergraduate. I think the older one was about fifteen or sixteen at the time and while I was an undergraduate he did his GCSEs. Then while I was doing my PhD the older one went through his A-levels and on to university. Then so did the younger one, because there is only a three year gap between them. So in the five years that I was doing my PhD, there was time for them both to go through that. We used to share studying a lot and that helped because it meant that in the evening at home our family time together, was spent discussing, oh I don't know, the Dubliners by James Joyce or whatever they were studying for O- or A-level. If our time was spent doing that, especially over dinner, we were getting dinner out of the way, we were doing their homework but we were also having what we considered to be quality family time together. It was very convenient that things developed in that way. Sometimes, for example, when my younger son was taken quite ill, when he was seventeen, I'm afraid the research had to take a backseat because nothing can come before your children. I realise now, looking back, that was a luxury of being in full-time research because once you're at work you might not necessarily have that luxury of just being able to take a week off if your child or if your elderly parent is ill. It was quite difficult to juggle it but I think you have to try, I say to anyone who is faced with three or four years of that in front of them now, time management skills are a great saviour; if you can be organised and manage your time well, then you can fit endless amounts in the day. There's the old attitude isn't there, that the more you do the more you have energy to do and I did find, actually, that it is true.

How did you manage financially?

Well, I'm very fortunate in that I own my own house but I bought it a long time ago and the mortgage is very very low. I took in a tenant who rented half the house and my sons and I lived in the upstairs of the house and I very cheaply converted my loft so one of them could have that as a bedroom. It's just a matter of being resourceful. And of course doing the teaching helped a great deal. When you're researching full-time there isn't much time to spend money and I think we just got by because we are resourceful. Both my boys, from when they were younger, were very much into cooking so they'd cook dinner and buy fresh ingredients. There was no convenience food, they wouldn't have any of that when they were at home. I think we just lived pretty frugally but we got by because we brought bits of money in here and there and the boys were both very good, they both had weekend jobs and that's just how it had to be.