Gosh, I am getting near the end of this task . . .

Clicking on the title gets you to a link about outdoor living; the cycling, the camping, stuff I used to do before being very busy took over . . .

My goodness me, the past six months has been a Sisyphean task (the guy pushing the large person-sized rock uphill, written about in Greek mythology).

It starts (on my photography course) when you get a little behind (the negatives don't process or print well, it rains for two weeks when you want to shoot outdoors), you cannot make a set of images which 'go together' well enough to complement each other and tell a story (which is what the brief has asked you to do).

Then personal matters intrude - you know they shouldn't, but life doesn't seem to observe etiquette in this way - you spend days sorting through complicated personal finance and getting legal advice when someone else is trying to make you liable for a HUGE amount of money they have taken, which you are supposed to ensure is safely looked after.

You work part-time on a peripatetic basis, and are always on the end of a telephone or sending e-mails, looking for the next day's work . . .

You spend weeks and months trying to organise a Photography Final Project, which you've always wanted to do and now you have a reason to carry it out - photographs of the Labour Party on the hustings just before the British General Election (later this week). None of your many letters and e-mails and phone calls are returned.

So you give up. But still needing a Final Project, you try on several old ones, and something gells.

Now, the 'American Football in London' project was NOT a piece of cake. A very steep learning curve was overcome, in terms of shooting crisp and well-composed imagery which they wanted, and which I could use for my project. That's done now.

I no longer have to go out four days a week and shoot the training and the games at football pitches in London and elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, it has been lots of fun, and just like being a professional. I still have the opportunity to shoot at future fixtures, and look forward to doing so. it is challenging to anticipate the 'decisive moment' in oppositional pitch-based team sport; pressing the shutter button just as the players collide, or the pass is thrown, or the touchdown is kicked over the bar; that is almost all you need to do.

As well as remembering to keep the shutter speed at 1/500th of a second, the aperture small enough to keep the depth of field you envisage for that shot, and the ISO low enough to give 'smooth-grained' digital prints A-2 sized or larger. You're shooting in daylight in a temperate-zone spring-time location, so every time a shadow falls on the playing field, the exposure changes too.

And, I've been run over by players sliding off the field at my feet, once at each football game. . . you have to leap fast to scoot out of the way . . . difficult to see the problem rushing towards you at very high speed, if you're following the action through a telephoto lens . . .

But I've got a week or two of sifting through 6,000 digital images to find the 'Top 50' which might be exhibition quality. And, I've got to cram scores of pages in a virgin workbook chock-fill of the ideas I've had and discarded about shooting this major piece of work.

But, I now feel this task is within my grasp. There's the printing and mounting of the chosen mages, ready for the Degree Exhibition in June. Expensive, but I am certain I'll get it there and on time.

And, before I forget, there were a couple of other pieces of college work which fell by the wayside. I'd better get them written up (today would be ideal, wouldn't it ?) and handed in. Then I can sleep the sleep of the innocent once more , don't you think ?