swanning off to a tropical island

Yesterday, the school bus reappeared after two and a half weeks absence and whisked away my kids, leaving me free to sit at my desk and pick up the threads of my thesis. I read through the nine pages of fragments that constitute the chapter I need to transform into a coherent whole, and decided to start by filling in the bit at the top that said 'Insert brief introduction here'.
I'd typed two sentences when the phone rang.
It was Linda Hawryluk, one of the creative writing lecturers at CQUniversity in Rockhampton. Young (well, 30ish), an emigre from Sydney to her first academic appointment, Lynda has retained a trendy black look (clothes, hair, glasses) but is not as out of place up there as she might initially seem. She lives on the coast at Yeppoon and regularly flings off her inner city image and takes to the water with her board. She's become a passionate surfie and even presents on the topic at academic conferences. Somehow she's also snaffled the role of coordinating the writing retreats that CQU hosts on North Keppel Island and - unbelievably - that's why she's ringing me.
Her arrangements with the workshop presenter for a three day 'Memoir and Memory' retreat have fallen in a heap. Would I be interested in being writer-in-residence? It's quite relaxed, she assures me. Lots of free time built into the schedule, and a mixed-age group of people who fancy combining a holiday with doing a bit of writing on the side.
I'm alarmed on several fronts. I'm running out of time to finish my thesis - how many more side-tracks can I afford? I'd need to do a lot of reading up before I could spout about memoir - I actually wrote mine intuitively, applying the creative nonfiction principles I use in writing other people's stories. And although becoming a journalist has taught me to mask my shyness in order to get the job done, it's still there underneath and I'm not certain that even a tropical island will make standing up in front of 35 people for hour-and-a-half long sessions FUN.
But I'm unlikely to get this kind of opportunity dropped into my lap again, and who knows? I might like it. So from May 7-9 that's what I'll be doing. Impersonating a writer-in-residence.