LRPS

While we were up in the North East last month, I received an email telling me that my LRPS panel had been recommended to receive the distinction. I didn't post about it at the time, because the recommendation still had to go to a Committee for ratification - and anyway, our reason for being in Northumberland was far from a celebratory one. But today I received the formal notification that I have my 'L', and that I'm now entitled to use the acronym LRPS after my name, and the Society's logo on my web site and stationery.

This hasn't been as straightforward a journey for me as for some other blippers: I originally put in a panel for consideration several months ago, but although nine of the ten images were accepted, the judges felt that the tenth didn't meet the standard they required, and the panel therefore went into referral - meaning that I had to submit one new image, which needed to be acceptable on its own merits and also to work within the panel as a whole. Should you be thinking of applying for an RPS distinction, my advice to you would be to avoid this situation if you can: it has caused me enormous stress, and it's taken me longer to replace that one image than it took to assemble the panel in the first place.

However, it's now done, and I'm absolutely delighted. R took me out at lunch time for celebratory coffee, cake and Bucks Fizz; and I've also been overwhelmed by the generosity of relatives, friends and acquaintances, since I posted the news on Facebook this morning. Chantler63, who as I'm sure you'll remember achieved her ARPS a few weeks ago, made a comment along the lines of "Onward to the next level!" - which was very sweet of her; though my response was that I'll be needing a nice long lie-down in a darkened room before I even begin to start thinking about my 'A'!

It's a mark of decades spent diligently modelling myself on the ball in a pinball machine that I now have three sets of quite disparate suffix initials. If I cared to (which I don't), I could style myself Jill Dyson Orme LLB, DO, LRPS - leading me to ponder whether there's some fourth qualification I could now aspire to, which has absolutely no relation whatsoever to any of the other three....? I'm currently thinking that something to do with theology or civil engineering might be the way forward, but I'm open to any other reasonable suggestions.

If you're not already bored to tears by my L invading your news feed notifications, and you're interested to see the images that I used, and the hanging plan according to which they were laid out for the RPS judges, I've put them all on Flickr.