I think the required solicitor sub-type is a notary public.

Definitely meet your supervisors to discuss this. Burying your head in the sand will only make the problem worse. I'd also recommend drawing up a list of things that you need to get on with. In some ways it's quite scary to do that, but if you then start working through the list, doing the easiest things first, you can start to make progress and feel better about things. It's how I've dragged myself out of similar problems.

I'm part-time too, and all through the PhD I've kept a month-by-month summary of what I've accomplished. It's in the form of an Excel spreadsheet with 3 columns: Main activities (my main focus in the month), Major written reports submitted (covers draft chapters/papers sent to my supervisor or journal editors), and Other activities (covers anything, including training sessions). It helps me keep track of progress, both over the short-term and the much longer-term of a part-time PhD. I do need to remember to fill it in though. Once I forgot for 6 months and struggled to remember what I'd done!

Mine are generally around 10,000 words long but a couple are coming in at 15,000 words or even longer, helping me reach a 80,000 total.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your viewpoint!) universities are increasingly having to account to research councils for their training provision for postgraduates. I'd actually like a more formal scheme at my university, but perhaps not as formal as you have!

Might be worth asking the Library themselves if there's anywhere they can recommend. They might have been asked this sort of question by others in the past.

Demanded that a hospital consultant investigate things properly since my symptoms had changed (much more like multiple sclerosis than ME). He was sceptical, but ordered a brain scan, and it showed lesions in my brain. Got a proper diagnosis in the end, and started on life-saving treatment. If I'd lived a decade or two earlier I probably wouldn't have lived.

Definitely seek medical advice about unexpected tiredness in case it is something treatable like thyroid etc. I was originally diagnosed with ME while a full-time PhD student over a decade ago. I couldn't only work/study for a handful of hours a week and couldn't put in the time needed. The funding council wouldn't support part-time study so I had to make the difficult decision to leave. ME turned out to be a misdiagnosis in my case - something neurological going wrong instead - but if it had been something treatable I would have wanted help to be able to continue my PhD. Now I'm a part-time student, can still only put in a handful of hours a week (I sleep for up to 15 hours day after day due to the brain damage: little time left to do anything useful), but somehow am managing to stay ahead of deadlines. I just have to be as productive as possible in my few good hours. Bit of a challenge!

Congratulations! And thanks for the insight into the viva process.

At my university until recently there was no office space for humanities students, a very different situation from science students. There's now a dedicated area, but it's small compared to the total numbers. I don't use it though. I'm part-time (albeit funded) and work from home.

Every time I make a substantial amount of changes to a chapter that I wouldn't want to have to redo or risk losing I email a copy from home to my uni account so I have latest copies of each chapter there (I prefer separate files per chapter). That can sometimes mean emailing multiple times a day if I'm on a roll. Every week I backup my laptop where I'm typing to an external hard drive. Every few months I burn to CD.

There's always astrochemistry of course. Googling turns up a number of research groups and possible PhD openings in the field.

I'm another who'd recommend the tape method, or rather computer in my case. When I can't get my ideas clear about how to start and structure a lengthy chapter I record myself talking to the computer, working out the ideas that way in my heads. It's amazing how lucid I can be at times like that: much more so than if I try to start typing directly. Then I go back and transcribe what I said and use it as the starting point for my writing, finding it much less waffly than what I'd come up with if I tried typing directly instead. I've usually forgotten half of it by then and am quite impressed by some of the things I thought of!

The OU option could be a way that you could pick up a new undergraduate degree, alongside work, if you're willing to wait a bit. OU degrees are either named or unnamed. I have an unnamed one which cut down my study time hugely. Nearly half my history degree was free credit transferred from a computer science degree. Your chemistry degree could be used in the same way, basically jumping you straight into second year. Then I took more level 2 and level 3 (3 is honours) courses to make up the full 360 points worth. Jumping in like that without the first year was a bit of an experience, but I quickly picked up the ropes and it cut down my study time hugely. I followed it with a taught Masters, but it also helped me get funding: I had a new first degree in the right subject to prove to the funding council.

That's a long introduction Lara. Mine's going to go up to 10,000 max, i.e. 1/8 of my total thesis, and that's with extending from the current version. Are long introductions normal in science (I'm arts)? I could review far more journal papers/books in the thesis (I've read masses more that I could comment on) but I've focused instead on the most relevant, contextualised my research appropriately, and then spend the bulk of the thesis describing my new research/findings.

Definitely seek advice from your supervisor though when you see them. They should be able to reassure you about length issues, both overall and individual chapters. Plus remember they have to officially approve your thesis before it can even be examined. So agree this sort of detail with them.