2008 reading list

1. Cell, Stephen King
2. Life's Little Instruction Book Vol II, H Jackson Brown Jr
3. Insomnia, Stephen King
4. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson
5. The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
6. The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety Nine Other Thought Experiments, Julian Baggini
7. The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Dietrich Dörner
8. The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner
9. 500 of the Weirdest and Wackiest Websites, Eds Colleen Collier, Lucy Dear, Nicki Mellows, Nikole Bamford
10. The Secret People, John Wyndham
11. The Know It All Book, 365 Steps to Being Very Clever Indeed, David S Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim
12. Aberystwyth Mon Amour, Malcolm Price (LC)
13. The World According to Clarkson, Jeremy Clarkson
14. The Nation’s Favourite Poems, BBC Books
15. The Magic Bullet, Harry Stein
16. Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
17. The Virgin Now Boarding, Ann McPherson and Aidan MacFarlane
18. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
19. I'm a Teenage Health Freak Too, Ann McPherson and Aidan MacFarlane
20. Next, Michael Crichton (LC)
21. Nine Tomorrows, Isaac Asimov
22. Sundiver, David Brin
23. A Life Stripped Bare. My Year of Trying to Live Ethically, Leo Hickman
24. The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry
25. The Running Man, Stephen King
26. Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, Ed Regis
27. Astronomy Handbook, Guide to the Night Sky, Clare Gibson
28. Everyday Numbers, Hutchinson. Ed Patrick McSherry
29. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
30. Tell Me The Truth About Love, WH Auden (LC)
31. The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov
32. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, Lewis Wolpert
33. The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
34. The Human Zoo, Desmond Morris
35. The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report, Timothy Ferris
36. Quantum Theory For Beginners, JP McEvoy and Oscar Zarate
37. Critical Mass; How One Thing Leads to Another, Philip Ball
38. The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie
39. The Secret, Rhonda Byrne
40. Bad Astronomy; Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax", Philip C Plait
41. The Moving Finger, Agatha Christie
42. A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie
43. Survival of the Fittest, Understanding Health and Peak Physical Performance, Mike Stroud
44. 4.50 From Paddington, Agatha Christie
45. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
46. Niels Bohr's Times: In Physics, Philosophy and Polity, Abraham Pais
47. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe (LC)
48. The Developer's Bible, Sarah Beeny
49. Sad Cypress, Agatha Christie
50. Verses of the Poets Laureate (from John Dryden to Andrew Motion), Collected by Hilary Laurie
51. Curtain, Poirot's Last Case, Agatha Christie
52. The Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman
53. The Labours of Hercules, Agatha Christie
54. From a Buick 8, Stephen King
55. Wanderers of Time, John Wyndham
56. Atom, Piers Bizony
57. French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano
58. Dreamcatcher, Stephen King
59. Emma, Jane Austen (LC)
60. A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke
61. The Sun Shines Bright, Isaac Asimov
62. This Book Will Save Your Life, AM Homes

Fiction : 28
Non-fiction : 31
Prose: 3
Total : 62
Cumulative total : 312













Favourite read of the year goes to "Emma".

2007 reading list

1. The Reality Dysfunction, Peter F Hamilton
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling
3. Different Seasons, Stephen King
4. Barrel Fever, David Sedaris
5. Running Made Easy, Susie Whalley, Lisa Jackson
6. Bag of Bones, Stephen King
7. Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, Rachel Reiland
8. Six Easy Pieces, Richard P. Feynman
9. The Fall of Lucifer, Wendy Alec
10. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
11. God’s Debris, Scott Adams
12. Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday? Michael P Foley
13. My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
14. The Bathroom Companion, James Buckley Jr
15. An Introduction to International Politics, Derek Heater and GR Berridge
16. Watching the English, Kate Fox
17. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (LC)
18. Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry
19. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
20. Toilets of the World, Morna E Gregory and Sian James
21. The Man Who Fell Asleep, Greg Stekelman
22. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
    
23. Heavy Water, Martin Amis
24. Warlock In Spite of Himself, Christopher Stasheff (SFC)
25. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain (LC)
26. Chaos, James Gleick
27. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
28. Flatland (A Romance of Many Dimensions), Edwin A. Abbott
29. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, JK Rowling
    
30. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
31. Difficult Loves, Italo Calvino
32. If This is a Man, Primo Levi
33. Christine, Stephen King
34. Everything’s Eventual, Stephen King
35. Summer of the Dragon, Don Goodman
36. Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
37. Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
    
38. The Truce, Primo Levi
    
39. The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
40. The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
41. The Quantum World, JC Polkinhorne
42. William the Fourth, Richmal Crompton
43. Marker, Robin Cook
44. State of Fear, Michael Crichton
45. Open Water Diver Manual, PADI
46. Nicholas NIckleby, Charles Dickens
47. The Stand, Stephen King
48. The Memory Keepers Daughter, Kim Edwards
    

Fiction : 27
Non-fiction : 21
Total : 48
Cumulative total : 250













A relatively poor book tally for 2007, but a number of gems nonetheless. Favourite read of the year goes to Primo Levi's "The Periodic Table".

Trip in Ten™ #005

Mainstream

Apparently I am:








With respect to my musical tastes.

A Sunday in Hodnet

May is almost (just almost but not quite, obviously) as fabulous as February; with two whole Bank Holidays to its credit it presents a convincing argument and... smoothly segue from the current Bank Holiday to the last (and first one) this month when I found myself in attendance at a wedding (I'm seriously contemplating a professional career move in this direction).

I travelled as part of a group to the village of Hodnet in Shropshire, where we descended en masse upon the local hotel and immediately embarked upon refreshing ourselves (it had been a long, arduous drive during which I had insisted upon playing "guess what animal I am", which had precipitated a rather nasty altercation over the carnivorous nature, or otherwise, of donkeys, this after I enthralled my fellow travellers with the number of bed bugs in pillows (apparently the average pillow is six years old and one tenth of its weight is comprised of bed bugs (dead and alive), their dung and your sloughed skin. At home it’s yours, but in a hotel…) When K1 tried to make herself feel better by saying, “yeah, but they put fresh pillowcases on.” I retorted with, “but when you’re the size of a mite, then the weave of a pillowcase is as loose as that of a ship’s rigging.” (I've been reading Bill Bryson and watching QI and am currently quite insufferable). Everyone was suitably impressed and thoughtfully quiet for some considerable time.

As we diligently pursued freshening up at the hotel, K2 attempted to book a taxi from the church to the reception, which quickly revealed itself to be a Herculean task in Hodnet on a Sunday. Still, we were all pretty tired of driving by this point (even all of us, bar one, who had not been driving) and, I strongly suspect, the others secretly hoped having a stranger in the car would reign in my obsessive game playing and fact spouting.

Now, for months prior to the wedding we had been covertly practising singing and had meticulously developed both an astounding quality of projection and a musically ground breaking style of harmonies (we even had actions for one of the hymns, oh foolish bride and groom for unthinkingly revealing your choice of hymns ahead of time! Actions have consequences you know). All in all it was going to be a magnificent, awe inspiring performance that would bring tears to the eyes of even the most hardened, emotionally distant congregational member. Unfortunately, when our much anticipated moment arrived we were cowed by the severe presence of a lady seated in the pew directly in front who kept looking back at us and intimidating us with a combination of twinkly eyes and lips that were unmistakably slightly upturned at the corners. It's a damning indictment of our times, but critics are undeniably far harsher than they ever used to be.

The wedding reception itself featured a ceilidh band and I was approached and asked to dance by perhaps the most (in)famous guest in attendence, who once appeared on University Challenge and gained fleeting notoriety (reaching the heady heights of being written up in the esteemed Daily Mirror) for uttering a naughty word, not only on national television but a British Institution, no less. I was sufficiently freshened up by this point to blatantly dismiss any concerns on the effect dancing with a tabloid flousy might have upon my reputation and agreed. I suspect Tabloid Flousy instantly regretted his rash decision as my first two suave moves involved me stamping heavily on his foot and swiftly toppling backwards over another guest, saved only from landing on my backside by Tabloid Flousy's vice like grip. After that I really got into the swing of things though, and my "And... polka!" was truly a sight to behold. When in close proximity to one such as myself it can be quite frightening just how long these complicated Scottish dances can go on for.

Shortly (but I'm sure wholly unconnectedly) following my dance floor display, a man from the reception hotel with a Landrover was quickly appropriated to drive us back to our hotel, there being a paucity of taxis, it being a Sunday in Hodnet.

And as for the rest of May... Well, now I come to take stock I realise it has largely been spent embroiled in an epic online poking war. It's probably best you don't ask.

(Photo by Noel Magic published under a Creative Commons Licence)

"She's never right she isn't"

A serious lack of imagination

Last week I happened upon an article in the Washington Post describing violinist Joshua Bell's metro busking experience. Sometimes a thing can be right in front of your nose and yet still you fail to notice it, which is the only way I can explain having grown up less than fifteen miles from a place called Penistone and only ever having referred to it as Penny-stone and, likewise, Fartown (until now) has only ever been Far-town. Go figure. You can entertain yourself for hours looking up amusing places close to you.

I carried a watermelon

If it wasn't obvious before, then it certainly was the minute we finished eating donuts and drinking frapucinos outside Euston station on Thursday; the provincials were most definitely in town. Having leisurely surveyed our environs for a good fifteen minutes, simultaneously belittling the litter louts who seemingly surrounded us, we had singularly failed to locate a single litter bin in which to place the remnants of our gluttony, when it finally dawned upon our innocent, provincial, young minds that they'd probably all been removed as a security measure. It was at this point that N spotted the trash collectors and so gathered up all of our rubbish and walked helpfully over to them to ask if she could deposit our empty boxes in their trash trolley. Her polite, obliging, provincial demeanour only served to induce panic on the part of the litter men.

"Put the rubbish on the floor."

"Yeah, but if I do that it'll just blow away."

"Put the rubbish on the floor."

We were watching the confrontation from the safety of our bench, some distance away as N slowly bent down, carefully maintaining eye contact, and placed the rubbish gently on the floor. It duly blew away. Vindicated, N walked back to join us, head held high.

That evening, in an effort to appear less provincial, we attended a performance of Dirty Dancing at the Aldwych Theatre. As part of the whole appearing-less-provincial thing we had also been attempting to get to grips with the local lingo and since our arrival had been accosting locals (whenever we could find them) and seeking instruction on the ways of the capital. We had been stumped by one local word in particular "Aristotle" and had been seeking, unsuccessfully, translation ever since first hearing it (or, more precisely, seeking confirmation that it actually means arsehole as some dubious character had informed one of our party) and so, as we made our way to the theatre, H stopped to ask some likely looking barrister / Harley Street surgeon chaps and was informatively told, "I believe he was a famous philosophaaar."

Anyway... I was never really caught up in the whole Dirty Dancing craze that seemed to take everyone by storm when the film first came out, but I found myself captivated by the live show and, in particular, the outstanding performance given by Nadia Coote playing Penny. I'm also always fascinated by the way such a show works; the seemingly seamless scene changes, altering floor levels, revolving sets, hidden doorways etc, so there was plenty to admire / keep my attention.

******

Bravely, given it was the 13th and we'd spent the evening before partaking of a few after theatre drinks, watching S perform press-ups¹ and J turn circus acrobatics, we decided to go rollerblading in Hyde Park on Friday. As the observant will no doubt discern, we are particularly accomplished bladers:

Feel the fear and do it anyway

K1 proved particularly adept, having already turned tricks in Slick Willies involving fast, spontaneously-choreographed, backwards bum-to-floor manoeuvres, she bought ice creams for everyone to celebrate and skated confidently over to us carrying her own. Unfortunately, she somewhat miscalculated the incline and picked up speed as she approached. We were all busily enjoying the ice creams she'd so thoughtfully provided and therefore failed to anticipate, or even notice the fast, uncontrolled approach. When we did eventually notice, K1 was already finely balanced on her stomach over the two foot high, thin, green metal railings that line the park's footpaths, head one side, legs dangling the other. As she hung, perfectly suspended, aristotle in the air, someone with a slightly greater presence of mind than the rest of us thought to ask if she was okay, "No!" a distraught, muffled voice replied, "I've dropped my ice cream!" Nobody said it, but everyone thought it. Show-offs always get their comeuppance.








As we were leaving the park a casually dressed, clean shaven man cycled up to a litter bin on his mountain bike, came to a halt beside it and started rummaging. Curious at the incongruity, I watched as he pulled out a polystyrene takeaway carton, inspected its contents and began to consume whatever remains someone else had earlier discarded with barely a second thought.

******

On Friday evening we spent the evening at Jongleurs Comedy Club in Camden where we were entertained by stand-up routines by Curtis Walker, Kitty Flanagan, Andy Watson, Jefferson & Whitfield and Adam Bloom.

K2, who had informed us at the start of the weekend that she's normally tucked up in bed by ten, and had even brought along some unfinished assignments to complete, turned all maniacal wild-child. Part way through red headed Mancunian Andy's performance she suddenly started laughing loudly and randomly at entirely inappropriate moments, her laughter reverberating around the club. Aware that as a group in iridescent purple bobs we were a particularly vulnerable target for the wits on stage we had been attempting to maintain a fairly low profile but K2 propelled us into the limelight with her sudden megaphone guffawing when the rest of the club was quiet. She claimed afterwards that she knew what was coming next and her laughing was therefore preemptive, but I secretly suspect that she was Drunk.

Andy Watson was actually an unbilled addition to the show, which thus over ran meaning we missed our entry time to a nightclub in Leicester Square so instead we opted to stay on in Jongleurs for a late night of cheesy dancing, at the end of which (having obviously climbed her own personal mountain and with all thoughts of self-imposed 10pm curfews and assignment deadlines clearly forgotten) K2 was very vocal in her opinion that we should not go back to our hotel at 2am closing and, fueled by Dirty Dancing memories and Beta Blockers, decided to teach everyone in the club how to dance Swayzey style.

Meantime, D was still walking around with her skirt tucked into her pants (having earlier in the day been dared to do this D purchased a floaty black skirt and green boxer shorts with little white palm tree motifs especially for the occasion). She was in the toilets with J adjusting her outfit for her inaugural promenade when another patron kindly pointed out the location of her skirt.

"I know," said D, "thanks."

"But your skirt, it's in your knickers."

"Yeah, I know. But thanks for telling me."

"Your skirt, though, it's in your..."

The woman clearly still did not grasp the situation and seemed deeply horrified when D explained that in a minute she was going to walk out into the club with her skirt tucked into her pants. As D recounted the story over breakfast the next day she said she had no idea whether or not anyone else had completed their dares, she'd been so into hers she'd performed it ten times and simply hadn't any time to check up on us.










H certainly didn't have any time to perform her dare; when she wasn't busy air-guitar-ing or ninja-ing, she was fully occupied fraternising with the stars of the show and asked one half of Jefferson & Whitfield, "What do you do if it all goes wrong up there, or if the audience is really shit?" I'll leave you with his sage words of wisdom:

"Well, it's like bad sex... you just have to pretend everything is okay."

innocent Hosted on Zooomr

---

[1] Apparently the first time S did public press-ups was when she was challenged in a Yates pub ten years ago. “You’re that little girl who's always in the gym, but I bet you can’t do press ups.” “I bet I can” said S and dropped and gave him ten. She's never looked back.

Call me Spielberg

I have been shocked from my contemplation of some of life's big questions (such as which way the toilet roll should hang, paper down beneath or over the top) by the realisation that this Saturday I will be spending approximately one hour on a pulpit in full view of a packed church congregation. Like most good ideas it all began in the dim and distant past when I rather incautiously answered "yes" to the question, "you'll video our wedding, won't you Disco?" "What larks", thought I, a techy gadget and express permission to shove it in people's faces. Does life get any better?

On Monday, almost a year after my rash promise, I attended the wedding rehearsal where, it turns out, the vicar is labouring under the misapprehension that I am a professional videographer. I shall not be sat on a pew during proceedings but instead have been thrust onto the dais where I will stand with my tripod and borrowed video camera, commanding a view of the entire nave whilst dramatically back lit by the large Flemish stain glass window. As I practised blankly standing there I realised, as if an epiphany, that the situation is reciprocal and that, technically, the entire nave will be commanding a view of me. I will be more on show than either the bride or groom, with only the vicar offering any serious competition for lead character in the whole extravaganza and, unless I can come up with the quintessential scene stealer, he wins purely because he has the bigger speaking part. As if a second epiphany, I realised I have yet to purchase a wedding outfit of any description and, therein my friends, may lie the quintessential scene stealer, one way or another.

The rehearsal also revealed a potential problem in that the necessary configuration has resulted in an unholy trinity; three synergistically-heightened proven gigglers all in a direct line of sight, namely myself, the bride and one of her bridesmaids (who, incidentally, are the two people at this wedding of whom I would normally ask, "so... what are you wearing then?" Fat lot of help they're proving in this whole undertaking. Nobody seems to realise this is the most important day of my life).

If things weren't bad enough, a fatal set of coincidences saw me rushing from the wedding rehearsal to a screening of "Amazing Grace", since which time I've been operating under the delusion that I am a first rate hymn singer. Given my projected proximity to the video camera microphone on Saturday, my occasional misplaced exuberance and my complete inability to hold a tune this could easily prove to be an embarrassment of epic proportions, recorded and used against me for the remainder of my natural days.

In an effort to relieve my stress and appear nonchalant re the whole lack of anything to wear / being on show thing I am spending my time constructively, looking for a clapperboard on Ebay.

Annnnddd... Action!

Overheard

I flung open my bedroom window this morning, in the manner I adopt only for weekend usage, to be greeted by a very loud conversation (kudos to the whole double glazing phenomenon). The conversation was of the sorts where you’re never entirely sure if the participants / combatants are arguing or talking until you tune into the actual words.

The lead character was complaining bitterly about the inefficiencies of the Post Office and the constant, deliberately provocative delivery of letters to his abode addressed to individuals who do not, have not and never will reside with him.

“I’ve bloody told them a hundred times and STILL they come.”

“I know, I know,” his female pavement sounding board solaced him, equally as loudly but a few octaves higher.

“Still, it’s not surprising, I suppose,” he continued on his soliloquy, garnering enthusiasm for his topic, “half of them can’t bloody read or write, they’ve got that bloody anorexia or whatever it’s called.”

I may have lost an hour this morning, but I sure gained a laugh. The world, indeed, has Balance.

Lurch

"Die, die, diiiieeee!!!"

Thus, with great gusto, did I launch into my day, calling down hell, fire and damnation via the intercom upon the head of some poor unsuspecting random who had not even gotten so far as pressing the buzzer to announce his presence at the back of the building before a booming, disembodied voice started reverberating across the lonely, isolated access driveway with the direst of pronouncements¹.

I suspected right then and there it was going to be a good day.

Currently at work older parts of the buildings are imminently about to undergo varying degrees of refurbishment, which has necessitated the temporary displacement of personnel, furniture and equipment. I am not one of the dispossessed and happily remain unaffected by all of the changes which, of course, has meant that I've been unable to resist lending a hand amidst the all-encapsulating chaos and, as a direct consequence of this inability to refrain from meddling, found myself crushed inside a small lift, pinned against the wall by a trolley piled high with boxes. As the doors slid shut I panicked, "what floor?!" I squeaked. They were still convulsed as I struggled to disentangle myself and emerge on the first floor³.

After such a traumatic morning, in the afternoon I was inexplicably left in sole charge of a hyper ten year old who had recently suffered a head injury (having collided head first with another ten year old, this ten year old developed double vision, was consequently withdrawn from school and had somehow come under my supervision). Said ten year old did not seem to be suffering any ill effects and instead went on to unabashedly engage anyone who passed within her sphere; speaking French with P1, discussing Portuguese geography with C, being briefly enthralled by P2 (whom I claimed was a professor) and making J believe in poltergeists. In between all her fraternising she offered up incisive relationship advice which I relay here for your edification; apparently any intended should be tall, dark, handsome, rich, have gorgeous eyes, a sense of humour and, most importantly, be completely and utterly under your control. She adamantly refused to be drawn on what colour the gorgeous eyes should be. On reflection she was right, it never pays to be too prescriptive in these matters.

I think I may just miss this place.

---

[1] I was actually trying to attract the attention of someone called Diane whom I believed to be in the general vicinity of the other end of the intercom² but, in the very act of seeking her attention, my own slipped and before I knew it... Perspective never fails to astound me.

[2] She was nowhere near the other end of the intercom.

[3] The building is resolutely two storey⁴. This incident only served to lend weight to the outrageous accusation that I never move from my seat.

[4] Although there were clearly more grandiose plans at some earlier point in time as the lift boasts the ability to go all the way to the ninth level.

Hypermilers

"Buckle up tight, because this is the death turn," says Wayne. Death turn? We're moving at 50 mph. Wayne turns off the engine. He's bearing down on the exit, and as he turns the wheel sharply to the right, the tires squeal-which is what happens when you take a 25 mph turn going 50. Cathy, Terry's wife, who is sitting next to me in the backseat, grabs my leg. I grab the door handle. As we come out of the 270-degree turn, Cathy says, "I hope you have upholstery cleaner."

We glide for over a mile with the engine off, past a gas station, right at a green light, through another green light - Wayne is always timing his speed to land green lights - and around a mall, using momentum in a way that would have made Isaac Newton proud. "Are we going to attempt that at home?" Cathy asks Terry, a talkative man who has been stone silent since Wayne executed the death turn in his car. "Not in this lifetime," he shoots back.

This could well become my latest challenge. I'm especially susceptible to challenges with lots of acronyms and this has a-plenty; ridge-riding, potential parking, draft-assisted fas and dwb manoeuvres. I feel an OCD coming on.

(Via Kottke).

I should be doing other things...

... so (of course) instead I'm seeing how many countries I can name in ten minutes. Naturally.

Buff or bluff?

In celebration of World Book Day, the BBC are challenging you to spot the War and Peace expert from the guy who's never opened Tolstoy's tome.

And you can test your first line spotting ability here.

I'm standing in the wind, but I never wave bye-bye

I've always really liked this picture. To me, it's a great example of why obsessive, random snapping occasionally pays off. It was 'taken' in September 1996 as, tiring of being part of lengthy wedding photograph proceedings, my cousin went to make a fast getaway from the village church - taking the direct route, straight across a cattle grid. In high heels. It wasn't until I scanned the picture in, over ten years later, that I noticed her brother is also in the frame; standing across the road in the old phone box, gazing down the street. Somehow that just completes the scene.

Anyway, you've probably noticed how her various relatives alternatively chose to look on in amused fascination, burst out in guffaws, take pictures or pose for said pictures. Not withstanding our help, she made it across to the other side and, today, she emailed me to let me know that I need to wear my own anti-cattle grid shoes on a certain Saturday this August. Congrats H & B ;-)

Frankenstein for a day

I wasn't at my usual employ today and instead spent the entire day shortlisting candidates for Surgery-in-General ST1 positions, which are more or less equivalent to the old SHO positions in the traditional medical career gradings that were phased out in 2005 in favour of the new Modernising Medical Careers programme.

It was certainly an interesting experience, looking at the procedure from the 'other' side, but perhaps not the best follow-up to last night's viewing... There were almost 12,000 applications to my particular Deanery for 1,600 positions, although, when you figure in that each candidate is allowed to apply to four Deaneries the odds of success don't look quite so daunting.

Given the masses of applications we were sifting through it became pretty easy to see any that stood out and tried something different from the usual, pat answers. From my perspective, one of the most interesting questions was the one in which the candidates were asked to address their understanding of the importance of medical research. Taking my cohort's answers on aggregate, research seemed equally important as a means of furthering medical treatments or as a career development device. Take your pick. I guess I'm biased here though. And talking of bias... Despite the anonymous selection procedure it was, unsurprisingly, pretty easy to discern certain distinguishing characteristics about some of the candidates, which sent me into paroxysms of worry that I was being subconsciously biased (I did the Implicit Association Test once and didn't come out as squeaky clean as I imagined, but then I did get all confused over which buttons I was pressing - manual dexterity has never been my forte, hence having never pursued surgery myself (not to mention all the blood and gore...))

Anyway, I'm not sure how relevant the award of "best hiker of the year" is, or just how proud the person who came 399th in some competition or other should be, but at least I didn't receive any applications of this type, although I think I'd have let them through on the grounds of bare faced cheek alone.

So, it's been a long and surprisingly tiring day and when I misread one research study as "an investigation of the incidence of fractured necks¹ in Jehovah's Witnesses", and started imagining all kinds of doorstep confrontations, I knew it was time to call it a day.

I'd be pretty interested to see down the line if I've helped create any monsters, but I guess I'll never know...

Addendum: I'm sure my involvement didn't precipitate this.

---

[1] It actually read "fractured neck of femur"

The worried well

I've just been sent a text message telling me to watch "Hypochondriacs: I Told You I Was Ill" this evening.

Honestly! Just because so far this year I've had strong indications that I'm suffering from a number of acute and chronic health conditions, including (but not limited to) suspected gout, angina, kidney failure (the result of an unproven bout of food poisoning), early onset incontinence and a nasty case of mumps. Then, of course, there's the whole slew of mechanical problems that currently bedevil me, including a permanently swollen ring finger on my right hand (thanks latest fad sport), a sore right elbow (thanks old fad sport), a sore left ankle (thanks A), two dodgy knees and a sore right hip. Oh! I almost forgot, I developed extremely sensitive fingertips two weeks ago - have you any idea how debilitating that is? I try not to complain, but some people have absolutely no sympathy and then, well, it kind of becomes necessary.

Who knows what else I might have and not even know about yet?! Hopefully tonight's viewing will prove enlightening. To steal a song lyric, sometimes we never know what's wrong without a pain.

Of course, not all pains are physical. I had to return a library book this evening, having renewed it to its maximum limit. It was dark and it was raining and who could I possibly meet during a five minute trip to the library on such a Monday evening? I made just such a serious miscalculation once before when my mother dared me to wear my hair in pigtails to town and I ran into every single person I'd ever known in my entire life to that date; I still haven't learnt. And so it came to pass that I was in town wearing what a certain uncharitable four year old acquaintance of mine refers to as my 'slob' pants, having also elected not to wear socks (thus I was pleased to make the hitherto unknown discovery that my shoes leak). Anyway, let's just say you'd be surprised who hangs out at the library these days.
























Edward Monkton

Right by your side

I have a friend whom, for reasons best known to herself and now obscured in the mists of time, always refers to me as Annie Lennox. I think it must be something to do with the pop industry multi-millions I've earned over the years, although I'm 90% sure my fame and fortune are not the reasons we're friends. Perhaps it's the way my hair vacillates between neon orange and blonde or my dulcet Scottish tones; who knows why friendships develop and endure, I don't! Anyway, it was with some confusion then that I met up with a disparate bunch in Chester over the weekend to celebrate her Hen. (Despite the irrefutable case previously made for February being the best month ever and this weekend actually occurring in February I am, nonetheless, going to refer to her henceforth as the March Hen since she's getting married at the end of March and, I suspect, there are going to be a few more Hens in 2007, so it's best to start distinguishing between them now, plus it undoubtedly appeals to my twisted sensibilities.)

Once installed in our hotel for the weekend we headed into Chester proper for a meal at Zizzi's, where we were waited on by the spikiest hair in Chester. During the meal we had a round of "My Proudest Moment Ever Was..." It turned out that B's proudest moment ever was a number of years back when we'd attended a Working Men's Club gig (March Hen is in a band¹ for which we are occasional groupies / roadies) and during the obligatory Bingo intermission (when we weren't being shushed for disrupting proceedings) we spent our time calculating the various Bingo odds. I was amazed at this revelation of her proudest moment; yet again, here was an example of the way I've been deep-impacting on the lives of those around me without ever realising! Shortly afterwards A's mother (A is also in the band) went on to shout, "House" which almost sparked a Very Nasty Incident (WMC Bingo is taken extremely seriously and suspected ringers are lucky to escape with their limbs intact). And what of me, I hear you ask, and my proudest moment? I was shameless in confessing that, even more than my numerous platinum and gold selling albums, my proudest moment was sitting right then and there next to March Hen in the restaurant.

After our meal, having canvassed various locals' opinions, we headed over to Reflex where we wound up spending the entire night (mostly because there were too many people to push past to get out again and eight is an unruly number to keep together even when one of you has a whistle). We only discovered that there were two more floors to the club when each of us were too tired to take another step and couldn't care less that there was an R&B floor and a Dance floor (Reflex is actually a Tardis in disguise). In any case, I was too busy meeting my fans on the Eighties floor and was virtually swamped when the DJ announced my presence in the club. Fame is a fickle friend, but I'm wise to it now².

Sunday was spent recovering in the hotel. Instead of sleeping on the poolside like some wimps (J and K, you know who you are, although kudos to you K for actually leaving an impression of your head on your lounger) I chose instead to spend the entire day swimming and nipping in and out of the jacuzzi, sauna and steam rooms; us global superstars are made of sterner stuff and can cope with the high life, even if by the end of the day I did have wrinkly fingers and blood shot eyes. What of it!

Now, it's said that the English don't complain enough³, but we were treated to a first class display by D on this trip who complained to the hotel manager about the fact that some of us were sleeping on bunk beds (I've always secretly loved bunk beds but I went along with her because she was on a roll) and the fact that all the spa treatments were fully booked up (as I'd been too busy in the build-up I hadn't realised that everyone had been debating for weeks exactly which body salt scrub / head / body massage / waxing combo they were going to have, and what did I care anyway, I had my bunk bed). Thanks to D though we were served up free cocktails and canapes before going into town, a free lunch and more cocktails the next day and free wine with our evening meal. D is now coming along to every single weekend break / holiday that any of us ever take again.

So, the weekend was Fun, but somehow over the course of it I have been co-opted into revamping / maintaining a hockey club website, which was piece by piece enlarged to encompass the entire role of Media Officer (I know next to nothing about hockey, so this should be an interesting one for all concerned...) I've also been informed that I'll be ghostwriting a book on the teaching experiences of some of my friends at the 'naughty' end of the education spectrum, the working title is "Funny Farm". This is in addition to the lab sitcom I keep threatening to write. And you thought Annie Lennox was a one-trick pony. Ha! Although, I have just spent the last hour trying to write a "thank you for good service" letter to the restaurant we ate at on Saturday night, so don't bate your breath over the book, sitcom or even first hockey newsletter. No, really.

---

[1] Despite my Eurythmics credentials I have never been invited to perform on stage with them.
[2] How anyone in an Eighties bar can claim not to know who Annie Lennox is, is simply beyond me.
[3] Or, more accurately, don't complain effectively enough, because (believe me) I know some world class standard complainers in quantitative terms.

Atlabtis

Picture, if you will, a hot water tap left running full pelt in a sealed room on one of the coldest days of the year. Imagine opening the door to this room a good six hours after the tap was first set running. Imagine the billows of steam tumbling out over you and the puddles of condensation you begin to discern on every single surface as the mist clears. You have just been watching the opening scene to today's big drama¹.

I'm good in a crisis.

There was a telephone call from S this afternoon, it sounded like she was phoning from inside a tank. "Can you tell K there's a flood in the Molecular Lab?" she asked.

"Sure, no probs. K, there's a flood in the Molecular Lab."

K reacted immediately, "I'll just finish this email."

“Tread water,” I said helpfully and hung up.

O then happened by, "K do you know how to switch the mains off? We're having a major incident upstairs." When less than an hour ago someone had trouble working a light switch it's hard to take such statements seriously, but K decided to check it out, "I'll come with you." Two minutes later there came the sound of pounding feet, "Buckets... We need... buckets!" Wet pounding feet.

In the cunning guise of helping out I went to gape. I was not disappointed. Cascades of water were flowing down the stairs in a new waterfall feature and independently coming in streams through the ceiling at the back of the building. Just as the whole wonderful vista opened up in front of me in widescreen technicolor cinescope there came a knock at the back door, D returning from her last counselling session. D was unceremoniously pulled in, handed a mop and set to work before her mouth had chance to un-form the perfect "O" it had assumed. Who needs counselling when there's reality, I say?

Because, occasionally, I find myself motivated to get to the bottom of things, I was filled with a sudden, unquenchable desire to find the source and so waded my way upstairs. On the first floor mops were a-go go but there were still streams of water spilling out from the Molecular Lab. As so often seems to be the case, it wasn't the source of the catastrophe that bore its brunt but rather the lab next door which was under two inches of water (well, three inches at one end and barely anything at the other end, hence we were simultaneously confronted with the shocking discovery that our brand new building is built on a slant). This wasn't the worst of it though, directly beneath this lab lies the Laser Lab and streams of water were falling into it and, worse still, onto the delicate equipment contained therein. Naturally, all of the researchers who work in this lab are off at some swanky American conference and are completely oblivious to the ruination of their careers. Ignorance really is bliss.

Without the aid of safety equipment I finally reached my goal; the source turned out to be a pipe beneath the eyewash station, more precisely two pipes held together by a jubilee clip which had come undone. Luckily, someone spotted water spewing out and ripped the paneling apart to further investigate. With Herculean efforts the pipes were pushed back together and the whole event lasted less than ten minutes; leaving me agog at the possible mind boggling consequences that an overnight flood would have reeked. I was ever so slightly disappointed.

My work done, and appreciative thanks reverberating in my ears for the calm advice I'd offered from the outset of the catastrophe, I made my way back downstairs and waited to direct the emergency aquavac operators to the scene. As I led them and three machines through the building a most horrible thought occurred to me. Are you supposed to use lifts in flood situations? You know, nobody ever mentions this; fires I know about, but water? Anyway, on the basis of one experience I can tell you it's okay. Live a little, it's only a little tin can box that you could be stuck in for hours after all, and I'm sure it would leak fast enough not to fill up with water, should the situation arise.

Now, we all know that people react differently under pressure; some people take immediate action, others are paralysed. As I've been at pains to point out, I'm extremely good in a water situation in which I'm not washed away and which does not involve anything belonging to me. Z², likewise, falls into the helpful category. As an example, last week I happened to be hauling a surplus over-sized and extremely heavy door along a corridor, Z's contribution was to hold open a normally functioning door whilst conducting a conversation with me. Z is motivationally deficient, but this gives him more time for contemplation, which is good because Z likes to offer his opinion and is never short of a helpful comment, if not a hand. “There should be drains in this lab," was today's contribution, "this is against health and safety, you know.” K (mop in hand) curtly informed him, “take it up with J, I’m busy”. I hate to speculate, but I'd say Z was pretty lucky that mop was fully occupied in its conventional role at that precise moment.

As we sat quietly in the aftermath of it all I said to D, “D, do you remember when it was your wedding and we put together that folder of gifts for you to choose from (except you thought the folder of pictures was the gift and tried to put a brave face on it)? Well, with all your own domestic plumbing crises if one of the gift items had been one of those water suckerupperers would you have chosen that?" It hardly matters what she answered as she'd already taken the London weekend break, but it certainly set her thinking. Everything's an opportunity cost.

And, if like me, you thought that was exciting you should hear what someone has just told me about the time an irate father showed up in the department with a shotgun. But that's a story for another day...

---

[1] This is not just a figment of my imagination but actually happened a few months back, temporarily creating the latest staff amenity; a sauna. Thanks K.
[2] Zs initial has been changed to protect the guilty, or has it? Admit it, you're not sure now, are you? Ha! My work here is done.

Outside looking in

A while back, when A finally admitted (after years of badgering on my part) that I may display certain mild autistic characteristics after all (and I'd gotten over my ever so slight annoyance that she'd actually agreed with me) we got to discussing ‘types’. A was convinced that fundamentally I'm an academic, which I immediately recoiled from, largely on the grounds that I'm really quite obtuse (something that A has not yet quite fathomed). We explored various avenues and eventually A conceded the point, somewhat reluctantly, and together we decided that I don't quite fit into that world. We cast our net wider in lazy speculation, aiming to pigeonhole all of our friends and acquaintances. R, we decided does fit into that world, even if (at the moment) she can’t wholly break into it. Don't worry, J, we kind of put you in that world too (minus the long dedicated hours, you like to play too much!)

But it got me wondering again; what does fitting in actually mean? That you don't even question if you belong? If that's the case, then I've never 'belonged' in Academia (or maybe even anywhere), in fact A is probably better at giving off the illusion of fitting into it than I, and is probably a whole lot more comfortable doing so, but it would still be an illusion and perhaps a more obvious one to those of us who know her.

Anyway, based on the skewed opinions that A and I both held of me, I guess my question is, can you ever really see where you slot into it all if you’re in the middle of it – don’t you have to step outside in order to come anywhere close to being able to observe the whole unbiasedly and, if you are on the outside, can you ever really be fully a part? As I confided to A, there always seems to be some small part of me that, whatever the situation, is somehow just spectating.

Life is short, wear your party pants

So, here I am.

Again.

I just finished up reading a book on running and I am once again convinced that I'm going to become an elite runner and pound the pavements (or, as I see it in my mind's eye, float effortlessly over the tarmacadam in a zen-like state). I'm choosing to ignore the fact that I woke up the morning before I even commenced 'training' feeling like I needed a hip replacement (note, right side), or that the last time I attempted my own special version of a running program I wound up crippled and spent the two weeks I couldn't walk self-diagnosing Runner's Knee (it still hurts, by the way), or the other small fact that I'm convinced that my ankle (note, left ankle) was never set properly after I broke it in 2001 (that still hurts too, thanks), or even the fact that I'm cursed astrologically as far as running is concerned. No. I say phooey to all that; I have been inspired by tales of fat ladies running with shopping bags to disguise the fact that they are actually out jogging and other people who couldn’t make it past their front gates when they first started out (although I'd like confirmation of exactly how long their front drives were.)

Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what running shoe I should have. I’ve performed the wet foot test and it seems I have odd feet, but even my left imprint didn’t look as bad as the supinator shown in my book, but it’s not quite the normal pronator either. (By the way, despite all my previous dabbling into running this is the first time I’ve ever even heard the word pronator). If I’m a normal pronator then apparently I need a 'stability' shoe (which sounds like it should be good for my wobbly ankles), however, if I’m a supinator I need a cushioned runner (which is probably indicated by the shocking state of my knees). I undoubtedly have high arched feet, but if my imprint isn’t quite that of the supinator does that mean I'm actually tending towards being an overpronator and should err on the side of a stability shoe? I don’t know!

My current trainers don’t give any hint because, on close inspection, they haven’t worn in any particular spot, but then I haven’t exactly done much running in them either... and mum always claimed I was very light on shoes (apart from that one time on my orange plastic wheely dog when I ripped the tops of some brand new Clarks whizzing around on its back. Ooops). In search of further clarification I tried looking up my current trainers and surprisingly they aren't completely defunct, in fact it turns out they're actually classified as a running shoe but of the motion control variety (i.e. for the overpronator!) They feel really comfortable. Now I’m totally confused! If I don't work this out soon I'm going to expend all my energy nervously.

We're all going to hell

From Indexed

But substitute BC for the chocolate fountain at the local all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant.

Teaser

I was sitting at my desk this morning when I casually asked, "Guess which band is reforming and going on tour and is probably my all time favourite band of all time, at least right now this very minute? Go on, guess!" I like to pride myself on my observational skills and the rolled eyeballs did not pass me by unnoticed however well the perpetrators tried to quickly mask their brief indiscretion with voluminous sighs, they are masters of misdirection. "Go on, tell us," said D. D is an optimist of the most delusional kind. It was never going to be that easy. I laughed and took the opportunity to roll my own eyes meaningfully.

"Wings?" D hazarded.

"Wings!?" I spat and then remembered this was the answer to a spot test I'd posed last week. I allowed myself a momentary smugness as I considered the deep impact I am having on the lives of those around me before saying, "No, not Wings."

"Give us a clue."

"They are melodic."

"Call that a clue?" D's pitch goes up when she gets over excited.

"Okay, they broke up ten or eleven years ago."

"Take That?"

"You think my all time favourite band of all time is Take That? Or Wings, for that matter? Okay, I'll give you another clue, one of them committed suicide a year or two ago."

"That guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers? The drummer? What's his name? No, wait... I think I mean Feeder."

"No, but it so happens that it was the drummer in this band also."

(We pause to ponder the fate of drummers everywhere).

"Nope, I just don't know."

"Okay, final clue, but this one will just give it away. Their last ever gig was at the Sydney Opera House."

T arrived on the scene at this point. T is a new person at work, she was instantly sucked into my game vortex. It turns out that T is into metal and heavy rock and DJs for some radio station with lots of letters and numbers in its name. T was also very excited because she'd just heard this very morning that Aerosmith are going on a brand spanking new international tour. With all this enthusiasm spilling out all over the carpet D chose that moment to reveal that she is a closet heavy metal fan, not only that she started offering advice on all the best tunes to make out to.

See how a seemingly simple, indirect question can lead to all kinds of unexpected outcomes and give you a deeper insight into what makes someone tick than perhaps any direct question possibly could? I don't know about T, but I learnt a whole bunch more about D today than I ever wanted to know.

T left shortly after this, my clues floating on the air behind her and my admonishments ringing in her ears as she walked away, "No dogpiling¹, now."

Just think, this morning T was a thrusting young DJ, brimming with musical evangelism, now she is racked by doubt and professional insecurities. How exciting!

---

[1] I actually used another well known search engine in this phrase, but since they object to their name being used as a verb I have erred on the side of caution in this condensed recollection of what was a very long and involved guessing game.

Month of champions (or goodbye blue January)

January is a meaningless month in which nothing of any consequence can be accomplished; it is the very Intertropical Convergence Zone of the year. Fortunately, fast on its heels is February which, as everyone deep down in their core knows, is the very best the calendar year has to offer. This is obvious, as any student of economics could no doubt pontificate upon for hours; put plainly it is a simple question of supply and demand, since there is less of February than any other month in the year it is, de facto, inherently more precious. For fans of the dramatics, what other month could not only demand an extra day, but every four years be granted its demands? If there's a month that knows how to stamp its foot and get its own way then it's February (and everybody loves a foot stamper). February is also the most difficult month of the year to spell, the month has guile.

Not only that, February is populated with fascinating people and happenings of deep cultural, scientific and philosophical significance. Of course, one should always be wary of overly broad generalisations, but since I'm developing a theme here, scantiness of data (or even direct evidence to the contrary) will not prevent me from manufacturing all encompassing, ambiguous abstractions and passing them off as fact.

Suspend disbelief and cast your eyes this way:

February is full of distinguished leaders:

• George Washington
• Abraham Lincoln
• Robert Peel
• Queen Anne ¹
• Mary I ²
• Boris Yeltsin
• Ronald Reagan
• and... Dan Quayle

Literary geniuses abound:

• Charles Dickens
• John Steinbeck
• James Joyce
• William S. Burroughs
• Christopher Marlowe
• Jules Verne
• Alice Walker
• and... February also saw the first television airing of the work of the EastEnders scriptwriters.

Great scientists / heinous heretics (delete as appropriate) are well represented :

• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Galileo Galilei
• Charles Darwin
• and... although I have been unable to find a single shred of evidence I feel almost sure that Wilf Lunn must be February born.

As most definitely are some other notable boundary pushers:

• Ernest Shackleton
• Charles Lindberg
• Rosa Parks
• and... John McEnroe

And wouldn't you just know that the original blogger, Samuel Pepys, is also a Februarian? I rest my case. It's heavy and if I don't put it down soon I may cause myself an unlooked for serious injury.

Finally, a thank you. That great public servant, the BBC, fortuitously saw fit to air an educational progamme aimed (almost certainly) at my parents edification on perhaps the most significant day of the most significant month of the most significant year ever, "Baby bashing, prevention and cure". I remain, as ever, extraordinarily grateful.

---

[1] Apparently old Anne had a fondness for brandy, which occasionally led to her being known as "Brandy Nan."
[2] Also known as Bloody Mary (I'm noticing a certain alcoholic trend with my female examples).

There and back again

When two people that you lived with during the most formative years of your life (note to reader: which ever period of my life I am currently discussing is, by definition, the most formative period of my life) move away, as people are wont to do, you eventually learn to forgive them (once your hired private detective has tracked them down and you have had harsh words), but when said two people independently move away as follows:













Well... you can't help but begin to speculate if perhaps a subtle point isn't being made, particularly as (at the present time) I largely exist somewhere along the Manchester - Birmingham corridor with occasional adventurous forays as far north as Leeds and south as Tunbridge Wells.

Anyway... lured by the promise of seeing the Northern Lights¹, indulging in a spot of banana wine tasting (purchased, unlike the time I arrived home to find every kitchen surface covered with over-flowing pans of fruit, all being stewed in rotation on the stove and subsequently suffered severe repercussions following a single tasting of the first fermentation)² and partaking in the well known sport of cow toppling³, S tricked me into visiting Thurso ("look it up, your geography is rubbish") mentioning as an aside that the windows needed replacing and the roof fixing ("waterproofs and woollies essential"), but neglecting to say that his new house is actually straight out of an episode of "Most Haunted" (complete with axe slash through one of the bedroom doors).

Having eventually come to terms with the sad fact that S no longer lives in the highly amusingly named Cockermouth I agreed to go visit. Fully confident that the minute I set tyre tread over the border (in my freshly-lapsed-AA-cover car) the weather would immediately turn nasty⁴, I ignored S's advice ("It's about a 10 hour drive for you..... think of it as an adventure") and caught the train (after first tackling the Virgin computerised voice (which repeatedly mistook "Thurso" for "Liverpool") and then the Indian call centre lady that it connected me to after going through all my options, who (try as she might) couldn't find me the two cheap⁵ "Value Advanced Single B" fares that I'd seen online and kept asking me to "call back in half an hour⁶").

S clearly didn't know what he was talking about when he said that driving would be an adventure. The five hour train trip to Edinburgh was accompanied by a snoring soundtrack, the four and a half hour train ride to Inverness was to a whoopee cushion soundtrack (no, really, a real whoopee cushion) and the four hour trip to Thurso to a one man drunk sideshow who at least showed some variety; alternating between sighing, whistling for attention, harassing the lady sat in the seat in front of me and swearing at whatever messages he was receiving on his mobile phone (some of which were a thinly disguised come back at the aforementioned lady but he was too scared of her to do it directly and, frankly, I couldn't blame him).

I received my usual welcome at S's - it may be a new home but it was the same old S with the sofa pre-booby-trapped with a sharp pairing knife and a pair of cunningly placed scissors. Somehow I managed to survive to New Year's Eve (including S's tour guide drive during which speculation as to whether or not the blobs we could see in the distance were the Orkneys resulted in a sharp turn, stereo calls of "beeeennnd" from the front and the three in the back getting to know one another even better). New Year itself was welcomed in (fleetingly) on a beach⁷ (at least I'm told it was a beach - it was pitch black and I couldn't see a thing and, technically speaking, we arrived just after midnight, drank some champagne in the rain, standing on what appeared to be a sewage pipe and then walked back home to finish the game of Trivial Pursuit we'd been playing all evening).

I leave you with this, which was being projected on the City Chambers on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh as I wandered around waiting for my connection yesterday:



















Oh, and the two funniest work emails of 2006:

From: [censored]
To: forsale@[censored]
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 16:11:12 -0000
Subject: forsale: FRAMED PRINT FOR SALE

I have a framed picture of a man laying on a sofa with no clothes on (except for his socks). It is black and white and very tasteful. You can only see from behind.

It is quite big (the picture). 62cm x 45cm wide. The frame is dark wood. £5 Is available to view in the office!


From: [censored]
To: announce@[censored]
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:06:25 +0100
Subject: announce: Urgent - Machinery entrapment

An accident occurred this morning during print cartridge changing on an hp deskjet 5150 series. The operator had difficulty in pushing home the cartridge and pushed her finger in the space where she thought there was an obstruction. As she did so the carriage shot left under the casing trapping her finger. The fire brigade released her by breaking the machine. The operator was very shocked but otherwise only bruised.

Clearly this will be investigated and the HSE will be asked to follow up interlocking/isolation issues with the manufacturers, but at the moment it might be prudent when changing these cartridges to isolate the printer from the electrical supply. The instructions appear not to mention the need for this, however!

---

[1] This was as close as I came to seeing the Northern Lights this time
[2] This offer was rescinded when S discovered that the wine merchant was buying back bottles of clear banana wine at £150 a pop
[3] The cows in Caithness are hairy and have big horns, even I did not persist in my complaints too long over this broken promise
[4] The weather remained entirely clement
[5] A relative term as far as rail travel in th UK is concerned
[6] There are a finite number of half hours in a day
[7] Apparently this particular beach had been the site of a "3-particle" incident

2006 reading list

1. Extra Virgin: Amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria, Annie Hawes
2. Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow
3. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
4. Fin, James Delingpole
5. Birds without Wings, Louis de Bernieres
6. Courage from Piglet, A.A. Milne
   
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
8. Conned Again, Watson, Colin Bruce
9. Nine Crazy Idea in Science, Robert Ehrlich
10. The Number Devil, Hans Magnus Enzensberger
11. Thirsty Work, Matt Skinner
12. Stupid White Men, Michael Moore
13. The Richard and Judy Wine Guide, Susy Atkins, Joe Wadsack and Jean Marc Sauboua (Ed Amanda Ross)
14. The Voyage of the Space Beagle, AE van Vogt (SFC)
15. Dancing Barefoot, Wil Wheaton
16. The Adventures of Tintin, The Secret of the Unicorn, Hergé
    
17. Citizen Zero, Mark Cantrell (LC)
18. The Polar Adventures, Paul Dowswell
19. To the Poles Without a Beard, Catharine Hartley
20. Growing Vegetables, Tony Biggs (The Royal Horticultural Society)
21. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick
22. Prime Number, Harry Harrison
23. Hacking Matter (Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages and the Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms), Wil McCarthy
24. The Hacker’s Diet, John Walker
25. Just a Geek, Wil Wheaton
26. PS, I Love You, Cecelia Ahern
27. The Fifth Miracle, The Search for the Origin of Life, Paul Davies
28. The Secret Galactics, AE Van Vogt
29. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell
30. South, Ernest Shackleton
31. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
32. Believing Cassandra, An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist’s World, Alan AtKisson
33. It’s All Greek To Me!, John Mole
34. The Outward Urge, John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes
35. Dead Air, Iain Banks
36. Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies, Romilla Ready and Kate Burton
37. Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon (LC)
38. Mort, Terry Pratchett (SFC)
39. The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (SFC)
    
40. Can Cows Walk Down Stairs (The Best Brains Answer the Biggest and Smallest Scientific Questions), Paul Heiney (Ed)
41. The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes, Mark Wolverton
42. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
43. Does God Play Dice, Ian Stewart
44. Das Boot, Lothar-Günther Buchheim (LC)
45. The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
46. Pikhal, A Chemical Love Story, Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin
47. Labyrinth, Kate Mosse
48. Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
49. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
    
50. Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan
    
51. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
52. Beyond the Limits, Ranulph Fiennes
53. The Strange Case of Mrs Hudson’s Cat (or Sherlock Holmes solves the Einstein Mysteries), Colin Bruce
54. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (LC)
55. Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
56. Don’t Panic Douglas Adams and the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Neil Gaiman
57. Four Past Midnight, Stephen King
58. Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Sue Townsend
59. The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Ursula K Le Guin
60. Mauve, How one man invented a colour that changed the world; Simon Garfield (LC)
61. Understanding Power, The Indispensable Chomsky, Noam Chomsky
62. Changing Planes, Ursula K Le Guin
63. Thinner, Stephen King
64. Dragon’s Egg, Robert L Forward
65. McCarthy's Bar, Pete McCarthy
66. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux (LC)
67. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
68. Cosm, Gregory Benford (SFC)
69. The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham
    
70. The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
    

Fiction : 40
Non-fiction : 30
Total : 70
Cumulative total : 202













A tough one this year with several contenders for favourite read, notably David Sedaris, Paul Davies and Donna Tartt, but the 2006 coveted award is going to have to go to Ursula Le Guin for "The Left Hand of Darkness". Sorry Urs, the winner is Charles Dickens with "Great Expectations".

Too much information

I could claim that it all started when I read an article in the Guardian earlier this year which happened to mention a certain website (which I need now only refer to as "W W W dot" and a grin for my friends to know exactly where I'm heading). I could... but that would be a lie.

Really (although you'd never guess it at the moment) I'm quite the little neat-freak, and so last night was spent in a frenzy of tidying up, which encompassed therapeutically blitzing the surrounding physical mess right through to the electronic - including searching through a bunch of floppy discs (unlabelled, are there any other kind?) that have sat beside my home computer for aeons, gathering dust. On one particular disc was an interim report I'd written, dated 8th July, 2002, the subject of which was of a rather personal nature.

Accompanied by a nice little graph detailing the normal distribution, I'd meticulously recorded over a twenty-three day period sample data points revealing that I had a PQ (Poo Quotient) of 0.6087 and that my most frequent PH (Pooing Hour, note: not pH) was between 8am and 9am.

2002 was obviously a slow year, in more ways than one.

As I regaled a colleague over lunch about how my old floppies were full of crap, literally, I was informed, "that's just weird." "Cute and endearing," I countered.

On the plus side, should my GP ever ask me if I've noticed any changes in bowel movements I'll be able to throw down a fully comprehensive dossier.

Sometimes I lay awake at night worrying just how quasi-anonymous this blog is…

Indirect indications

This evening I attended a presentation by Jocelyn Bell Burnell (who as a grad student discovered what was ultimately recognised as the first pulsar) as the first in a planned series of "Women in Science" lectures. The last lecture I attended at the same venue was an inaugural lecture on the perception of time, during the question section of which a kind professor in the audience gave a remarkable demonstration of how time can stretch interminably by generously and unswervingly instructing the lecturer over his (mis)use of the word "measurement".

There was no such instructive sideshow this evening, but the hour gave me plenty to think about nonetheless, both contextually and scientifically, but (perhaps flippantly) I went away with two take home messages. Firstly, when Bell Burnell left home to join academia her mother presented her with a homily (as certain mothers are wont). Bell Burnell promptly forgot said homily (as certain daughters are wont) all apart from one piece of advice strongly given and carried a lifetime: "Jocelyn. Always volunteer." Good advice for the most part, but certainly requiring (at least initially) a certain lack of self-consciousness.

The second thing I learnt during my drive home (or let's say consciously registered for the first time, having seen many times but not observed, as Sherlock Holmes would no doubt remark). If when I'm taking the third exit of a roundabout I signal my intention to drive right around the roundabout drivers will race to squeeze out in front of me, but should I neglect to signal then the amount of doubt I introduce to the situation, together with the resultant hesitation induced in my fellow drivers, will usually allow me to exit the roundabout relatively unhindered. Not that I'd in anyway advocate such behaviour...

Trip in Ten™ #004

With respect to the day care arrangements of the quickly sprouting and very busy next generation, my mother's insistence on pronouncing the word "crèche" as "crash" was perhaps more accurate than any of us initially gave her credit for.

Pyromania remains alive and well in a certain branch of the family and is being passed on to new members much to the delight of their partners.

Eight years was too long a gap.

Oh, and something new to worry about, thanks A:

The Dinner Game

A destinct dearth of real life dinner party invitations at the present time has meant that I've been forced to resort to the fantasy variety. Of course, I'm not going to venture into that territory without dragging a few people along with me. A quick survey of those nearest to hand has resulted in the following nine ultimate dinner party guest lists:

Host #1

1. Elizabeth I
2. Antonio Banderas
3. Ghenkis Khan
4. Jack Black
5. Stephen Fry
6. Dawn French

Host #2

1. David Beckham
2. Jonathan Ross
3. Ray Winston
4. Victoria Jenkins (from Ladette to Lady)
5. Lady Diana Spencer
   
6. Alexander Graham Bell

Host #3

1. Elizabeth I
2. Stephen King
3. Catherine Tate
4. Stephen Fry
5. Madonna
6. Orlando Bloom

Host #4

1. King David
2. Orlando Bloom
3. Colin Firth
4. Matthew Macfadyen
5. Mel Gibson
6. Laurence Olivier

Host #5

1. Oliver Cromwell
2. Isambard Kingdom Brunel
3. Emperor Constantine
4. Apostle Paul
5. Queen Victoria
6. Reserved

Host #6

1. Ghandi
2. Adolf Hitler
3. Stephen Fry
4. Albert Einstein
5. Elvis
6. Winston Churchill

Host #7

1. Lady Diana Spencer
   
2. Jeffrey Archer
3. Harrison Ford
4. Oprah Winfrey
5. Robert Nerem
6. Uncle Buck

Host #8

1. Oscar Wilde
2. Mikhail Gorbachev
3. Woody Allen
4. Madeleine Albright
5. Hermione Gingold
6. Isaac Asimov (surely someone with works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy is going to be able to fill up those embarassing silences?)

Host #9

1. Charles Babbage
2. Isaac Newton
   
3. Stephen Fry
   
4. Chris Tarrant
   
5. Ewan McGregor
   
6. Ghandi

Host #10

1. Charles Darwin (bit quiet but a few bottles of wine and he will warm to the occasion (not sure if Charlie did drink)).
2. Paulette Goddard (one of the finest actress's that ever lived but not liked by Hollywood for being too clever).
3. Isaac Asimov (top flight after dinner speaker, biochemist and some time writer).
4. Audrey Hepburn (pity about My Fair Lady but Breakfast at Tiffany's - superb).
5. Alfred the Great (if all else fails and the party is a flop Alfred and I down to pub, get slaughtered).
6. Rosalind Franklin (bit of a self-centred Commie, but that adds balance, would have chosen Marie Curie but she always brings Pierre and places are limited).

Four of the above hosts are in administration, two are slightly more experienced PhD students, one is a research manager, one is a bearded postdoc, one is a narcoleptic computer bod and one is still undecided. Given the breath of choice (i.e. anyone, across all of time) there are a number of recurring names, with perennial dinner guest favourite Stephen Fry once again trumping everyone.

Host #7 took the assignment a little too seriously and suffered a mini-breakdown mid-list concerning the compatibility of her guests. As a carry over from this she was allowed to heinously disregard the rules and include a fictional character amongst her six guests (this concession was allowed since I make it a general policy of mine not to confront the unhinged, especially in sparsely populated areas such as work at 4pm on a Friday afternoon).

It should be noted that in my case the list is definitive for the next five seconds only.

Host #5 has given up his reserved spot to Christopher Wren.

Breathing Earth

Breathing Earth displays global CO₂ emissions, birth and death rates.

To the victor the spoils

In an effort to foster good working relationships and general bonhomie an "Away Day" was recently held at my workplace. Unlike the last Away Day when I was horribly tricked this one actually involved a rather large element of fun. Of course, in the best of traditions the route to the big event was inevitably derailed numerous times. The original gorge walking suggestion was quickly dispatched (immediately upon the proposer departing on vacation, possibly to a Crimean Dacha, although this is largely unsubstantiated conjecture) and, in rather a neat coup, a gang of four social junta installed and grand plans for a day of water based escapades developed.

As news of the Committee's machinations spread, the populace quickly displayed a mixture of great enthusiasm, general apathy and downright militant dissent. After an extended period of grand visionary plans, wide spread propaganda and not-so-subtle coercion, economic realities set in and an afternoon spent on an assault course was proposed in place of the now defunct lakeside fun. Given my inability to climb higher than the third rung of a step ladder and, by reason of having seen Private Benjamin, I knew what was in store and was therefore (in the face of all reality and despite the reputed presence of pike-with-teeth in the lake) still pulling for the water based activities. In spite of my various underground movements¹ everything was settled and, during the "any other business" section of a completely unrelated committee meeting, an announcement made concerning the wonderful team building afternoon in which we would all be participating in a game of... cricket. An inside source informed me there was general shock at this unilateral announcement but the chair was unanimous in her decision, failing even to register the universal disbelief and indignation surrounding her unexpected proclamation (an enviable talent I am working on possessing myself). When news of the meeting spread, finally pushed to the limit, one quarter of the social junta resigned.

Of course, the actual Away Day resembled none of the proposed plans and, as is often the case with spontaneous outings proving distinctly more fun than the most over-planned, eagerly anticipated of events, so this proved. The afternoon was finally spent in a non-stop round of volleyball, dodgeball, 5-a-side football and, new to most of us, korfball. Due to the overwhelming, giddy excitement of being out of the office mid-week I have to hold my hands up and admit to running around like a big kid and sadly, whilst I was clearly not quite in my right mind, I was heartlessly taken advantage of and recruited by a member of a faction. Brainwashed I went along to training last night and by some monumental cosmic mix up I am inexplicably enrolled to play in a korfball tournament this Sunday having never played a game in my life...

¹ I'm sorry, but a statement such as this is never not going to make me chortle.

Meet the world

In January 2005 Icaro Doria, Luis Silva Dias, João Roque, Andrea Vallenti and João Roque produced an ad campaign for the Portugese magazine Revista Grande Reportagem. The resultant flags campaign, "Meet the World", designed to convey the image of a serious magazine, produced eight thought provoking images concerning life issues in various parts of the world.










And The State of the Village report has been turned into an animation over at The Miniature Earth.

That which we call a rose

For weeks on end now an official work event has been variously planned and plotted, with a good measure of infighting, strops and political manoeuvring thrown into the pot for extra zing. After having been thoroughly mixed and brought to the boil several times the concoction was left simmering on the stove and today was served out to the various visiting dignitaries who'd collected to officially christen the building in which I work.

I always find these events amusing; despite the best pedantically laid plans the prankster gods always intervene and today was no different. Minutes before the main dignitary arrived an unknown perpetrator traipsed mud across the previously pristine reception carpet, the "there's luck in muck" comment offered in solicitude was met with an icy glare and for once it wasn't me with the questionable timing; I was exercising the better part of valour, having already blotted my copy book with an earlier inadvisable observation that our place of work now sounds like a hotel.

The main VIP arrived by train, and therefore late, which always strikes me as mildly comical when said VIP has any connection (however loose) with the government. This was followed up by a real-time discovery that the first space in the visitors' book, left purposely blank for said VIP, had been signed instead by a second-tier visitor, with the kind of abandoned flourish only ever achievable by the totally oblivious, whilst no one was paying attention. A lot of fun things happen when no one is paying attention. Sometimes finding out who it was that wasn't paying attention can be even more fun.

Much to my disappointment, several anticipated problems never transpired; the roof didn't start leaking with the exquisite timing it exhibited the last time we had anyone of import visit (right above the doorway through which they had to walk). An AGM for our 'troubled' organisation scheduled in the locale failed to generate a single placard bearing protestor and the strange mist eerily blanketing everywhere an hour before everyone's arrival completely dispersed (strange, eerie mist to me, nearby allotment rubbish burning smoke to everyone else).

I guess the most amusing thing though, and the one completely at odds with every day reality, was everyone's enforced strict adherence to protocol, the propping donning of appropriate health and safety wear and the assiduous manning of various work stations. Today everyone had a purpose and if you didn't have one you had to find one.

Anyway, whilst all the official press photography was taking place I took the opportunity to capture the gritty behind the scenes reality. Above is the red bag belonging to the visiting VIP. I'd bet good Bertie Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts¹ that I'm the only person in the whole world who thought to take this particular picture this particular day.

¹I hate liquorice

The great and the good

Cousin M turned 40 on Friday (a different cousin M to Flight Operations Cousin M, although, now I come to think of it, a significant number of my cousins are Ms so things could easily get a little confusing... In fact, a quick tally brings the total number of so initialled first cousins to nine, but you're just going to have to suck it up because you don't know any of them anyway and it doesn't really matter two hoots to you which M I'm referring to at any given time (but if there's a means of straying off the point and wandering down some arbitrary side path I always like to set off at an eager trot)). Anyway, in recognition we gathered in a town just across the M1 from Britain's most cutting edge city (and therefore also pretty cutting edge by association and the mere fact that we were there) on Saturday night to poke fun at M whose significant birthday, as I've already mentioned, was actually the day before. In life it's comforting to have certain pillars, reference points you can rely on amidst all the turmoil and thus it was reassuring to gain verification that, after all these years, my cousins remain as chronologically challenged as ever.

As a typical example (by which I really do mean typical and not an extreme case I've plucked to best illustrate my point, this is biography here folks, not professional journal writing) I offer up the fact that said cousin M's sister, A, was still finishing the bridesmaid dresses for their brother, D's, marriage to L on the morning of the wedding, with cousin H trying her best not to sustain an unfortunate pin injury amidst all the frenzy. A then went on to miss her thank you for the wonderful dresses at the wedding breakfast (why on earth it's called that I'll never understand) as she'd briefly absented herself in the pursuit of a noble dream (which was later revealed to be the slightly less noble than imagined quest for a jackpot rollover lottery ticket). Thanks to me this was a somewhat more noticeable absence (given the fact that she was called by name during the speeches and I, Spielberg-like, panned the video camera to her vacant seat) than the time at another cousin's wedding when photographing procedures were deemed to be a little more protracted than quite necessary and a certain demographic relocated to the local pub. Out of all of us only I appear on the wedding photographs because I am a bastion (and also a little slow on the uptake when drinks were mentioned). That said, we love a good wedding and have plans to put in an extra good showing this November. Cousin S, consider this your formal warning.

Reading back over the last two paragraphs I see I've painted a pretty picture of a branch of the family who are expert procrastinators, enjoy a drink and like to gamble. Whilst not wishing to fan the flames I cannot help but relate (with no little bitterness) the time innocent abroad (in case you're having difficulty keeping track of all the characters (not to mention all the parentheses) thus far mentioned, I mean me) was unwittingly embroiled in an illicit for-money card game with the cronies of this particular subset of cousins' parents. I've always been partial to a hand of cards and was an enthusiastic participant in family games of Twenty-five and Black Jack (not Pontoon Black Jack but some strange family variant that no one else ever seems to have heard of and to which, frustratingly, I've largely forgotten the rules) and, during study free periods at A-levels; Whist, Gin Rummy and Scabby Queen (a version of Old Maid only differentiated by the brutal and painful fate that awaits the loser). Thus, at the time I understood the rudiments of the card game of choice, Twenty-five, reasonably well but I'd failed to recognise the possibility of it ever being a semi-professional competitive team sport. Let's just say there are subtleties to the play that I was / am clearly ignorant of. My enlightenment came amidst the accusatory mutterings of my newly met losing team mates; it's hard to make discoveries about yourself (particularly those of a deficient nature) in the glare of the spotlight (or, as in my case, just the glares).

I remain scarred by the Great Fleecing to this day and whilst I've forgiven, I clearly haven't quite forgotten. Somehow though, I keep going back because, in contrast to all the buffoonery above, quite simply, to see them is to renew my faith in people and, by extension, me.

They also rescue kittens in their spare time.

The eyes have it

This evening, on the brink of yet another glorious weekend, I'd like to offer up a special thanks to one of my workmates who thought it edifying to inform me at the beginning of the week that someone in our building has the "most beautiful green eyes imaginable". I'm always (at least fleetingly) interested in what other people find interesting and thus I spent the whole week peering from the back of my office at this person whenever they stopped by (which was often at first but, now I come to think of it, grew less frequent as my obsession grew more fervent).

When committed to print in this way it seems blatantly obvious, I'll admit, but real life is messy and confusing and thus it only occurred to me this afternoon (when the alleged possessor of the most beautiful green eyes imaginable caught me once again, without any apparent reason, unblinkingly staring at them for the umpteenth time) that, from the perspective of any casual observer and, indeed, the mark themselves, I have just spent the entire week somewhat disconcertingly staring lovingly, and rather intimitely, into their eyes.

Whilst a devastating realisation, my mortification might have been tempered somewhat if I had indeed gotten to see the most beautiful green eyes imaginable, but I didn't. The eyes were commonplace blue-grey and I will be having words on Monday morning.

The sound of sirens

Originally I was going to entitle this post "In the ghetto", but after some consideration I decided I much prefer the music of Simon and Garfunkel to that of Elvis, so I renamed it in their honour. Sometimes the mind dwells on the trivial to keep it from sweating the big stuff.

In the world of counter-intelligence, yesterday I discovered the meaning of PSE (which is a slightly less Herculean task than discovering the Meaning of Life, which I'm still working on). I can now reveal that PSE stands for P(local place name) Street Elite. Apparently PSE has an arch rival gang (all the best gangs do) which goes by the tag HM, H(local place name) Mafia. Who knew? I am living and working in a hot bed of gang culture.

Hopefully this now fully exonerates me from any lingering suspicion I may still have been under regarding the identity of the PSE tagger(s). Although mud sticks, you know.

Mum, I'll ring you this weekend to let you know I haven't become a crossfire statistic. In the meantime I've posted the calming picture above for you. Try to imagine me dreamily spending my time in fields this way, and not dodging urban bullets.

And, finally, I'm proud to announce, I've finished it at last.

Turn and face the strain

I'm a tinkerer. I just can't help it and I've been wanting a site redesign for a while now, but I knew the various bells and whistles and bits of scripts etc (together with the extra snippets of html code that Blogger seems to like to insert when I'm not looking and which I've been meaning to tidy up forever as I'm OCD about things like that) might not make the transition so easily. Then the news that Blogger Beta had arrived put things on a further temporary hold, by which I mean it put things in my head on hold as opposed to any actual work in progress, but the tinkerer in me won out and who knows how long it'll be before the Beta invite comes along, anyway.

Of course, my eloquent first post now no longer makes sense and I've dumped my original banner which I liked for a long time, partly because I'm a sucker for sunsets / sunrises, but mostly because I thought it was kind of fun that the picture involved me having my back to an extremely frequently photographed landmark, which is also, I guess, metaphorical - everyone was facing one way and I was facing the other.

Anyway, out with the old, in with the new and I'd like to offer a huge thank you to Murray at CoffeeWaffle for so graciously allowing me to use his "Desert Road" picture as the basis of my new blog title banner. Many thanks!

The insaneness of the middle distance runner

When I first saw Morgan Spurlock's film "Super Size Me", I immediately thought, "what a neat idea". Not the whole eating Big Macs for thirty days thing, but the idea itself; the concept of a thirty day challenge. As if a cosmic nudge, I then read some self help clap trap about 30-day trials being "powerful personal growth tools". Well that was it, with little aforethought I settled upon my challenge.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

I really like this quote and sometimes repeat it to myself mantra-like, usually just before I decide to do something incredibly stupid.

I chose for my challenge... running.

Every day for thirty days straight I would haul myself along to the local running track and not only attempt to run 2K but I would also endeavour to improve my time each day, all from a couch potato sitting start. I've always secretly fancied myself as a long distance runner, but the reality is I'm crap at it and quickly get bored; the graceful gazelle-like delusion I have of myself loping across the African savanna is impossible even for me to maintain after about the tenth stride.

Despite this lack of aptitude, things were going swimmingly on my challenge; I was showing up daily at the track, my times were improving and the volume of the internalised Chariots of Fire and Rocky theme tune music that I was having to play in my head to get over the finishing line was diminishing. There was the odd problem - a bit of a niggle with my ankle (but nothing overly unusual) and a periodically excrutiatingly painful right big toe. I wasn't worried though and poo-pooed warm up / warm down and rest day philosophies. I was on a mission.

On Day 10 I was a cripple. As I lay in bed that morning I could feel that there was a problem with my knee - my right knee on the inner side just below the kneecap, the one part of my body that hadn't given any indication that there was an impending problem had completely betrayed me. As I lay assessing the situation I speculated as to whether it was a result of running around the track in the same direction each time (anticlockwise, in case you're interested). I never came to a definitive conclusion but I stayed a cripple for two weeks during which time a conversation with an orthopaedic reseach nurse did nothing to assuage my fears (she seemed overly pre-occupied with the prospect of my knee 'locking' which, hitherto, it had shown no signs of doing but which I thenceforth lived in constant fear of).

I learned several things from my experience; never allow yourself to be influenced by Morgan Spurlock or hippy clap trap, always ignore Eleanor Roosevelt, be careful what you poo-poo and, under no circumstances, should you ever seek medical advice in the staff kitchen.

Elite athletes everywhere, I feel your pain.

But enough of that empathy stuff; I've discovered how to write Elvish:

Intelligent Design

My friend showed me this cartoon yesterday. I thought it was funny.
























Then I heard this song by the Sprites and thought it was pretty funny too.



Some people tell me I'm easily amused.

In the news....

This news item was so written for me. It has everything (except for a shark).

Canada pilot in toilet trip drama.

The wisdom of crowds

Peer review has long been a staple of scientifc methodolgy, as far back as 1675 if this timeline of the history of scientific method is to be believed and, whilst it has its problems, as Joan Sieber notes, "One suspects that peer review is a bit like democracy - a bad system but the best one possible."

In this vein the journal Nature recently opened up a debate on the topic of peer review, in combination with a commenting forum, and since June 2006 has been conducting an open peer review trial. Participating manuscripts essentially undergo a dual track process; subjected to the normal peer review process, they concurrently appear on the Internet and (non-anonymous) comment is invited, according to Nature's website:

After receiving peer reviewers' reports on a manuscript, editors will close the commenting facility, and may take into account any comments received when making their decision about publication in Nature.

Given the popularity of social sites such as Digg, Reddit and numerous others which rely on the promotion and discussion of attention 'worthy' items based on their readers' participation, a tentative step in the direction of interactive science publishing is perhaps unsurprising, although somewhat of a departure from the more traditional closed peer-review process.

On the whole I approve, after all it's mostly an extension of conference / poster presentation interaction and, almost certainly, groundbreaking work such as that conducted by Theodore Hapner, would never see the light of day if the decision was left purely to conventional peer review. Although sometimes I wonder; the amazing semi-conductor breakthrough, the anti-inflammatory drugs and oral cancer study, the patient-specific stem cell cloning advance and, of course, the biggest whopper of them all; evolution. I ask you.

On a completely different note, I may have found my calling this morning as a crime scenes photographer. Unfortunately, whilst I was out gathering pictorial evidence of some graphically challenged graffiti artists' handiwork I singularly failed to notice the three car pile up not more than twenty metres from me. It's called focus people, and it's sadly lacking these days.



















P.S. Despite the fact that the initials incriminatingly appear to spell out my own Escalator-Snorkel Phenomenon acronym backwards, this had nothing to do with me.

Dysfunctional

I have no sense of smell, whatsoever¹. I don't know why this should be, or when it came to pass even, but sometimes I like to point the finger at my dual tonsillectomy / adenoidectomy procedure at the tender age of five and a half years old². As a direct result of this hidden handicap I spent last Christmas day morning engaged in a father-led (he has no concept of the definition of discrimination) strip search of my car, in what ultimately proved to be a fruitless hunt for the source of a reputedly horrendous stench, a stench immediately detected by my parents at five paces upon my return home, but in which I had obliviously sat for the duration of a ninety minute yuletide drive along Britain's highest motorway.

I'd like to pause here and take this opportunity to note that I don't understand the older generation. I know they're not supposed to understand me, or at least they weren't during my teenage years, but frankly, they've always been a complete enigma. Every single one I've ever encountered, in anything but the most superficial way, seems to have a relentless drive and energy to Get Things Done in a manner that sometimes comes across as, well, crazed fanaticism. These people will wash up immediately following a meal (without the aid of a dishwasher), pick up litter (other people's litter) from outside their houses (or even other people's houses or, worse still, public amenities), check the oil in their cars before embarking on long journies, properly sand surfaces before initiating painting, conduct interminable examinations of vehicle interiors on Christmas day morning. They are relentless. Some might call it industriousness, diligence, thoroughness; I call it sectionable lunacy and, quite frankly, I could have left the car stinking to high heaven indefinitely and simply manufactured ingenious excuses never to give anyone a lift again, ever. Sometimes it's not about fixing the problem, it's about managing the problem.

With every last car interior item removed, scrupulously inspected and lying all about, deep and crisp and even, father finally announced, "Well, there must be a dead pigeon in the engine compartment." ⁴ I'd given up the will to live by this point, standing in the driveway in my pyjamas and overcoat, grumbling about the cold and silently ticking off in my head a list of all the people I'd given lifts to recently, all of whom had, I can only assume in the interests of social niceties, apparently elected not to point out that my car stank like a piece of crap. I could see other, normal families through their frosted living room windows enjoying their sumptuous greeting card perfect Christmases in front of roaring log fires, enjoying mince pies and egg nogg as I stood outside in my own personal Dickensian Tiny Tim misery (he had a handicap too you know).

Anyway, this particular past trauma was brought to mind today during a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (despite the vicious rumour that I have too much time on my hands, I do occasionally get out in the community and when tests have conclusively proved (see picture for confimatory back-up evidence) that I'm the least autistic member of the outing party and a veritable model of well-adjustedness and normalcy these smites against my character simply wash right off) and it was with gusto that I entered into a "guess the smells" competition at one of the interacive exhibits. I was obviously at a distinct disadvantage in this enterprise, but my answers were by far the most imaginative and that makes me the winner in my book (I don't care what the rest of you say, you're autistic anyway). We also entered into one of our 'conversations', this time on the topic of pronunciation. As we are all Northerners we naturally pronounce, for example, bath in its short, pithy, correct form and not its poncy, deviant "baarth" variant, likewise "grass" not "graaass". We concurred that we use "eether" and "eyether" interchangeably (ditto neither) and we all pronounce garage as "garidge", although I discovered that apparently, in one of those quirky little twists, that when paired with music it is always "garaaage music" and never "garidge music". As I may feel the need to one day speak eloquently and at length on this particular topic it is as well I found out today, rather than making a fool of myself at some future date.

PS You can spy part of Coronation Street from the Science Museum, so it really is a day out for all the family:











PPS The planetarium has thus far neglected to erase Pluto from its records.











¹ This is ironic, given that I used to work in the trace gas analysis field.
² If any litigation experts are reading this and would like to make a prima facie case³ please contact me asap.
³ I don't really know what this means, but it sounds good.
⁴ No dead pigeon was ever found and the smell to this day remains a family mystery.

Generation gap

Every year Beloit College publishes a "Mindset List" detailing the cultural 'touchstones' that have shaped the lives of the next intake of its academic students. This year's future graduating class of 2010 (assumed to have been born in 1988) has grown up in a world with no Soviet Union, one Germany and has rarely mailed anything requiring a stamp.

The list only goes back as far as 1980, so I'm out of luck, but with a nudge like that I couldn't help but ponder some of the faces / events / items prominent during my own callow youth:




















Hmm... Maybe that explains it...

Addendum
Note to Beloit College: In my aforementioned callow youthhood I grew up in a neighbourhood consisting of nine planets, but it seems that Pluto has finally been demoted. To paraphrase Pharyngula, astronomers arguing about the definition of something as fundamental as a "planet" obviously means that all of physics is in disarray, and completely wrong, so thank goodness it's finally been sorted out.

I particularly like Professor Iwan Williams' comment on the whole affair, "I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would like it to be."

Well, frankly, what does he know? That's just provocative secular talk, if you ask me. Pluto responds here.

It seems Pluto's major weakness is its failure to 'dominate' its orbit around the sun and we all know the importance of domination, so frankly Pluto was asking for it.

I can't help thinking we've all missed out on a massive opportunity for a reality style TV vote, "Text 09-EVICT now to kick Pluto out of the Big Brother solar system." Come on Endemol, pick up your innovative, market driven content game, for goodness sake.

Promises

Far be it from me to dispense advice but, if you insist, I offer up this little pearl of wisdom; never make rash promises to small children in the grossly mistaken belief that proffered pact, hastily made by you now in order to buy some precious time, will have been forgotten all about in a few hours when it's time for the pay back shoe to drop. Invariably they don't forget; that endearing, apparently gnat-like attention span is actually a highly sophisticated steel promise trap in disguise.

As a corollary to this general rule, nor should you make equally rash promises to said children's parents or things like this can happen to you a few months down the line at their offspring's 3rd birthday parties:













Folks' retentive capacities concerning things I say in jest never cease to amaze me, nor their seeming unintentionally self-advantageous inability to perceive my jest. As it happens, suckered or not, an afternoon dressed as Jake turned out to be not such a bad thing; a gentle ice-breaker into the alien world of parent-child gatherings and, come on - who wouldn't leap at the opportunity to get dressed up as a fictional cartoon / puppet character given half a chance? It's just a pity that last year on the particular day in question the greater proportion of those attending exhibited tendencies of terror when in close proximity to my Tweenie persona, manifesting in floods of tears upon my initial doorstep meet and greet and leaving me rooted to the spot, helplessly watching as previously excited faces, aglow with party anticipation, morphed into screwed up faces of tears and fear right before my very eyes. Luckily, the kids had it more together and generally took their parents in hand.

But I digress.

As I was saying, promise something to a three-soon-to-be-four year old at your peril. This evening I may just have promised to metamorphosize into one of two things; Bob the Builder or a Fairy Princess. I saw a glint in three-soon-to-be-four year old's mother's eyes. I think my fate is sealed...

Moving on

Accident, n: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better.

I visited my brother at the weekend. He's just bought his first home with his girlfriend, and our parents were schlepping some of his possessions from the family home to his new abode. It turns out I am not, by nature, useful and whilst work was on going all about me I was busily occupied recalling the move before last that I myself had made...

A few days prior to taking up occupation of my anticipated rental paradise I'd had occasion to break the little bone in my left ankle, not that I realised it at the time. The joint in question swelled to considerable proportions and took on a particularly offensive blue hue all within a surprisingly small frame of time, but I'd had badly sprained ankles before (having a particular predilection for this type of injury) and didn't suspect anything more sinister this time.

I'd taken a week's annual leave to effect moving house and to give me some extra time to spend enjoying my new environs (environs which also turned out to house arachnids of nightmare proportions and seasonal habits, and which eventually endowed me with my thenceforth life long aversion to wooden floorboards). Now though, at the very beginning of my leisurely week I found myself incapacitated and with a second floor flat full of possessions and a fast expiring lease. Fortunately for me various schmucks friends were on hand. Some might be so unkind as to level the accusation of Machiavellian orchestration on my part, but it was the easiest move I've ever made.

I spent three days settling in, hobbling around before a medical friend dropped by for a visit. Ankle inspection ensued and a trip to A&E followed in short succession. My spider senses started tingling when the X-ray operator showed signs of not being satisfied with just an X-ray of my ankle and repositioned me for a shot of my knee as well. Sure enough, the film came back to my attending with a tell tale little red dot. I'm told it's unusual to break the fibula without also breaking the larger, weight-bearing tibia, or at the very least sustaining a secondary break of the fibia at another point higher up that same bone (hence the second X-ray); somehow I'd managed it. I was asked to walk to the plaster room but suddenly came over all incapacitated; not withstanding that I'd been walking around on my fractured ankle for several days I thought it highly outrageous, not to mention litigious, that they should now expect me to walk the blue line to the plaster room unaided. With great foresight (and indelible optimism) I'd chosen to wear a pair of tight jeans to A&E, fortunately my escort was slumming it in tracksuit bottoms that day and with some coercion acquiesced to an exchange. Plaster happened and I returned home to begin my convalescence.

Now it so happens that my new dwelling was a barn conversion, part of which was occupied by my new landlord and lady and their three daughters. This family unit had gone on vacation and we'd volunteered to look after their various animals; a menagerie comprising several goldfish, two gerbils and three pet hens. My severely animal-allergic housemate, by reason of my magnanimous accident, was now in sole charge of most animal duties and taking pity on the gerbils had managed to manouevre them into their exercise ball, giving them 'free' run of the kitchen. In the interests of the prevention of cruelty to animals, a change of water for the goldfish was also deemed necessary when opaqueness finally rendered them completely invisible to the naked eye. Vaguely aware that it might not be subsequently judged a tremendous idea to have unceremoniously plunged the fish back into a tank of freshly drawn tap water they were thoughtfully left in a bucket of their own tank water overnight, the gerbils were captured and replaced in their cage and peace descended upon Walton's Mountain.

The next morning a summoned fish savvy friend duly turned up along with a time-on-his-hands post-doctoral friend of ours. Together they set about banging at the front door as I made my slow progress downstairs, not best pleased at having just spent another night on pushed together sofa cushions (which resolutely refused to stay pushed together on the shiny floor whilst I attempted to sleep on top of them, Argos take note and take a good look at your six week furniture delivery lead time). Usually placid even under the most trying of circumstances (excepting incidents concerning family and friends) I came near to completely losing my head during my inglorious backside descent of the stairs as the knocking continued unabated, deliberately (as it seemed to me) designed to provoke me to a frenzy, but eventually I overcame my infirmity and baser instincts and granted my visitors admission. Fish Savvy Friend disappeared to attend to the goldfish and Time-on-his-hands Post-doctoral Friend and I conversed in the kitchen, until footsteps were heard.

"What's this?"

"What's what?" I replied, still somewhat mildly irritated and not troubling myself to turn around.

"This."

"This" was held out at arms length, dripping on the stone flag kitchen floor. "This" turned out to be a rigor mortised gerbil, which at some point during the night had made good his escape from the cage, only to fall foul of the fish containing bucket. Miraculously the fish survived the ordeal unscathed; the entrusted to our care pet gerbil did not.

"Hey, Disco. Make yourself useful," Brother snaps me out of my reverie, "give Bunny some water would you?" Bunny is a rabbit; a medium-sized, brown house rabbit whom my mother persistently refers to as a hare and who has, amidst all the chaos, sat quietly, attentively. I fill the water bottle and reattach it to its clip. "Good luck," I silently mouth.

The Escalator Conundrum

There's a phenomenon, of which I was reminded today, which I've come to refer to as the "Escalator Conundrum". The Escalator Conundrum revolves around a non-functioning escalator which is the sole convenient means of transit between floors within a building. People are walking up and down the non-functioning escalator, interestingly they are still adhering to proper up/down protocol. I too approach the escalator and my eyes inform me that it's not working, that it's stationary. Furthermore, my brain understands what this means; that in essence I'm dealing with stairs, and I negotiate stairs every single day of my life; big deal. I approach the escalator full of the confidence born of past experience and I step on; yet I'm aware of my body making a subtle adjustment. Despite the evidence of my eyes, despite my ability to interpret what my senses are telling me, despite all my previous experience with stairs, somehow, somewhere, deep down fundamentally I still expect the clearly out of order escalator stairs to be moving.

I sometimes wonder if this observation goes some way toward explaining so much of the folly in this world; despite what we can observe, despite our ability to assign meaning, despite our experience. Or perhaps because of it?

Sometimes it's the music...

...but a lot of the time it's more the words.

We'd gather around, all in a room,
fasten our belts, engage in dialogue,
we'd all slow down, rest without guilt,
not lie without fear, disagree sans judgement.

We would stay and respond and expand and include,
and allow and forgive and enjoy and evolve,
and discern and inquire and accept and admit,
and divulge and open and reach out and speak up.

We'd open our arms,
we'd all jump in,
we'd all coast down into safety nets.

We would share and listen and support and welcome,
be propelled by passion not invest in outcomes,
we would breathe and be charmed and amused by difference,
be gentle and make room for every emotion.

We'd provide forums, we'd all speak out,
we'd all be heard, we'd all feel seen.

We'd rise post-obstacle, more defined, more grateful,
we would heal, be humbled and be unstoppable,
we'd hold close and let go and know when to do which,
we'd release and disarm and stand up and feel safe.

And in my ideal world the BPI and RIAA will not sue my backside off for verse reproduction.

In a heart beat

Because¹, as anyone with half a brain will tell you, when it comes to achieving anything of significance it's far more important to have the latest technological gadgets rather than any innate ability or inherent bloody minded determination; I have thus purchased a heart monitor in the clever guise of a watch. Since its arrival I have been conscientiously collecting data on all aspects of my life which occasion the flow of blood around my body (did I mention that I'm also quite partial to a certain nitrogen-oxygen mix?) Here are some sample mean beats per minute:

Pulse overnight: 56
Pulse after climbing (non-picturesque) Dinas Bran²-like hill near my home: 171
Pulse during a particularly violent coughing fit³ after summitting (non-picturesque) Dinas Bran-like hill near my home: 179
Pulse after gut-bustingly massive meal: 78
Pulse at work following a typical interaction with... well, just about anybody asking me anything really: 83
Pulse (losing) at badminton: 105
Pulse whilst vividly describing the agonies I would go through should the oxygen masks on an airplane in which I am travelling ever deploy: 91
Pulse upon discovering Le Pew contemplating NOT taking a towel around the world: Off scale

Data collection is ongoing with a view to improving over all fitness. if I do not succeed in this endeavour it's because I bought a bargain end of line product and not the very latest cutting edge iteration, I refer you to my opening statement.

---

¹ I love it on blogs that you can flagrantly disregard all grammatical constraints and brazenly start sentences (indeed whole diatribes) with forbidden clauses such as Because.

² R told me the real Dinas Bran would be a gentle trot. R is full of crap.

³ Despite my foolhardy assertion to anyone who would listen at the end of March (based on three months worth of solid data) that 2006 would be a totally head cold free zone, it's now August and I'm in the throes of my second fully fledged cold of the year. Extrapolation, you have a lot to answer for. I can only console myself in the certain knowledge that in an average person, with a regular person's lesser immune system, my current affliction would probably be drug resistant tuberculosis at the very least.

Lessons I have learned

Here's why you shouldn't log on to MSN Instant Messenger late at night.

Disco: How was flying? I'm an obsessively bad flyer.
Brother's Girlfriend: It was great, Brother even got a tan.
Disco: A tan - I don't believe it!
Brother's Girlfriend: He did and I had an aerobatics lesson which was great.
Disco: Aerobatics? Did you do loop the loop and shit, because that is making me feel sick.
Brother's Girlfriend: Yep, aeileron rolls, loops and hammer head. Pulled -1g and +4g.
Brother's Girlfriend: You'd love it.
Disco: I think you're confusing me with somebody else. Dare I ask... what's a hammerhead?
Disco: Please tell me it's not a shark?
Disco: I have this thing....
Brother's Girlfriend: Straight vertical then a pivot around CofG and vertical down. Such an adrenalin rush.
Disco: I can feel my bowels loosening....
Brother's Girlfriend: hehehe.
Disco: You guys are just cruel.

This isn't them, but it does demonstrate some of the manoeuvres. Like I said before, Crazies:

The only wrong way to dance badly is to do it well

Some things are just kind of life affirming, in a kooky kind of way.

Where the hell is Matt?

A brief interlude

Things are a little surreal right now....

At work this week I was embroiled in a long and difficult conversation during which I was informed, in passing, that the other party to the conversation had typhoid and was on his way to my place of work. The conversation went something like this, “blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah some more, I’ve got typhoid, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada”. My brain heard the lightly skipped over words, spent several seconds decoding the precise meaning and finally arrived at an Interesting Place. J happened to be in the office when I finally rang off, “do you know?" I said, "I think P has just told me he's got typhoid."

“He’s got what?” J shrieked.

“Typhoid.”

Rapid Googling ensued and I now know all there possibly is to know about Typhoid Mary (FYI, beware of iced peach desserts). J (never one to sit still when an action might be anyways possible) was immediately on the phone to Occupational Health which resulted in a list of questions that I was tasked with asking P when he phoned back:

1. How long have you had symptoms?
2. Are you on medication / antibiotics?
3. Do you have good personal hygiene?
4. Have you seen a doctor?

I won't describe the number of different ways I phrased #3 in my head.

Funnily enough, not long after my revelation typhoid panic seemed to descend upon the department, leaving me sincerely hoping that I'd heard P correctly… Further escalation ensued when P2 decided it was a Big Deal and that I shouldn’t even let Typhoid P enter the building. Y started pooping her pants and began phoning around her medical contacts for advice when I informed her that (just like me) she'd turned up trumps in the people he was coming to visit lottery. It was at this point that I cancelled Typhoid P's access to the building.

All good things come to those who wait... So there I was; stood in the office, phone yanked across from a colleague's desk and handset thrust out through the hatch door to access-denied-Typhoid P, leaving me stood in the middle of the room holding the phone cradle, rolling my eyes as I tried to eat H’s mother’s chocolate cake whilst idly wondering at which highly inappropriate point D was going to call me over to the other building because she needed to vomit again (puking sickness is so endearing). It was part way through this little performance that I noticed a Fatal Flaw in the whole set up - I was going to have to take the phone back from access-denied-Typhoid P in order to hear safely-in-another-building-Health Protection Agent K's assessment. Monty Python has got nothing on me. Oh yeah, trying to open the door with my foot was kind of fun too (don't ask).

Anyway, the official word was, as long as no-longer-access-denied-Typhoid P is not coming into contact with 'vulnerable' people or preparing food for anyone and is practising good personal hygiene everything should be just dandy. Minutes after hearing this I saw no-longer-access-denied-Typhoid P in the kitchen at the sink, perhaps he was just practising good personal hygiene but my brain would only operate on the "under no circumstance should he be preparing food" level. Y was still not happy and I washed my hands and phone ear. Call me paranoid, but having already had suspected meningitis and a heart attack in the last four weeks is, I firmly believe, more than adequate for the average person, throwing in typhoid on top of everything else would just be taking the piss.

You know, when I woke up on Typhoid Panic Morning (as I now like to refer to it) I knew I had a lot of problems to deal with. I did not for one second think that a typhoid scare was going to leapfrog the lot of them and claim top spot for its very ownsome. Life’s like that sometimes.

Anyway, the following morning I awoke at 6am, skipped out of bed and went downstairs to soak my Fruit and Fibre (I'm going through a soggy breakfast cereal phase) in the absolute full assurance that it was Saturday - hence being so skippy about the whole getting out of bed thing - after all I was about to go back for several more hours. The horrors when realisation struck. Still, at least I hadn't woken up with typhoid. Unless being completely out of whack with reality is the first symptom....

Now that everyone at work is over the whole typhoid subplot, attention has switched to a proposed "Staff Away Day". The last one of these I attended turned out to involve travelling to a meeting room a whole three miles away from my usual office at the time and sitting through a day long series of presentations. I don't know about you, but fool me once.... They might be trying to trick me again but gorge walking in Snowdonia has been mentioned this time. I've said they can count me in. What could be more fun than walking around Wales whilst eating and drinking as much as you possibly can?

In other news, German visitor to the department, N, requested that we teach her some new English words to impress her mother with when she returns home. Apparently N's mother speaks excellent English (as does N) and is keen for N to improve hers. Since her request H has already taught her "wanker" and "cretin", K has taught her "muff", I came up with "typhoid" (D complained that typhoid is not a word that you use in general conversation but I beg to differ, I've used it a whole bunch this week) and D (also with a medical bent and completely blowing out of the water her previous argument) suggested "smegma" (look it up - but only if you're sure AOL isn't going to release your search history). A combined group effort produced the following new vocab suggestions; "pleb", "twat", “pillock”, “tosser” “bog”, “bollocks” (including the subtle usage distinction in the phrase “the dog’s bollocks”) and “smarmy git”. Her mother will be so proud. There’s such a sense of rewarding fulfilment in education. I’ve always thought so.

Expanding out from my own tiny microcosm, in the world at large we today had the thwarted airlines terror plot, which apparently revolved around an energy drink ("the British version of Gatorade" - I can only assume Lucozade?) and mp3 players.

Somewhere along the line (and rooted way back before 2001) I've become a nervous flyer which, when you think about it, is completely rational. I don't care about statistics. When you're on a plane there's no way off until the flight's over one way or another and none of it's in your own hands and when you can read things like "The crew didn't complete the landing checklist and forgot to lower the gear due to non-pertinent and extended conversation" I think you can legitimately worry. Like I said, rational - as (by the way) is the whole stalked by Jaws thing, if only people would stop being so blinkered. Anyway, I recently discovered that one of my cousins is a flight ops dispatcher so I have a whole new unexplored avenue with which to feed my neuroses. Cousin M you will be hearing from me. Lots. And did I mention that my brother's girlfriend has a pilot's license (or is working towards getting one, not sure which, although it's probably a vital distinction) and part of the reason that they're currently in the States (lucky peeps get to fly back this week) is so that the pair of them can go up in a plane by themselves. This world is full of crazies and a lot of them appear to be my family / friends.

There's a strong likelihood that this post will get deleted when I've had time to think better of it.