Samhain...

Yes, bit of a pagan at heart, so it's Samhain (pron. "Sowan", in the Munster dialect at least) rather than Hallowe'en, but I do like tonight.

I could just curl up with Sleepy Hollow or something right now. Plus I also see that we have The Brothers Grimm from Terry Gilliam, The Goblet of Fire and The Chronicles of Narnia to look forward to in November, which nicely sates my requirements as a fantasy genre geek. I was also a little peaved to discover that Terry Gilliam had been in pre-prouction on the film "Good Omens" (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - one of my favourite books for the teenage years), with Johnny Depp cast as Crawley (the Demon) and Robin Williams cast as Aziraphale (The Angel) who are the protagonists of this quite wascky and amusing tale of the apocolypse. Unfortunately, because the "Hollywood" bigcheeses were convinced that Depp was only into European arthouse movies like Chocolat, they wouldn't put up the final $15 million. Bastards. Then Pirates came out and they were throwing money at them. The short sighted bastards that Hollywood are.

I arrived home tonight to find a little Hallowe'en Dell, created by my fair lady. All the lights were dimmed and our rather fabulous becandled porcelain Jack o' Lantern was glowing in the window. All our many fancy real flame candelabra were flickering away, and she'd prepared a little tray of sweets and chocolates mixed in with witch sand filled silk frogs. Apparently she'd had 5 trick or treaters so far, and had quizzed them thoroughly to ensure their Harry Potter knowledge was up to scratch before relinquishing the much sought after chockys. The little witch!

Anyway, horror movie time - must go see what is available.

Mwahahahahaaaaaaa.

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Once more with the tall tales...

I have mentioned in the past that my Father was rather fond of "tall tales" when I was a youngster. I won't go into details about Haggis or other such creatures he managed to convince me existed, but in a recent conversation with my Mother, I very nearly stumbled again.

Occassionally I find myself reiterating these tall tales, as fact, to people - but invariably manage to stop myself before the woeful utterance. My Mother was describing how she was showing the Gardener where the paving flagstones are buried under the over grown plants, to which I nearly replied "What, the ones where the ice turned into stone?"

"Eh!?" I hear you say.

Well the thing of it is this. After a particularly icey winter where the garden had enjoyed a layer of ice for some weeks, I noticed odd patterns in the flagstones, curiously enough in the shape of shattered ice. I probably never noticed them before because how many kids go round looking at flagstones? - unless they have ice on them!

I asked my Dad what the patterns were and he told me that if the ice stays on the stones too long, it becomes part of the stone, like little shattered ice fossils.

I.of.course.believed.him!

Damn!

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Anniversary....

Ooh ooh, I've just realised it's my blogiversary!

I've had this blog precisely 1 year today and how things have changed from those meagre beginnings. Back then I was rent with passion for making political and scientific commentaries, but since then I've mellowed considerably, opting for what I hope to be a more comic observation of some of the the bollocks that life serves us.

Nether the less, given that I've been ranting on about Mountains rather a lot recently (which I don't plan on curbing any time soon), I shall punctuate said mountainous blogs with some highlights (bloglites) of the last year. Well, it's not everyday you get the opportunity to shamelessly recycle some old blogs!

Better finish work first though!

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DofE spotting...

One of the amusing pass times of the mountain leaders and ML candidates was DofE spotting. For those of you not familiar with DofE (The Duke of Edinburgh's Award), it is usually embarked upon by 16-18 year olds, although many universities run it also, but typically it is in the last four years of high school. There are three awards, but the two you'll most often come across are Silver and Gold expedition groups who will be engaged with 3 day/2 night or 4 day/3 night expeditions, respectively.

They can be characterised by their being a group of 6 to 8 teenagers lugging expedition backpacks containing the entire planet, usually with a karrimat fastened to the outside, wrapped in a black bin liner. They will have a look of abject misery on their faces and one or more of them will be frantically trying to figure out where they are, where they've been and where the bloody hell they're going on an erratically folded map. You can see them a mile away from their standard issue DofE waterproofs. It is highly amusing, if only because most of us remember doing exactly the same thing!

It's a right of passage, and for what it's worth I'm planning to become involved in the whole process myself (again), this time volunteering my skills to assist with the training of expedition groups and practice walks....just as soon as my award contact gets back to me!

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Chaos. Organised.

So as you can imagine, I was quite pleased with my Mountain Leader week, a very profitable employment of time. One thing that did exasperate us though, was the catering organisation on the part of the venue. Through no fault of Mountain Activities, the venue was changed from their usual one to the Betwys Y Coed YHA. Whilst the accommodation was ok (5 of us in a 6 bed dorm of sufficient size - if a little too damn warm!), the catering was slightly less than impressive.

The whole management of the YHA seemed to be under a rather mad Phillipino guy, and the entire catering staff were Polish. Actually, much of Betwys (including the other local pubs etc) was being run by Poles, which was a little weird, and made for a few communication problems. The only bread available was cheap ass sticks-to-the-top-of-your-mouth white bread (yuk!) and greasy spoon fry ups in the morning. I know we were burning shit loads of calories, but there are better ways to get them. Basically the food was over loaded with simple carbs, when what we really needed was complex carbs. Anyway, it was filling (or bloating?) and we managed to suplement the days with energy and cereal bars.

The camp food was a little scary - more to the point, the effect it had on our digestion. Good job it was blowing a gale is all I can say. Phew.

Mind you, look what it did to me, call it Dr Jim and Mr Wild-Eyed Boggart if you will:



Anyway, some pictures are available here: http://photobucket.com/albums/v467/roag/MLT/, I'm still waiting on a few more to be emailed to me.

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Mountain Leader...

Well I have just returned from one of the most useful employments of time I have ever embarked upon. This last week I have been away on a Mountain Leader training course in my old stomping ground of Snowdonia. This is very much a diary entry rather than a blog, just as a reminder to myself as much as anything else.

The weather was completely foul, with one low front after another battering the west and intensifying in the mountains. To put it plainly, we got thoroughly shat on. Gale force winds with gusts of 80 mph and rain so hard that it hurt. Having said that, there were some breaks in the weather, which allowed us to get up above 3000 feet, but the rain never really let up. At least it gave my new gear combination a trial by fire as it were. They performed superbly, not letting a single drop get through - which is more than I can say for many others.

The course was a real mix of people of all ages and backgrounds. The guys running the course were splendid chaps, each very different, but all friendly, highly knowledgeable and great to spend time with. I can't recommend Mountain Activities highly enough! The ML candidates were a roughly equal mix of males and females, predominantly over 30, experienced walkers, most of whom were doing this to further their work with the Duke of Edinburgh's Award or Scouts. Others were working on becoming outdoor pursuits instructors and some were just doing it to gain a higher level of competence on the hills. There were businessmen, air-conditioning engineers, PhD students and (ahem) scientists all with a singluar passion in common: The Hills. In that regard we all got on fabulously and never ran out of things to talk about, learning a lot from each other as well as the course. A thoroughly aimiable group of people.

We were thrown in at the deep end, heading straight out into the Moelwyns on the first full day for some micro-navigation in some of the boggiest land Snowdonia has to offer. Plus the gale force wind and rain didn't help either. We managed to navigate our way from one featureless rocky outcrop to another, through quagmire and hidden streams, with nothing but common sense, distance pacing, compass bearings and a some sweat.

We spend evenings in lectures and on the first evening we covered meteorology and weather sense. A very useful skill improved apon there. The following day was rope work on steep ground. That was fantastic fun as I've never been in to climbing as such, so have never done much rope work beyond the odd abseil. Ropework in mountain walking is not about harnesses, it is just about securing the rope, the use of appropriate and foolproof knots and confidence. A theme of the training is that many of the techniques taught are a last resort. If you think you are going to need a rope, you have no business taking a group on that route; the rope being for extreme unforseen circumstances only. None the less, I took to it like a fish to water and was doing free rope abseils off crags in no time (for my own personal education rather than as something I'd do with a group).

We then covered river crossings - again on the premise that they should be avoided where ever possible. This was slightly less fun, given the gale and rain. We struggled to find a stream small enough as most of Snowdonia was flooded by this point. Needless to say we survived, though that bloody freezing water was over waist height, and that was about as much fun as it sounds! We each had to traverse the stream 4 times using different methodologies. Torture!

The following day was a distance and height walk in the Glyderau, bringing together some the new skills learnt. We worked on route finding and spotting on steep ground, confidence roping of nervous walkers and group management with groups role playing the different types of clients a Mountain Leader might encounter, from novice school children to experienced ramblers looking for their first walks off the path. The routes chosen were real bastard awful routes, deliberately chosen to test us. Not pleasant, but rewarding when achieved.

Then came the expedition with a wild camp far from civilisation, this was great. The warm front (with associated, sustained drizzle) had passed over giving us a day of fantastic, calm and sunny weather with blue skies. We knew it would be raining by that night - we could see the cold front creeping off the sea behind us - but that didn't matter. We got the camps set up after a bit of a trek into the Carneddau and at 7 pm, we set off for 4 hours of night navigation. Myself and a few others chose the "strenuous" night nav group, which saw us head on up over Foel Grach, one of the Welsh 3000ers. Very steep ground, strong winds and pitch black. That was a real test of navigation skills, but we did well and got some great views of night-lit Bangor and Anglesey from the top.

The winds turned into a gale in the night and despite have a rock solid tent, the ground was a little too soft to hang on to the pegs, consequently we all but lost the flysheet twice in the night. Myself and my tent mate were running around at 4 am re-pitching the tent and re-pegging the tents of the other group members that were slowly working their way loose. I didn't get much sleep though. The trek on the following day was the first time I actually felt the strain of walking. The lack of sleep and the insufficient breakfast (couldn't be bothered to light the stove up) made life difficult, but we were back and showered/fed by 5 pm and all was well. We visited the Llanberis Miountain Rescue that night and spent some time working with the stretcher and looking at how they operate. The job those guys do it amazing, they a tough bunch of lads. Some of the stories they had to tell were horrific, highlighting the importance of Mountain Leadership and mountain craft.

The last day was spent looking at other means of improvised mountain evacuation and stretcher building. We then had individual reviews, which I was happy with. My gear is good. I am in good shape for the demanding climbs. I am very confident on steep ground. I need to keep practicing my rope work and choice of direct/indirect belays. I need to improve my confidence at following my own bearings on night nav. I need to tailor my walking style to groups, rather than the solo fast walker that I am. I can't wait to get back out there now!

We shared the photo taking, so will have to wait until the other group members email their picture through.

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...overheard...

Overheard whilst browsing in Boots
A couple being led by a rather flustered bloke, obviously mid-retort to something his missus had just said:

Guy: "...God, you've always got sex on the brain haven't you!"
Gal: "...[silence]...I said 'SIX' you berk"
Guy: [red in face]
Me: [Laughing my head off]

Scientists in the media
I see they've wheeled out good old Professor Hugh Pennington again, to comment on the avian flu situation. He seems to get wheeled out a lot these days - the token microbiologist. He's a rather demure, no nonsense sort of chap who invariably sounds pissed off with the media's sensationalisms. Too true, but sometimes it would be nice to show a little variety. I'm sure there are a few other senior scientist they could wheel out. Mind you, old Prof is retired, and I'm sure everyone else is too busy writing papers, grant applications and reviewing manuscripts to talk to some rather silly media types.

Of course, I had to balk at the tabloidesque headline offered by the BBC "UK tests Parrot for killer strain". Are we to take it that all 60 million of us are to take a part in the testing of this Parrot, or perhaps will the task fall to a few Government scientists? I think I've been staring at manuscripts too long.

Rain
It's still raining. You want a weather forecast: open a window.

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Here, but only briefly...(but I'll be back)

Wow, it's been busy. Busy, busy, busy. This last week has been rather testing really and has ground me to the floor a few times, what with finally getting my manuscript finished, getting the review finished, supervising my student, planning my own work, trying to keep fit and preparing for next week's Mounatin Leader refresher training. That kind of monstorously long sentence sums it up nicely really.

I've got things to say, but first I have errands to run before some friends arrive to saty this evening...but tomorrow I'm offski again, away to Snowdonia - my home of several years in the late 90s - for lots of wet fun. The rather large polar maritime low and convoluted occluded fronts that are about to smash into Western Britain mean I've chosen a fantastic time to be getting my ass out in the field. In the words of one friend "we're going to get shat on". Fine words. There's also the question of the night-navigation exercises to deal with. So picture it being pissing wet, 30-50 mph winds, no damn moon (and it'd be covered by low cloud even if it wasn't a new moon) and nothing but the say-so of Gore and co (purvayers of fine fabrics) that we'll actually stay dry.

They say to "bring matches". Bugger that, I'm taking an oxyacetylene torch!

Back later.

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Talent....

I love to check in at C h r o m a s i a, the guy has a truely fantastic talent.

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Lorem ipsum...

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nunc erat lacus, commodo quis, feugiat a, scelerisque quis, elit. Praesent tellus mi, cursus sit amet, gravida vitae, consectetuer vel, nulla. Mauris est ligula, aliquam vitae, blandit non, imperdiet quis, orci. Donec non magna. Duis pharetra. Nam mattis. Aliquam vitae eros. Sed sed dolor. Vestibulum eros nisl, egestas consequat, sollicitudin ut, nonummy ac, elit. Nam pulvinar sagittis erat. Maecenas dapibus nunc vel massa. Donec malesuada viverra mi. Maecenas convallis. Proin ut diam. Ut non lacus at urna dapibus gravida. Fusce sed nibh. Aliquam vitae libero et lectus aliquam aliquam.

Worry not, I am still around. I'm reading what I can but the writing must be saved for final touches to my manuscript prior to submission next week and writing a review for this other manuscript, which is a bit of an arse actually .

There really are too few hours in the day. I've determined that I could just about manage with 27.5 hours a day, so there's nothing for it...a pint of ale is in the offering for anyone who can erect a solar sail to tardy the Earth's rotation a bit....anyone?

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Comrade....

An email I received this morning:

"Hello!

It has been requested that the following address:

[my private work address@work.ac.uk]

should be added to the communism community mailing list. You have been successfully subscribed to our mail list.

Thank you."

So not only do they want to sell me English lessons....in Russian; and not only do they want me to "buy" a Russian wife, but now they feel I "should" be added to the Communism Community mailing list.

Needless to say I'm starting to get a little worried.

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Review and be done...

I've just had my first request to review a paper for a prestigious well known journal - to those of us in the biological sciences! Yay!

Power! *evil glint*

(Unfortunately I'm not permitted to say any more than that, but it looks quite exciting)

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Carpe tempum...

I got a call last night from the watch shop whom I used to have my poor ailing Tag watch returned to its makers. They told me it was available for collection. I asked them what time in the morning they opened. 09:15 apparently.

So I rearranged my morning, got out of bed early and and made the herculean effort it takes to get in and out of the town near to where I live - paying the extortionate parking meter fees - before trucking the 20 miles to the city where I work. I duly arrive at the shop for 09:15 on the dot.

They're weren't open.

In fact, they wouldn't be open until 10.30 due to staff training.

I knew they're staff training because I could see them beyond the window display of hundreds of hugely expensive watches all saying 09:20!

So I waited like the patient, if ever increasingly late, guy that I am. In the mean while I was accosted by some woman doing one of those street surveys, she wanted to know my gas preferences. "I beg your pardon!?", again "What gas do you use sir?"

I couldn't exactly refuse with the usual "Sorry, I'm busy", or "Sorry, I have to be somewhere" brush off. The fact is that here is where I am meant to be and evidently I wasn't busy, other than loitering, so I capitulated. Ten full minutes later (a 10 minute survey - ridiculous!) and there was still no sign of the watch shop opening, so with all hundreds of thousands of punds telling me that it was 09:45 I got into a sweat and ran back to my car and fought me way to work.

I'm bitterly disappointed I wasn't reunited with my watch and heartily pissed off that the watch shop couldn't open on time!

Bastards. I'd like to say I rang them up and told them they stood me up, that they're a bunch of wankers and are holding my watch hostage. Unfortunately I was polite as ever as I inquired as to what hour they would open tomorrow. Soft touch that I am. Of course now I miss my sleep in because my Father is arriving for a visit in the morning.

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Why!?

...and more!

Why? *sighs*

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Recent email....

I now officially receive more spam from the University regarding meetings, seminars, computer issues, warnings and other dross, than I do from the Russians who keep sending me emails - in Russian - asking whether I want a Russian wife (evidently they want receivers to read Russian) or trying to sell me English lessons (which is frankly a little bizarre).

I particularly like this mornings effort from the University Human Resources Director:

"Following a recent case, I am writing to remind all members of staff that using University IT facilities to access pornographic websites (whether legal or illegal) is a serious disciplinary offence and could constitute gross misconduct"

I'm curious to know what member of staff would be this stupid. I mean, who accesses porn at work!? Mind you, what if you're a media studies researcher or sociologist and you're looking at that particular medium?

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Higher Learning...

Another day of higher learning. I feel general university (student) rants brewing.

...but for this post I simply recall a chance meeting with a very good school friend some years back in my own heady university days.

He happened upon my shopping list, such as it was, on my study table. The list:

Mates
Orange juice
Bank
Crow CD
Call soandso (girlf at the time)

Him: "Well at least you've got your priorities straight!"
Me: ? {baffled look}

Later I clicked what he was talking about, unfortunately I had quite a different sort of "Mates" in mind *wink*

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Overheard...

I overheard the following in the University bookshop today:

Inquirer: "Do you have the Handbook of Speech Perception in stock"
Vendor: "Sorry, it doesn't seem to be on record...?"

[Long pause and look of confusion on Inquirer's face]

Inquirer: "Sorry...I did say speech perception didn't I?"
Vendor: "That's what I perceived" {chuckles}

Inquirer: "Oh. Alright then"
[not at all grasping the comedic moment. Guess he really does need the handbook].

Busy, busy, snowed under....life of science slavery!

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Googlation...

Hot on the heels of Sanescientist's enlightening list of search terms that have brought people to his blog, I took a look at my own referrals - not that I get many (makes mental note to look at metas).

Perhaps not a retarded as Ss's search hit punters, but outright bizarre in some cases:

kill the crazyfrog with chainsaw
flight-attendant+blog
kirsty allsopp (on no less than 11 occassions)
"The Child Who's Older Than Her Grandmother"
"six classes of antibiotics"
ballanitis (my personal favourite...how many of you can say you've had someone reach your blog with this term!?)
pressure at the temples

Well, we shall keep an eye on these.

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