M’very good friend, let’s call her Brunhilde, was having trouble with senescence last week.
More specifically, her cells were sick, and there were black lumpy bits in the media. So I gave her some of my cells, and after a few days they started to have black lumpy bits, too. I suggested she changed serum supplier, and gave her some more of my babies (although, in her own words her recent record suggests DOCS should be called). As Brunhilde was not around when I split them, I secreted a fully labelled flask in the incubator in the IC lab cell culture room.
You know when you’ve done something wrong, don’t you?
Apparently there was mass hysteria in the IC lab at this strange flask that was, to hear it, oozing bugs and viruses and mycoplasma everywhere (let’s forget that, all modesty aside, I probably have the best aseptic technique in the building). I didn’t know this at the time; it wasn’t until I caught up with Brunhilde and DH that the full story unfolded.
Turns out that our very own aggressive-passive-aggressive emailer, Mr Kidd, was the one getting upset. But that’s OK, we said; he’s German. And a very German German at that. Thence the conversation deteriorated somewhat. We talked about How Strange the Dutch Are (and Especially the Southern Dutch), about Belgium (how it exists purely as somewhere for Europe to fight its wars), various theories about second generation immigrants to Australia (look, just don’t ask, OK?) and back to Germans. I told the joke (second time around I got it right) about Germans and debating societies and wars, and how I had persuaded one particular student in Cambridge to stop telling me how they used to do it in Germany.
We all agreed that while individual Germans can be very personable, they do have a peculiar tendency to, ah, organize things. Especially when multiple.
And then DH said,
“How on earth did they ever manage to lose the war?”
Laugh? I nearly bought a round.