Issue Seven, this eleventh day of April, 2003

'Out of action for six months'

Here's a tip: don't leave coffee in your mug over the long weekend.

There's been a break in transmission from your correspondent - partly because I took leave over Easter and partly because I've been moving house. One of the good things about the new place is that it only takes 10 minutes to get home from work. The worse thing about the new place is that it's only 10 minutes from the lab.

I could get used to these two-day weeks. Especially as the first part was spent looking after Rachel - glorious weather, going for cycle rides and picnics, very nice. Leave out the house-moving, though: I've come back to work for a rest.

Having said that . . . I was going to make witty and scathing remarks about Stud Muffin hogging the sound system. It's not that I don't like Coldplay, and I can even bear the Beatles; but each track repeated fifteen times over the space of three days wears even my reknowned patience (stop sniggering at the back). But this morning . . . this morning, all we needed was the strobe lights and the bottles of water and the little white tabs and we'd have the complete techno-house-club-rave experience. And that kind of thing, gentle reader, turns what few grey cells I have left into grey mush. So I apologize. I'm even considering asking Beardy for some of his >ack< J*zz CDs.

Talking of Beardy, what with him leaving, and the finding and appointing of Hippy, Sauron says we've been 'out of action for six months'. This hasn't been helped, of course, by Hippy buggering off to the West Indies for weeks. Why would anyone want to take a holiday from this place, that's what I want to know.

Nearly had a row this week. Certainly upset the lord and master: For context, you must understand (heh) that twice in the past we've sent my crystals to the synchrotron at ESRF - and neither I nor Sauron have gone along. So, when there was time at Daresbury, I made similar assumptions and organized stuff for the weekend.

The Bank Holiday Weekend.

Yes, folks, that's right! We get synchrotron time at Daresbury over the Bank Holiday Weekend! And you get to spend it with the Dark Master in the beam room!! Never mind my family commitments, and that I'll be fetching Rachel back from her grandparents . . . As an aside, have you noticed that 'Mordor' is only two letters different from 'Murder'?

Anyway, we managed to sort that out (I'm sure the burn marks will fade over time) and are going towards the end of the month. Mid-week, just before the Whit holiday, so I'll have four days to recover.

(Update: we now have 'sound scientific reasons' for not going. Hah!)

The other lab rats don't realize what I do for them - I've been shooting crystals all over the shop, including one which is proving difficult to index, let alone integrate. This is a Good Thing - it means Sauron disappears off into his fantasy computer world for hours on end.

In other news, this week's lab meeting clocked in at fifty (yup, five oh) minutes. Only because Sauron needed to go and schmooze with Ron Laskey at 12 o'clock. I can live with that, especially seeing as the first fifteen was taken up discussing the prospect of fresh blood in the lab. Apparently there's a medic who wants to come and learn how to do Real Science. Meat for the grinder . . . Oh - memorable quote time, We're dead in the water because we haven't got native gels working.

I close this week with a selection of quotes from various emails to the message list. Unattributed, to protect the guilty:

We have noticed that the Lab's greenhouses are being used to grow someone's trays of plants. Since we do need to know what is being done in Lab facilities - and these houses were used for plant viruses - could whoever owns these plants please get in touch with me.

Someone left a mess in the sink in our room over Easter weekend. (All I know is that it was clean on Thursday 5pm when I left.) It looks as if there was a murder--well, there is a patch of red/black stain on the counter and on the big brush, and a large amount of brownish salt crystallizing in the sink, plus stuff stuck in the drain.
[...]
If you are guilty, PLEASE CLEAN IT UP!
(We don't know what it is!)

Please be aware of potential visitors, and preferably avoid dangerous (or very secret) experiments on that day. Please also leave the lab as safe and tidy as you can, and be patient and helpful with lost alumni (who may turn out to be more eminent than you think!).

That's it. I'm now off to be not meaning to be perjorative.

Thinking of sticking this up above my bench,

Richard (- too sexy for his Gilson).