What not to say at a climate change rally

TWO of my friends attended the Climate Change protest in London this weekend. Through a series of circumstances - probably including alcohol and fatigue as a result of walking around for hours - they ended up chanting:

"What do we want?"
"Climate change!"
"When do we want it?"
"Now!"

Oops.

Rodrigo y Gabriela

I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela on Tuesday. Nearly two hours of instrumental glory at the hands of two phenomenal guitar players. Here's a video:

This post has been pre-dated so that it is published to keep you entertained while I spend my Friday setting up dozens of genetic crosses and counting hundreds of flies. I expect I shall then go to the pub.

I'll write an update of my travels and things over the weekend and, at some point, I need to tell you about a sneezing elephant.

Nightmares

I'VE been dreaming a lot recently, some might say having nightmares: about pipetting, aliquoting and giant, man-eating flies. My mind will repeat the motions of pipetting, sometimes at a selection of probe concentrations, again and again until the point of insanity, when I realise I'm now awake and actually panicking about whether or not I have set up my experiments correctly.

I think the PhD is going to my head.

When considering whether to accept this position, my potential supervisor advised me to make a cake for my girlfriend. Many experimental protocols are much like following a recipe she said, with particular ingredients, particular methods and steps. But, like a cake, to make an experiment work you need to understand the recipe, what is most important to include or do compared with other steps or ingredients, so that you can tinker and get to the result you want: the perfect cake. You have to be prepared for many cake failures but you must continue - you must continue - until it rises precisely, the icing is uniform and the texture and flavour are, in every way, supreme. No cake: no PhD. But people tried to put me off, preparing me for failure, and thus the impression I got was that things are actually much more complicated than this.

Thus:

A PhD is much like baking a cake for your girlfriend. You must follow the recipe exactly but be prepared for failure, at which point you must then play with the ingredients, timings, steps and sizes of baking trays until you achieve success. And then, just as you reach this result (or at least think you have), your girlfriend - now fiancée - is diagnosed with coeliac disease and so cannot eat the cake that you've made. You have to learn a whole new set of rules about ingredients, source more specialist types of flours, raising agents and a magical thing called xanthan gum, and start the whole procedure again.

I still haven't made Rachel a cake - I've only managed chocolate brownie, which was, in my defence, pretty darned tasty. Consequently, I suppose, I still haven't mastered the art of the PhD. Maybe this explains the dreams about fixatives, fly larvae and aliquot after aliquot after aliquot after aliquot after aliquot after ... aliquot after aliquot of staining solution and hybridisation buffer. After last year I have managed to detach myself from work as I return home for an evening or weekend, but apparently not in my subconscious.

I'm not sure, however, that this explains the dreams about my pet cat gnawing through my laptop power lead or being trapped in a zoo enclosure by a velociraptor.

Exercise

I JUST went for a run. The last time I went for a run was 18 months ago, a four mile jog from Southgate to Hadley Wood in North London. The last time I did any exercise was back in the summer, when I was swimming to keep up with a whale shark. The whale shark won.

I ache. I am very unfit, and I'd like to say that I hereby vow to do exercise more frequently, but, then, I said that 18 months ago. Once a year isn't exactly frequently...

Modern technology: it gets the better of all of us eventually

MY first real adventure in PhDland - after cutting, grating and burning myself - was to piece together a stapler. This took 15 minutes. Who would have thought it could be so complicated?

A change will do you good?

I'VE never been one to knock progress. Change can be good, and progress and novelty aren't something to fear. But I draw the line. Knocking down the ivy-covered mansion between the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and Sainsbury's Selly Oak was bang out of order.

Now that I'm back in Birmingham it is interesting to see what has changed. The new Queen Elizabeth hospital is nearing its final stages of construction and, though I once thought it ugly, I actually quite like it. Although it looks a bit like three giant toilet seats, there are interesting elements of Jetsons-style googie architecture and I reckon the only reason that it looks odd is because it is so radically different to the surroundings. It doesn't really matter what it looks like, it's what's inside that's important - and the region's hospitals have been crying out for modernization (and space) for ages. On campus, the aesthetic failure of astounding proportions that was the Muirhead Tower has finally been tackled head-on. It hasn't been knocked down, but it has a new, shiny facade, has been revamped inside and the "temporary" emergency scaffolding around it (that had been standing for 12 years) has been removed. It almost looks OK. The Guild is being refurbished. Biosciences has an artist in residence.

Some things certainly look a lot nicer: some things never change. The Mailbox, a redevelopment project on a substantial scale, continues to look out of place surrounded by the deprived city centre edge. Work is in progress, but still desperately needed. Five Ways and Broad Street are also still well below par.

And some things have been taken away. The cardboard box factory (top), a ruin that loomed over the Grange Road entrance to the University, has gone, as has the gun factory (bottom). I always loved that next to one of the biggest universities in the country was one of the oldest established gun manufacturers in the country, until recently building and testing weapons on site (the sporadic explosions always made the walk to lectures more exciting). It was a coincidence of brilliance on a par with two other neighbours a short walk up the road: the parole office and a fireworks shop. Now the Grange Road entrance is surrounded by rubble, ready to welcome the Selly Oak bypass. The road is needed, but it would have been so much better if these treasures could have been left behind.

But it is the house of ivy, a mansion long ago hidden behind its creeping climbers that really upset me. I will always rue not having had the chance to go inside; to enjoy its understated majesty (funny how a ruin can be so appealing). Perhaps I will just have imagine what it would have been like.

wombat :)

wombat :)
Originally uploaded by SBishop

For Sale

I'VE been rooting out my bedroom at home. I've found some musical gems that deserve a good home. The bidding is now open for:

Dance Tip 95 - double cassette, feat. The Outhere Brothers and Scatman John

Huge Hits 1996 - double cassette, feat. DJ Dado's X-Files theme and Chantay Savage's I Will Survive

New Hits 96 - double cassette, feat. 1, 2, 3, 4, Sumpin' New by Coolio and, brilliantly, PJ & Duncan

Non Stop Hits (circa 1998) - double cassette, feat. 2 Unlimited and Been a Long Time by The Fog

Five + Queen, We Will Rock You - cassette single

Now 41 (circa 1998) - double CD, feat., aptly, If You Buy This Record Your Life Will Be Better by The Tamperer and Tell Me Ma by Shamrock

Now 44 (circa 1999) - double CD, feat. Jordan Knight and the Wamdue Project

Hits 99 - double CD, feat. Yo-Yo Boy and Matthew Marsden

Fresh Hits 99 - double CD, feat. TQ, Gouryella and the Honeyz

Smash Hits Summer 2000 - double CD, feat. Trevor & Simon and the DJ Aligator Project

Kiss Hitlist 2002

The Offspring, Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)

The All Time Greates Movie Songs - double CD, feat. Celine Dion, of course

and, er, Bob the Builder, Can We Fix It?

The collection is a little dusty.

Ideas Above My Station

BACK in May, I wrote a blog post called Encore une fois, in which I raised my concerns about the direction of this blog. "I don't know any longer what I should be posting" I wrote. Much of my readership wants to know what I am up to, being family and friends, but I don't feel that I get up to much that is worthy of note. So instead I write about what I learn, find out or feel I should share or communicate, in any small way. It has led me to produce a blog that has too many different personalities, where momentum in any direction is always interrupted as I try and cover all bases and become more and more selective. The rather large post on conspiracy theories in Kazakhstan took things too far - I obviously felt it was important to write, but I knew then that this blog was the wrong platform for it. The fact that I published it here has troubled me for the last few weeks.

I'm also acutely aware that I might have ideas above my station, and that sometimes I sound like I am ranting. Maybe I am, but there are some stories or perspectives that I feel are important to share. If you believe that something is wrong, in my opinion you should not sit on your laurels - you should, in a sensible fashion, do something about it. At present, the only tactic I have at my disposal is to help spread the story to others, so that is what I want to do. I'm not grumpy, I just care, and I don't like people being misled.

So, I've made a decision. This blog, Simon Says, will continue, but for its original purpose - silly stories, travel tales and everyday experiences. In short, what I am up to. I have set up a separate blog, longhand & scribblings (or Simon Says A Little Bit More), for the purpose of publishing my thoughts, my essays, stories, causes and miscellaneous interesting stuff. The two blogs will undoubtedly crossover, and I will link between the two, but in doing this I hope to resolve the identity problem that I have created by trying to say too much. I also hope this will help to me detach from the beast that I have created.

I hope you continue to visit both blogs and find everything interesting, but this way you have the option to filter out the content you dislike the most.

Thanks for reading.

The Masquerade Ball

IT is one of the greatest mysteries of life. How do you tie a bow tie?

On Saturday, Rachel and I attended a masquerade ball. I spent the entire day, in between paid work, preparing myself: I imagined myself, arms linked with my fiancée, amongst important people in their most magnificent finery; jaw-dropping ball gowns, dapper gentlemen and the mysterious air of hidden identity.

All day I became paranoid about my appearance. I’m well aware that I am a bit of a scruff at times. All afternoon I would disappear into the bathroom to shave off facial hair that had so far evaded my attention that day; and all afternoon I studied guides on how to tie a bow tie.

At first I found a step-by-step diagram, designed such that it could be printed, stuck on a mirror and followed precisely. But as helpful as it was, the final stages of perfecting the deed were difficult to fathom, and even harder to imagine. This called for desperate measures. I turned to YouTube.

The first video I found was utterly charming. Everybody was friendly, their ambition to teach the viewer the key to this mystery clearly defined. And it was lovely... up until the difficult bit, when the camera panned out, such that you could no longer see what the instructor was doing. I screamed in anguish, then found another video, memorized it and hoped for the best.

Rachel’s dad presented me with a range of bow tie options, including a blue velvet clip-on with accompanying cummerbund, but realistically I had the choice of a big black one or a small black one. In the interests of modesty I chose the small one, but this proved to be my undoing: it was so small and fiddly that I had no margin for error, nor any margin to see or feel what I was doing. For half an hour I battled on, fiddling and straightening and then, suddenly, realising success, I was a real man.

Then I looked properly in the mirror. My hair, uncut since before the summer, was a mess. It was long, windswept and unaccustomed to combing. Desperate measures were called for. With nobody looking, I took a pair of scissors to my hair and tried to sort it out myself. I’ve spent years watching hairdressers; I knew the score. You filter the hair between two fingers, leaving the hair that is to be discarded sticking out, and then slice along the finger line. Easy. A chunk off here, some tidying there. The results came instantly. And, if I was honest with myself, I was rather pleased with what I had achieved: a presentable head of luxurious hair.

Then Rachel came in.

“What have you done?” she cried out.

No amount of protesting on my part could convince her of my achievement. She insisted on taking the scissors herself and further cutting my hair. And, I’ll admit, the results were promising. She, too, was rather proud of herself.

Then the penny dropped. Having tidied only the front and not dared to touch the back, I had given myself a mullet.

Then I looked at my shirt: it was covered in cut hair.

I had no mask.

Then we looked at the invitation, on which no dress code was specified. Were all of my efforts in vain?

We arrived at the ball, held in support of a UCCF mission to Bulgaria. It was a curious event. Held in a church hall, there was a disco, playing a mixture of chart music and party favourites from throughout the decades, and a Wii competition. There was a tombola. Everything was fifty pence.

The majority of the visitors were students. All the girls (and there were mostly girls) had made an effort, all very stylish, but most of the boys were just wearing shirts: few had tuxedos, only one other had a bow tie. Everybody knew each other, and it was almost like a get-together of friends with party games thrown in. We stood to one side, slightly bemused and unsure of how to talk to anybody but each other or Rosie or Helen, who we had come with. It was a strange night, not at all what we were prepared for, but for a good cause and everybody had fun.

The following morning, having tossed and turned through the nocturnal restlessness that comes with drinking red wine, my hair had been rather unkindly flattened. I looked in the mirror. The mullet was back.