Sauntering Vaguely Downward

Happy Non-Sectarian Festival Holiday!

2009-12-24T19:11:49Z

So the bloke bought a ham, because his parents are coming over for NSFH dinner tomorrow. We have to feed four people. Somehow this entailed purchasing the Biggest Gammon Joint In The World. It didn't fit into any of our pots, not even the double boiler. We had to buy a new pot just to cook this ham, and it barely fits into that one.

The Biggest Ham In The World

The ham had to be boiled for three hours in a broth of cider, vegetables, bay leaves and peppercorns. The house smells amazing. That port, by the way, is the 2008 Barnard Griffin Syrah, which was purchased in Washington state on our last trip to USA, for nine whole dollars. It is excellent.

I Sense That Pig Is Near

"If I laser my way through the table with my eyes, the ham will fall into my mouth."

Not Amused

"You will give me the string. AND the ham. Do not toy with me, human."

The String! The STRIIIIIING!

BHITW Is Ready For Oven

If you'll excuse me, I have to go and get more port into me before the bloke cottons onto it and realizes he should stop drinking ale.

Wanted: Miss B. Haven

2009-12-22T14:49:23Z

WANTED: MISS B. HAVEN

Known Aliases Nanila, Mad Scientess, Lilith, Jane Expat
Crimes Excessive Chirpiness, Harbouring Rascals, Scrumping, Pimping Science, Superlative Abuse
Special Skills Sleeping Through Anything, Generating Warmth, Cheese-Eating, Tea-Drinking, Bison Mimicry
Weapons Silver Shootin' Irons
Reward £10 or a round at the bar
Considered Highly Dangerous. Do not approach if wearing Cheap Silver Cowboy Hat, which looks as if it were purchased for a Hen Night or Some Such Nonsense. It is intended to disarm and deceive.

Snow day meme

2009-12-19T14:21:20Z

oursin gave me five questions, which I have answered below the cuts:

Is being an expat your preference? Being an expat is my preference now. It didn't start off that way. At first it was difficult and scary. I didn't have friends that weren't my partner's. Just leaving the house proved to be exhausting, especially when traveling around London by bus, which was what I could afford. This was before the buses had those handy boards & announcements for every stop and you had either to sit at the front on the upper level or right next to the left-hand windows on the lower level to be able to spot the stops. Even then, London's winding streets meant that often you couldn't read the signs until you were within 20 feet of them, at which point the bus was already flying past it.

I went through a depressive slump, which both caused and was then exacerbated by, the meltdown of said relationship. I attempted to cope with this by drinking a lot and pretending everything was fine. You can imagine how well that worked.

Now, however, I've won myself a pretty nice lifestyle, I think. I thrive on the perpetual edge of heightened awareness that being an expat requires. I'm always conscious that my behaviour must be monitored and occasionally modified to suit the cultural norm. However, as the culture suits my quirks and peccadilloes quite well, it's no longer a struggle. Instead, it's a source of happiness.

When did you first identify as an atheist (if you do)? I think I've always been a non-believer. My parents were quite careful to raise me without any religious indoctrination. We didn't go to church, but if I had wanted to, they wouldn't have stopped me. (I didn't.) My mother tried to expose me to different schools of belief and philosophy through the books she brought home from the library. I attended a Catholic school in Hawai'i, but this was simply because my mother worked in the library. Very little of the doctrine seems to have made its way into my nascent consciousness. I spent all my time staring out the stained glass windows and wondering how they'd been made, or day-dreaming about being outside.

I didn't think to label myself an atheist until I was in high school. As high school is a difficult enough time as it is, I didn't discuss my lack of faith with many other people since nearly all my friends were fervent Baptists or Mormons. My training as a scientist and post-university reading material have only served to firm up my position and provide me with the tools to gently but firmly deflect attempts to convert me.

Favourite thing about physics? I think my favourite thing about physics is its boldness. "Hey!" says physics. "I know it's an impossible task and I'll never get it completely right, but I'm going to try and work out the fundamental laws governing the behaviour of the observable universe." You have to be a little nuts to expect that you can do that even to a reasonable approximation. And yet physics manages.

Would you volunteer to take part in a space mission? Technically, I've already volunteered to take part in several space missions. I'm going to assume, though, that you meant would I volunteer to participate in a manned space mission. Yes, but there would be caveats. Were it, for instance, a colonization mission I would have to be able to bring my partner for a potentially one-way trip. If it were a servicing mission for a robotic spacecraft, a trip to the moon or a stint on the ISS, all of which are on the order of months, I would volunteer without reservation.

London: tired of, tired of life? Or foul wen? I think it's possible to be tired of living in London without being tired of life. I love working in London and the exciting mix of high and low-brow opportunities for night-time entertainment it affords. But I also love living with my partner, being able to afford a house with a substantial garden, having pets and essentially escaping to the countryside every weekend. I have to make sacrifices - I can't really close out the pub with friends very often unless I want to pay heavily for it by being exhausted from the commute for days afterwards, for instance - but my quality of life has improved substantially since I moved out of London.

If you would like five questions of your own, dear DW/LJ friends, please leave a comment. I will respond. (Actual number of questions may vary depending upon how well I know you, whether or not I've asked you questions before, whether or not you answered them, whether or not I'm afraid of repeating myself and how much time I have.)

You know what's coming now. Oh yes, you do. It's...Adorable Kitten Picture time! With snow!

Telstar is not convinced that this is good for him. At all.

Mighty Hunter Sputnik. Very good at catching his brother.

It's winter in Cambridgeshire

2009-12-18T10:43:40Z

I woke this morning and looked out the window into the back garden to see if I would be commuting to work today.

Snow says no.

Part of the garden fence blew down in the winds. The kittens took one look at the snow and shot back inside. I cleared off the bird feeder since it was coated in snow and ice. Sputnik & Telstar have been sitting on the kitchen windowsill, snug and warm, to watch the show.

Cold feet

When the mice are away

2009-12-14T20:13:28Z

I encountered three boys on the way to the train station this morning. I'm fairly certain it was The Them from Good Omens. I'm not sure where Pepper had gone. I bet she would have treated the kind of porkies they were telling with the appropriate level of scorn.

"An' then I kicked at him like this!" exclaimed one, as I approached. He launched a poorly controlled assault at the air that missed my midsection by inches. I quickly passed to avoid further physical involvement.

"Stupid, you almost knocked out that old woman," chastised the second.

"She's not old, she just has a lot of hair," observed the third.

They paused to allow this shift in their perception to sink in.

"She should get it cut," said the first.

"No!" said the third, who was rapidly becoming my favourite. "I bet she has a lot of fun head-banging."

I turned my head enough to see him stop in the middle of the pavement to proffer a convincing demonstration. I had to move on swiftly so they wouldn't hear my laughter.

~*~

I don't think you're supposed to feel this way in winter, but lately I've had the sensation that I'm "waking up" creatively. Writing is flowing more easily. I have more ideas for photography projects than time to execute them. I've been painting, though am not presently inclined to share the results. I conserve as much precious energy as possible to spend in the studio. Consequently, I'm no longer a person at the party that people can count on to pull out all the stops and to carry on all evening. I regret the loss of this type of enjoyment, but not enough to prevent me from hopping on the train at 10 rather than midnight to go home.

~*~

Finally, the obligatory Adorable Kitten Photo.

We aren't s'posed to be on your bed. Do you have the heart to move us?

Amaryllis

2009-12-13T22:08:57Z

States of decay

Several weeks ago, the bloke remarked casually that it would be nice if we purchased some bulbs to plant in our back garden, so there would be a bit of colour there to cheer us up come the spring. I agreed.

A trip to a garden centre and a consultation with our gardener friend later, the bloke discovered a web shop where he could order bulbs at a great discount. He went a little mad. A few days later, 565 bulbs turned up. We spent the next three weekends creating, and digging compost into, several new flower beds so that we'd have someplace to plant them. As an afterthought, he bought two large amaryllis bulbs for the house, since we were going to have to wait months to appreciate the fruits of our labours.

The white began to flower two weeks ago. The red popped out on Wednesday. I've derived a quiet kind of winter pleasure from watching their luxuriant, velvety blooms evolve and then crumple into tissue-thin husks.

Emergence

Formative Childhood Experiences: Trust No One

2009-12-10T11:35:51Z

No one can break your heart the way they can when you're a child. That pure, searing agony of utter tragedy enveloping you, of the world collapsing into the crumped tissue with which you wipe your streaming face. You don't yet have the twin defenses of experience and the sense of humour imparted thereby.

I've often been called reserved and aloof and I can pinpoint the lessons that led to the development of these traits. I'll start with "Other People Don't Always Want To Do The Same Things As You".

I had a friend in the third grade, Terri. She wasn't just a friend. She was my best and only true friend. She was also to be the last person I ever called that.

Terri was my friend at least in part because she was very shy and I was quite outgoing. I did most of the talking for both of us. She never seemed to mind. Also, she was the only person willing to accompany me at recess in the pursuits I preferred - bug-watching in the woods, pretending my dollhouse was occupied by a king and his family and attempting to make shelters out of branches and sticks, where we would live when we were grown up. I didn't like team sports and had no desire to play foursquare or basketball. And I was perfectly happy because I thought I'd found someone just like me.

One day as we passed the dodgeball courts en route to the woods (that day's activity: cracking open freshly falled horse chestnuts), Terri yanked her hand out of mine. I stared open-mouthed as she joined the line to play the game. "What are you doing? Come on!" I insisted, trying to pull her away. She shook me off. "I'm going to play," she said calmly and turned her back on me. I wandered off to the woods by myself. My tears blinded me periodically but I still managed to assemble a fine collection of glossy chestnuts before returning to the classroom, where I sat next to Terri in silence. The next day, I asked to be moved to a different desk. I sat with a boy who spent most of his time drawing spaceships and ignoring me, which suited me fine for the rest of the year. Terri went to sit with Holly, who eventually became one of the popular girls, with her curly blonde hair and sweet, pliant personality, neither of which I would ever possess.

I mourned the loss of that perceived harmony for a couple of years, but eventually I found someone else I thought I could trust, at least. This led to the "Other People Make Fun Of You Behind Your Back" lesson. This girl was a neighbour, two years older than me, and I was flattered that she wanted to spend time with me and found my odd activities interesting. She was willing to rehearse and perform a play I'd written about going home to Hawai'i, to get soggy while making mud sculptures next to the creek and to try science experiments such as baking-soda volcanoes. She seemed more than tolerant. She was eager to participate. (Notice how my expectations have undergone radical reassessment.)

One day I went over to her house to ask if she wanted to play. She always said yes, so I took it for granted that she would. When I arrived, I found two other, older girls were already there with her, up in the treehouse. My friend wouldn't come down to talk to me. "I don't want to play with you every day," she said impatiently. I was hurt, especially since I didn't ask her to play with me every day, but I started to walk away, not wishing to commit the same error I had with Terri. As I departed, I heard one of the other girls say, "Is that your neighbour? She's so weird."

I waited to hear my friend's response.

She giggled.

It was a sound that indicated her complicity with the sentiment as clearly as if she'd voiced it herself. I knew I didn't wish to play with her that day or ever again.

A couple of weeks later, I spotted her from the living room window, under which I was attempting to devise a code unbreakable to my older male cousin. (I never succeeded. I later discovered he'd found the notebook in which I wrote my keys.) She came over the front lawn hesitantly, with an appealing expression on her face. I bolted out the back door and down to the stream so I wouldn't have to hear her ingratiating voice or my mother's puzzlement at finding me absent from the house.

The lesson was complete. Don't trust people with the fruits of your imagination, for they will mock you.

This wariness may be why I fell in love with the internet and social networking (before it was even called that). Suddenly it became possible to introduce a level of abstraction and anonymity into group interaction, and surprisingly, the majority of people seemed to be rather considerate about it. The abstraction provided a measure of protection from the sort of pain described above. I could share my thoughts and my creative output with less of a risk to my heart. These experiences may also be partly be why all my romantic relationships have been heterosexual. (The other part is an almost fanatical devotion to the cock, but moving swiftly onwards...) However irrationally, I don't believe that male humans can hurt me the way female humans have. I've been devastated by the breakup of various relationships, but none have had the poignancy of those early ones. None of my more recent experiences have had effects from which I've struggled to recover for so long. This is the first time I've been able to write about them in an objective way and they happened over twenty years ago.

I think this may be why I'm so fond of, and to a certain extent identify with, the Brits. There are people in the UK whom I can call friends, I think, but neither they nor I would ever commit the embarrassing crime of speaking of it aloud or of insisting that the friendship include such activities as, say, spending a lot of time together. My trust and love are girded with cautious silence, but that doesn't make them any less real or tenacious than it is with those who wear their hearts on their sleeves. An understanding of this perspective is embedded in the culture here, which makes life easier for a spiky little soul like me.

I have an exciting house update.

2009-12-09T20:37:42Z

I spent the last two nights in London at the lovely imyril & her boy's flat while something wonderful happened to our house.

It acquired...central heating.

This may not sound particularly thrilling to you, but to me, this is the best £4k I have ever spent. Before, the house had ancient electric storage heaters which cost a fortune to run, and as we discovered once it got properly cold, don't actually warm a room beyond the four feet directly in front of the heater. Additionally, the bathroom featured a miniscule hot water heater which was at least 30 years old and probably half full of limescale. We could take 1.5 showers (note: 2 people + 1.5 showers == 1 unhappy person*) OR 1 bath per day. If we did either of the preceding, we couldn't wash the dishes in hot water.

I'd gotten used to the shower/bath situation. I'd even gotten used to getting home and putting on more clothes than I was wearing when I was outside. After three months of scrubbing greasy pans in cold water, though, my patience was wearing thin.

I would post pictures, but I don't think photos of combination boilers and radiators are all that exciting. Pictures of the glorious bubble bath I'm going to take in a few minutes might be more interesting. However, the internet has yet to see naked pictures of me and I think I'll keep it that way.

* Since I get up early to commute to London, Unhappy Person was almost invariably the bloke. Poor man.

ETA: You can have some pictures of the kittens. Because they're cute and fluffy.

Sputnik & Telstar discover bathtime

Bubbles. Oooh.

Cat Tales

2009-12-03T22:13:49Z

Sputnik & Telstar had their first great outdoor adventure last weekend. They frolicked outside for a good half an hour before returning indoors. To use their litterbox.

As they scampered back outside, I shouted, "Boys, you have totally missed the point."

~*~

I let the boys out when I got home this evening to have their first taste of the World At Night. They bounded eagerly through the door and screeched to a halt near the wheelbarrow leaning against the house, proceeding with extreme caution. They were quickly lost to view, though I could hear their bells through the partially open door. I had just phoned the bloke to discuss our imminent holiday when I heard the most appalling screech, followed by a jingling bell.

I ran outside to find Telstar, who is the larger of the two, cowering behind the wheelbarrow. Sputnik stood in the middle of the lawn, fluffed up to the best of his ability, which still brought him nowhere near the size of the battle-scarred moggie perched on the fence and spitting furiously. I chased off the full-grown cat and chastised Telstar for leaving his brave little brother in the lurch.

He later attempted to redeem himself by launching himself into the deep end of pond in pursuit of the moon. I tried to explain that "foolhardy" is not the same quality as "valiance". I do not think I made much of an impression.

~*~

Cat farts. Explain to me how it is possible for something so small to produce so foul a stench.

And finally, a poll to test how well you know your nanila:

View Poll: Travel procrastination

The Moon & Me

2009-11-30T09:14:58Z

When I ride the train home after work late at night, the harsh fluorescent glare of the carriage lights means that looking out the window yields only a reflection of my tired face.

Fortunately, I hardly ever see it. I'm too absorbed in the shape of my own thoughts.

METALHANDS. METALHANDS OF THANKFULNESS.

2009-11-26T18:27:48Z

It's Thanksgiving in my country. I've been sent home from work early because my coughing and sneezing were disturbing my colleagues. I'm heating up frozen pizza to eat alone in the house because the bloke is going out for drinks with his workmates.

But I'm not depressed.

Because

I got my passport back. \m/

Leave to remain in the UK and work for the employer of my choice through 2012. \m/

I'm going to pretend this video of the Muppets singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" was made for me.

Encounters with the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade

2009-11-25T14:35:56Z

Over the past three days, my work colleague & I have received phone calls on our shared office phone from a chap who is becoming increasingly weird. He will only identify himself as "James", which he tells us is not his real name (?!) and he refuses to give us his number.

During the first call, he pestered my work colleague to give him the contact information of an ex-colleague. My work colleague refused, partly because we don't actually have contact information for him other than a personal mobile number, which we certainly weren't going to give to someone who refused to give us a real name.

During the second call, he asked if it were possible to beam information directly into someone's brain using a laser. He informed us that he believed someone was doing this to him. My work colleague assured him it was not possible to do this without him noticing (e.g. being put inside a CAT scanner).

I answered the third call, confusing "James". He tried to ask for my work colleague but he couldn't remember his name ("Foreign chap. Maybe Eastern European." Said colleague is Dutch.) and I wasn't about to help him. He asked me if the college had any sort of device for measuring microwave radiation. Yes, I said, it does. He asked if he could borrow it or buy it from us. No, I said, you can't. Why? he asked, becoming belligerent. Because it's purpose-built and it's not for sale, I answered.

"Look, can I talk to the guy I spoke to before?" he asked.
"No, there's no one else here right now. If you leave a number and a message, I can figure out who it is and ask him to phone you back," I answered in my brightest breeziest American.
"I don't have a number," he grumbled.
"Well, that's a shame," I said.
"I'll try again later," he growled.

If he calls again, I'm going to tell him that the next transmission from the laser will erase our phone number from his brain.

I hope this sets the tone for the rest of the week.

2009-11-23T11:00:48Z

I witnessed the loveliest microdrama as I walked down the steps into Kings Cross tube station this morning.

Person 1: "Well, I'll see you at home later then. Should I phone when I'm leaving?"
Person 2: "No, I'll start cooking and you come home when you can."
A small hand-squeeze, a decorous kiss, a loving look and they parted ways, one for the Victoria/Piccadilly/Northern entrance, the other the Hammersmith & City/Circle/Metropolitan.

Now, this would have been a nice enough scene if it were to have contained a young, good-looking heterosexual couple. However. Person 1 was a podgy middle-aged man in a reflective jacket and paint-spattered overalls. Person 2 was a slightly taller, slightly older man wearing a suit and a smart overcoat and carrying a briefcase. ♥ ♥ ♥

The Tale of The Engineer & The Professor

2009-11-20T16:10:05Z

The Engineer & The Professor

I'd like to introduce you all to someone. He's the smiling chap on the left. His name is Trevor Beek and I work with him in the magnetometer lab at Imperial.

I recently read a section in CP Snow's The Two Cultures, a transcription of his 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge, which reminds me of Trevor. Snow mainly intended to illustrate humanities' and sciences' understanding - or as he saw it, lack thereof - of one another. This paragraph draws attention to a different set of attitudes that I'm sorry to say still prevails in academic society.

"Pure scientists have by and large been dim-witted about engineers and applied science. They couldn't get interested. They wouldn't recognize that many of the problems were as intellectually exacting as pure problems and that many of the solutions were as satisfying and beautiful. Their instinct - perhaps sharpened in this country by the passion to find a new snobbism wherever possible, and to invent one if it doesn't exist - was to take it for granted that applied science was an occupation for second-rate minds. I say this more sharply because thirty years ago I took precisely that line myself. The climate of thought of young research workers in Cambridge then was not to our credit. We prided ourselves that the science we were doing could not, in any conceivable circumstances, have any practical use. The more firmly one could make that claim, the more superior one felt."

By these standards, Trevor is not a very important man. But one person who certainly doesn't hold such an arrogant and ill-conceived opinion about the nature of engineering is the man on the right, Professor Andre Balogh. Trevor has spent 44 of Prof. Balogh's 45 years working with him at Imperial. Trevor has had a hand in building every instrument that has gone into space and been used by the Space Physics group. When he solders a component to a breadboard, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. There are bits of his electronics handiwork orbiting an alarmingly high number of the bodies in our solar system. As an ex-colleague was fond of saying, if the aliens ever decide to clone humans from the cells they find aboard our spacecraft, the probability that they'll generate Trevor is rather high.

It continues to amaze me that there are postgraduate students and postdocs in our group who go through the three or four years of their PhDs or fellowships, using the data that would not exist without him, and don't know who Trevor is. One of the best things about him is that he sincerely doesn't care. I recently heard him say, "I'm the guy in the background. Nobody knows who I am and that's the way I like it." This is a man who has 787 scientific citations to his name. Seven hundred and eighty-seven. That is a number which a good many researchers would happily give up a kidney to have. Again, he doesn't care. It's not important. If there were a Coolness Factor (like an inverse Impact Factor) for academic achievement, the top of the scale would be measured by Trevor Beek. He loves his unassuming life, sitting with his colleagues at lunchtime, talking about old Bond films and giving advice on the best fish to put in your garden pond.

Although he could retire this year, he's just reducing his hours. Like most people who enjoy their work, he doesn't really want to retire yet. I expect to raise a glass of whisky with him many more times before he goes. And if you have a drink or three this weekend, I hope you'll give a little wave in London's direction in honour of this creative, productive engineer who's used his life's work to make it possible to conduct science research in space.

My boys

2009-11-17T17:09:36Z

What chance has a girl got against the onslaught of six naughty hazel eyes?

What's really important, though, is that I made apple crumble today.

2009-11-15T23:13:15Z

I'm intrigued at the way my reading habits have evolved over the past few years. I used to be an avid re-reader. I own books whose re-read counts approach or surpass double digits, most of which are fiction (either novels or collections of short stories). I would also rarely fail to finish a book, even if I hated it.

Now, however, I read a good deal more non-fiction that isn't just science articles. I'm also very choosy about the fiction I read. If something fails to grip me, it goes to the charity shop without any sense of guilt or agonizing over my inability to appreciate it.

Below the cut are the books I've read since I started commuting from Cambridge to London at the end of July. Not a single one is a re-read.

Marilynne Robinson Housekeeping, fiction
Mitchio Kaku Physics of the Impossible, popular science
Margaret Atwood Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, non-fiction
Mark Kurlansky Nonviolence, non-fiction
Anne Brontë The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, fiction
W. Somerset Maugham Ah King, fictional short stories
Hanif Kureishi Midnight All Day, fictional short stories
Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front, fiction
David Low Dodge War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ, non-fiction, referenced by 4
Anne Brontë Agnes Grey, fiction
Orhan Pamuk My Name is Red, Nobel fiction
Orhan Pamuk Istanbul, autobiographical
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth, fiction
Mary Elizabeth Braddon Lady Audley's Secret, fiction
Jane Austen Northanger Abbey, fiction
Richard Matheson Button, Button, fictional short stories
Jane Austen & Ben H. Winters Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters, fan fiction
Ben Goldacre Bad Science, popular science
J. M. Coetze Disgrace, Nobel fiction
Gerald Durrell The Stationary Ark, non-fiction
C. P. Snow A Coat of Varnish, fiction
Simon Singh Fermat's Last Theorem, popular maths
Georgina Ferry Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life, biography
Saul Bellow Herzog, Nobel fiction
Muriel Barberry The Elegance of the Hedgehog, fiction

I could probably have gotten through more if I didn't mix in the New Scientist, the Economist and the more than occasional guilty indulgence in sudoku & crosswords. However, I think my Christmas present to myself might be a re-reading of the David Eddings series The Belgariad, which I adored when I was twelve but hardly qualifies as Nobel-prize winning literature.

BEER

2009-11-10T17:47:36Z

I did physics on the train to work.

Then I got to work and did physics.

I had a meeting about physics.

I had lunch, during which physics was discussed.

I had another meeting about physics.

Then I taught physics in lab for 3.5 hours.

View Poll: Physics or beer?

Bonfire night & mulled wine

2009-11-06T14:45:26Z

I knew it was coming, but it was still a slight shock last night when I had my first real pang of homesickness for life in London. Oh, I know I still work here, but commuting isn't the same thing.

The bloke and I decided to help a friend prepare for a lectureship interview today by running a mock interview last night and critiquing his presentation. I don't begrudge him this attention, as we'd all like to see him get this job. As I hurried home from the station, I saw some neighbourhood Bonfire Night fireworks above the roofs of the houses. I suddenly wished very much that I were in London, jammed into a pub with a dozen acquaintances, excitedly pouring mulled wine down my throat to insulate me against the cold before going to a park to watch the Guy burn.

I did get to have the mulled wine. I like the stuff I make best anyway. It goes like this. Start at least an hour before you want to drink it. Then, over the lowest possible heat - you don't want to boil the wine - mix the following:

1 bottle nice rich red wine (I favour chianti but merlot was fine last night. Thank you M&S.)
1 lemon, sliced into rough chunks
2 oranges, likewise
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup sugar (Can be adjusted for taste. I like mine pretty sweet.)
some cloves
ground cinnamon
freshly grated nutmeg
allspice
splash of brandy, sherry or other sweet strong liqueur (I used the last of our previous year's homemade sloe gin)

Stir periodically. The longer you can bear to let it sit and heat slowly, the better it'll taste. When you can stand it no longer, make 2 cups of peppermint tea and add it to the mulled wine. Spoon into wine glasses as if it were punch. Nom.

Boffoonery for Bletchley Park

2009-11-04T13:21:18Z

I have now seen Simon Singh speak twice in the space of two weeks. I didn't know he was going to be at last night's charity comedic nerditry event "Boffoonery", in aid of Bletchley Park, at the Bloomsbury Theatre beforehand, though. So I think that means I am definitely not a Loony Fangirl. Nope.

For those of you who don't know, Simon Singh is a particle physicist turned popular science writer who has written such fascinating epistles (no, I'm not being sarcastic) as Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book. He is also a dynamic and incredibly articulate speaker. Last Monday, the deliciously cerebral mathmo happydork and I met upstairs at the Blue Posts pub in Piccadilly to hear him discuss his latest book Trick or Treatment, which is about alternative medicine, with the Science London book club. Much to our surprise, we found we were part of an audience of only 40-odd people, and thus nearly everyone who wanted to do so got to ask a question and engage him in dialogue.

Of course, we had to have the following discussion at the end.

nanila: "Oh, you've taken notes!"
happydork: "Yes. I wasn't going to so I didn't bring my notebook, but..." She holds up a heavily annotated bus ticket.
nanila: "That settles it. You're blogging this."

And she wrote up the evening beautifully. I recommend that you read about it here.

Last night, Dr Singh opened "Boffoonery" with fabulous demonstrations of the perils of believing in pseudocode by finding signs and portents of Princess Diana's death in Moby Dick, and of the Enigma encoding machine that was cracked at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing & friends during the WWII. This was by far the most geekcore moment of the entire evening, which was good because the two pints on an empty stomach had kicked in completely by the time Hugh Dennis (yes, the one from "Mock the Week"), Robin Ince and Robert Llewellyn (better known as Red Dwarf's Kryten) appeared to make bad puns about computing and cryptography. Additionally, Maggie Philbin, Richard Herring, Robin Ince and Johnny Ball competed in the first and last ever Bletchley Park-themed quiz show, scored in binary. Johnny Ball explaining the Königsberg bridge problem with flourishes of green marker pen while strands of white hair waved energetically about his head is a sight I shall not soon forget.

Next week, I plan to attend a symposium in memory of Harry Elliott, FRS, a debate on human spaceflight run by the astrophysics group, and the Jay Reatard show. If Simon Singh appears at any of those, I shall be quite surprised.

Professors Tinycat Strike Again

2009-11-03T10:02:37Z

The visa application is sent. I can do no more except wait.

Except bombard you with Adorable Kitten Macros.

Sputnik Doesn't Believe You

Telstar is Always Prepared

It's good catch, that Catch-22

2009-11-02T11:28:29Z

There have been developments in the ongoing saga of my quest to renew my visa. No wait, don't scroll to the next entry on your friends page! This is worth reading, if only for the element of schadenfreude.

Due to various bits of administrative faffing, I had to delay submission of my renewal forms. This means that it is getting rather uncomfortably close to the date of my visa's expiry. So I sought to make an in-person application. It's more expensive, but you get the visa that day and so it is guaranteed to happen before your current visa expires.

That is, assuming you can get an appointment.

I tried every office (Croydon/London, Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Cardiff) through the online booking system, repeatedly. None of them have appointments available. Please note also that some of these places are a good five-hour journey from both my place of residence and my work. I phoned UKBA, who informed me that every appointment at every office is booked through 31 December.

The really beautiful thing about this is that you are not allowed to renew your visa until within 5 weeks of its expiry date. Hence, by the time you're ready to submit your application, it is impossible to get an appointment.

The icing on the cake was finding out that since I filled out my form, it's changed. So I have to print out the whole 75 page application and fill it out again.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (part 1 of 2)

2009-10-31T18:42:22Z

On Thursday night, imyril, dizzykj and I went to watch Ben Haggerty tell seasonally appropriate tales at the Barbican pit theatre. I enjoyed it so much I wrote them up on the train home, and I want to share them with you this Halloween night.

Ben began on a plane to Jonesborough, Tennessee, heading for a storytelling convention. A dashing devil in a cowboy hat tricked him into stretching out across Row 13, reserved for the absent Mississippi Moondoggies. The weather turned bad, forcing the plane to divert to a city in Georgia. Ben noticed a funfair during the bus trip to his hotel and walked to it after checking in, much to the consternation of the receptionist. He played a shooting gallery game, hitting an unprecedented nine out of 10 targets and winning a lucky silver-plated left hind rabbit paw (shot by a cross-eyed man on a moonlight night). He slipped the paw into his pocket and wandered on.

He felt drawn, guilt-ridden, to the sideshow, outlawed in his country. For a mere $5, he could purchase the privilege of viewing ten exhibits through ten doors. The first, he was told by the carnie barker, was something English for an Englishman. A lord found himself a lady at an American beauty pageant while playing away from home. He took her to the sideshow, where he was hypnotised by the expert sideshow performer Marcello. Since the lord had a laugh like a donkey, the lady told Marcello to turn him into one. The lord's braying amused her briefly, but she wanted something else. She told Marcello to turn him into a rabbit, as he'd been after her like one. He did. As the lord hopped about the stage, Marcello dropped dead of a heart attack. No one could snap the Englishman out of his trance.

Having viewed the unfortunate man, Ben remarked dubiously that it could be any old bloke pretending to be a rabbit. Ah, said the carnie man. Consider Door 2! Behind Door 2 you'll find an amazing sight. A long time ago, twin Dutch girls with a poor seamstress mother were out on an errand when they heard an organ grinder in the street. Enchanted by the music, they stopped to watch him. Oh, you like my music! said the man. Watch this. He pressed a button and a large red flower, poppy-like, unfurled from the box. In the flower's centre stood a perfect porcelain Dutch boy. These twin girls have always wanted a brother. Please sir, they asked, may we have the music box? This is my livelihood, he replied. If you want it, you must do something really bad.

The girls went home. The next day, they ruined their mother's sewing basket and cut up the curtains. Returning to the music man, they found him scornful. Such paltry sabotage is not really bad, he said. Despondently, the girls returned home, where they found themselves forgiven. The next day, they deliberately shattered all the crockery while washing up. Their furious mother threatened, If you continue like this, I'll leave you here alone! The girls, though frightened, would not be so easily deterred from their goal, though the music man deemed their deed not quite bad enough. Once the boy was brought home, their mother would relent.

The next day, the girls razed their mother's little garden, so carefully tended, her pride and joy. Seeing the girls with the secateurs in their hands, their mother packed up and left. The girls waited. After night fell, they heard a knock at the door. They rushed to it. But it was not their mother. Instead, the music man told them that they'd succeeded at last in being really bad. He scooped them up and stuffed them in a sack.

In the morning, the organ grinder could be seen in the street. When the poppy opened, it now revealed two perfect little Dutch girls.

Though the music box was indeed ornately carved and beautiful, Ben wasn't impressed. Well, said the carnie barker, wait til you see what's behind Door 3. First, let me tell you the real story of Cain and Abel. Cain's father was the Devil. See, the serpent didn't give Eve a fruit. He gave her...something else. Nine months later, she gave birth to Cain and a twin sister, whose name everyone forgot. Eve became pregnant again, this time by Adam, and gave birth to twins, Abel and his twin sister.

When the four children grew up, Adam decided that Abel should marry Cain's sister and vice versa. Cain had a problem with this. His sister was stunningly beautiful, while Abel's sister wasn't. So Cain suggested putting the choice to the Lord. Whichever of them gave the best offering to the Lord would be allowed to marry his sister. They took their offerings - Cain, a marvelous cornucopia from his harvest; Abel, a fluffy young lamb - to God. God struck the lamb down with a thunderbolt. Ha! exclaimed Abel, rushing down the hill to claim his prize. Cain, unthinking, picked up a stone and loosed it at Abel's head. He tried to hide Abel's body, as the ravens did after plucking out the smoking lamb's eyes. Of course, he couldn't hide it from God, who cursed him to roam the Earth without peace for eternity.

If you want to see Cain's folly, said the carnie barker, open Door 3. Ben went in to see a tiny brown snake writhing in a large aquarium. As he watched, the aquarium began to fill with bubbling red liquid, drowning the snake. Shaken, he emerged. English, did you like that? demanded the carnie barker. It was pretty horrible, said Ben, but no more so than any other piece of modern art.

You're hard to please, English, but I think you'll be shocked by Door 4. That there is a sad tale of greed. Old Ezekiel "Easy" Brown was drinking in a pub with his friends. He was a black man in the south, and like most, he was poor. This night he was angry about it and he stood up and shouted, dammit, is there no way to make easy money in this town?

A strange man stood up and answered, there is. Yeah? challenged Easy. Then why you dressed in rags like us? Because I'm scared to get it, replied the man. I tell you why. It's grave-robbing that can make you rich. There's a mausoleum in that graveyard on the hill, made of black marble, no door, with a symbol like they have on dollar bills, pyramid with an eye in it. You poke that eye and a whole wall slides back. When you step in, the door shuts behind you. A beautiful vision of a woman appears. She offers you all the gold you can carry, all the wealth you can hold and all the knowledge of mankind. All you have to do is kiss her (with tongue). Okay, I said, but only if you say the Lord's Prayer with me. So I started saying it. She hissed and threw me out. I ain't going back there.

That's EASY! shouted Easy. He rushed out of the bar and up the hill to the graveyard. He found the mausoleum and the pyramid and the lady and did what she said, with none of the Lord's Prayer stuff. She kissed him and his tongue turned into a snake. He rushed frantically back to the bar, where the tongue cursed his friends. He rushed home, where the tongue cursed his wife and daughter and drove them from his house. As he was about to give up hope, he stumbled across a baptism at the river and hurled himself at the priest. The priest, recognizing a man possessed, started to exorcize Easy. The tongue popped out of Easy's mouth and scuttled away in the water. Just as he thought he was saved, it returned with four alligator friends, which wrenched Easy's limbs from his body.

Now Easy has all the gold he can carry, all the wealth he can hold in his hands, and he's crazy. Job done. If you want to see him, English, open Door 4. Ben did, and saw the pathetic creature lying in straw, surrounded by money.

I need a drink, Ben told the carnie man. This county is dry, replied the man, but I have a secret. Open Door 5, go up the hill to the shack and show them your ticket. Just don't be too long.

~to be continued~

Dr Bones, ? - 28 October 2009

2009-10-28T20:57:28Z

Many moons ago, Marco and I went to get a coffee after a rock-climbing trip. On the way out of Peet's, he was adopted on the pavement by a large grey cat of indeterminate age. Said cat spent a number of happy years with us in San Diego and Los Angeles. When it came time to move to London, he had to stay behind with my parents and my own cat, Molly.

Two years ago, he was diagnosed with 25% kidney function and given two months to live. Typically, the irascible grey cat was having none of that and continued to dominate my parents shamelessly.

Four days ago, he stopped eating and drinking. Today, my parents made the difficult decision to take him to the vet.

Good night, Dr Bones

Overheard in England

2009-10-26T14:54:07Z

To Christina, the young lady on the train who volubly discussed a recent "infidelity" with a seatmate for the entire 50 minute journey from Cambridge to London Kings Cross,

First of all, if you are agonizing about whether or not to tell your boyfriend, perhaps it is not wise to do so on an otherwise silent - and packed - train carriage. Secondly, if you are agonizing about whether or not to tell your boyfriend, perhaps it is not wise to phone up your entire circle of acquaintances and tell them about it so that everyone knows about it except him. It will not stay that way for long. Thirdly, from what I gather, having been seated in the privileged position directly in front of you, you got drunk with a male friend, who also has a girlfriend. You let him sleep at yours, during the course of which he made a pass at you. You didn't shag him. You didn't even kiss him. Even if you are currently lying to your friends and yourself, this is not the end of the goddamn world. Why don't you face up to the fact that what you're really after is the pleasure of making a tearful, heartrending confession? And the romantic, painful reconciliation scene? I can almost guarantee, however, that the way you're going about it ensures that should you eventually decide to tell him, this is not what you'll get.

xo xo
nanila

PS Explain to me how it is that you did not spontaneously combust from all the hatred being directed at you by my fellow commuters.

To Christina's boyfriend,

Maybe she's not a cheater, but she definitely is a drama queen. This will happen again. So unless you happen to be equally fond of public scenes of remonstrance and floods of tears, I'd suggest a quiet exit at your earliest convenience. HA! Ahem, excuse me, something in my throat.

Good luck with that,
nanila

File Under: Getting Old & Boring

2009-10-25T20:26:57Z

I've spent the last three weekends being a happy housewife. Okay, we've done other stuff, like having people round and getting drunk, or going to the pub and getting drunk. But the bits that give me a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment have been the housework and the baking. For instance, on Saturday I cleaned the whole house and made zucchini bread, which I refuse to rename "courgette bread" for the Brits. Today, I did all the laundry and hung it outside so it smells nice and fresh. I trimmed back the brambles encroaching from the jungle that masquerades as next door's garden. I dug up a large section of the garden near the house, separated out and replanted all the crocus bulbs I found, and planted a batch of tulips.

After dark, we popped over to the Botanic Gardens for a bizarre event called the "Plant Orchestra". The gardens allowed a Bristolian artist to spend several nights wiring up 60 plants in the Palm House to record the sounds they made. He chose the best 15 for the Orchestra. Visitors walk through the Palm House at night and listen to the recordings. The members of the Orchestra have green flashing LEDs nestled amongst their foliage. The banana palm gurgles. The capsicum crackles. The bamboo sounds like the lurching of a distant train. It is a most peculiar experience, and rather magical, especially when you look up and see the constellations of the northern hemisphere through the roof of the hot tropical glass house.

I fear I'm in great danger of settling down.

If you read this far without falling asleep, congratulations! Have some kitten pictures. And a disheveled Catmother.

Catmother, just awoken & in her oversized dressing gown

The belt on your dressing gown is a toy for me, right?

You cannot resist the combined power of our KAYOOT.