Press statement

Hello everyone! Just thought I'd better update this, since it's been a few days now. I've been on the road, and there are a few little stories to tell.....

There's been a retirement conference for Stuart Warren, who is the old boss of my current boss. In a normal working environment this would be an odd thing, but academia is a law unto itself with any number of quirky habits, and mild sychophantism seems to be one of them. So off we all trundled to listen to quite a few names in the world of chemistry, far too many of which I have some mild connection with. *ick*

So, to travel the dumdeedum-odd miles to Cambridge, we (that's the group at work) all had to get up at silly o'clock to drive down. No real trouble, except that a certain person's car decided it wouldnt start, and so there was a lot of frantic ringing around to alert people, and then owing to not being able to get hold of one person, hanging around and phaffing for a while. Net result: hour and half late in departing and I could have had an extra kip in. Ah well.

Smooth journey down in Becky's, or as smooth as you could expect with a lovely dosing of the Strokes and Sir Mix-a-lot. Brilliant.

Conference-y business all OK, some interesting, some boring (there's a surprise), and a realisation again of how closed a little world I live an work in. An a little bit of self-disgust on that whole nepotism kind of front. Very closed shop it is.

Cambridge seems to be a very nice little city, but you never know with places like that whether they would be absolute hell to live in, what with marauding students and tourists all over the place. Oxford was OK when I lived there, but to be fair I wasnt constantly in the city. And seeing a place in sunshine is always helpful. Still, makes me want to go back and visit the place properly, since we didnt really get a chance to see any of it. Though Steve and I did take a random detour through the grounds of some college or other, and had to escape through a locked gate - d'you think we weren't supposed to be in there?

Managed to forget to pack any sleepwear for shared room arrangements, so had to sleep in pants. No great loss, but I'm a bit embarrassed. Sorry to Mandy for the arse-pinching incident. I shall not let roving hands get the better of me again.

Other than that, a swift journey back to Brighton and another nice couple of days with Mr. grumps (at least in the morning -x-), and I'm back home again this evening. Hopefully bike will have survived OK without it's cover, somebody nicked it on Wed night and I really dont know why, bit of a pain as they are quite pricey and phaffing with a tarpaulin is not what I want to be doing. So I'm going to have to buy ANOTHER, which would be the third one within twelve months. Arse, eh? Still.....Want to get back to riding pronto!