h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Doesn't time fly? I just logged on and realised it's been nearly four months since I last wrote anything. I have a dozen bits of paper with random thoughts scribbled on, but I seem to find it difficult to actually submit anything. There's plenty to catch up on and I need to get around to writing my annual review at some point, but for now I'm going to settle for writing a few short pieces about what I've generally been doing with my time since October. To start with I have three entries I wrote during November, but haven't had chance to submit until now:

Getting Sent To Coventry (And Then Locked In A Carpark).
November 1st, 2006

Last weekend was really quite productive. I managed to sort through almost all of the junk I've accumulated at my parents' house. I ruthlessly threw a lot of stuff out and packed the rest of it into boxes and bags ready to bring to Reading this coming weekend.

Because I was so efficient on Saturday I didn't have a great deal to do on Sunday so in the afternoon I drove over to Coventry. My girlfriend was staying with friends for the weekend and since she was so nearby I thought it would be nice to meet up and have dinner together.

We only had a quick bite to eat in a Wetherspoons pub, but it was nice to see her, if only for a couple of hours. Unfortunately on returning to the car park we were horrified to find that our cars had been locked in. We called the car park management and tried to find security, we even asked the staff in the nearby Burger King if they could help us, but all to no avail. Everyone told us we would have to wait for the car park to open at seven the next morning. If we were lucky and our cars hadn't been clamped then I might be able to scramble through the rush hour traffic and maybe make it to work on time. We were extremely lucky though, because just as we'd called my girlfriend's friends to ask if they wouldn't mind picking us up and letting us stay the night a wonderful kind lady who had been working late turned up and let us out and what would have been a major drama ended up being just a minor setback. I got back to the bed and breakfast shortly after ten and collapsed into bed soon afterwards.

It's been hard work sticking to my resolution to run regularly this week. The clocks went back at the weekend so by the time I leave work in the evenings there isn't enough daylight left for a decent amount of running and I had to start getting up early to put in a cold and torturous ten miles before breakfast. But I think a few more days of such toil may motivate me to join a running club so that I can have a couple of evening training sessions each week with other runners on a well lit running track.

Workwise this week has been pretty good. I finally managed to get away from my desk, get a labcoat on and actually do some practical work. It's odd, I never would have imagined I'd miss lab work, but this week I actually feel useful and I feel I've made some small contribution to the company and as such, I'm a bit more relaxed about everything.

Another reason for feeling more settled and happier is that this week I finished sorting out my new flat. On Monday lunchtime I dropped into the letting agents to drop off the tennancy agreement, to show them my identity proofs and to pay the balance of my account (frightening amounts of money!). And today after work I drove over there to meet the landlord and pick up the keys. The flat seems a bit spartan with no furniture in it and I need to make it a bit more homely before I can actually move in properly. Currently I don't even have a bed so I'm staying at the bed and breakfast until the weekend when I can move some furniture in.

Also this week, on Tuesday I met up with an old friend from (undergraduate days at) Wolverhampton University in Reading. He's been living in Basingstoke for the last year so since we're now living quite near to one another we thought it would be rude not to meet up for a drink and a chat. Unfortunately he's having a bit of a rough patch with his girlfriend, poor chap and I had to try really hard not to offer too much advice, but nevertheless it was good to catch up and talk a bit about old times.

So that brings me up to date again. I'm feeling quite tired at the moment and another busy weekend is looming ahead of me and I can't wait until I can spend a weekend doing normal weekend things like sleeping.

Moving House.
November 8th, 2006

As predicted the weekend was pretty hectic. On Friday evening I left work and drove into Reading to pick up a rental van for the weekend. I usually drive a Nissan Micra, so a long-wheel-base Ford Transit was quite a change for me. Not only was the sheer size of the vehicle quite something to cope with, also I haven't driven a car with a manual gearbox for two years or more and most important of all there's no rear view mirror in a Transit and it took a long time to get used to the massive blind spot right behind the van. My nerves were further frayed when a shambling tramp loomed out of the darkness on a narrow Berkshire lane and very nearly splattered himself on the front of my van and later, having joined the motorway I was rather shaken to see a burning car on the hard shoulder. Nevertheless I managed to get both myself and the van to Bath safe and sound, but very tired on Friday night.

We didn't really do much on Friday evening, just had an early night and got up fairly early on Saturday morning to drive the van up to my parents' house where we grabbed a quick lunch, loaded the van and headed back down south again. By the time it got dark we'd unloaded the van and started to pack things away in the new flat. Needless to say we were pretty tired out after all that driving so we took it fairly easy for the rest of the weekend. On Sunday morning we took a walk around the village, bought some food at the local supermarket and in the afternoon we drove over to the bed and breakfast to collect the last of my things from there then had another quiet evening and an early night.

On Monday morning we got up early to take the van back to the depot and I dropped my girlfriend at the railway station before heading into work. After driving more than three hundred miles in the Transit it actually felt a bit strange to be back in my little car again, it felt weird to be sitting so close to the road and I kept wanting to change gear.

After such a dedicated week of running last week I let things go a little bit over the weekend, but yesterday I drove into Reading after work to go running with Reading Athletic Club. I said before I've been thinking about joining a running club because I think it might be a good way to get some running done in Reading and to meet a few people and maybe to get some good advice on training for a marathon. I had a really good session running a fartlek programme in the local park. It's been quite a while since I've done speedwork of any kind so I found the session quite hard work, but I managed to stay with, or just behind the leading group right up until the very end. Everyone was really friendly and asked me if I would be training with them again and if I would be joining the club properly. They even tried to talk me into running a cross-country race this weekend. I had to tell them no because I'm probably going to be in Bath this weekend, but I'd like to get back into racing again so I think I'll probably pay my fees and join up.

I was feeling tired and stiff today so I decided to go for a gentle run round the village this evening to loosen up. Obviously it was pretty dark, but I took a torch with me and did some route finding and I managed to work out a nice mile and a half lap which is reasonably well lit and might become a regular running route in the weeks to come. And tomorrow after work I'm going to have a look at a gym which could serve as a warmer and drier alternative as the winter closes in.

Things have also been going well at work this week. I spent a few days setting up my reaction rig and calibrating the analytical instrumentation and loading some samples into the reactor. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the thing running and I might actually have generated some results by the end of the week. It feels good to be getting things done and I'm actually quite upbeat about the project and evern, dare I say it, quite excited about chemistry for a change.

The rest of the week is going to be quite busy at work so I'm looking forward to a lazy weekend in Bath with my girlfriend. I have one or two domestic things to attend to like getting my haircut and buying a few things for the flat, but the last few weeks have been really exhausting and I think I'm overdue for a weekend off.

Lazy Weekend.
November 14th, 2006

The lazy weekend went exactly as planned I knocked off work fairly early on Friday and managed to get to Bath in reasonable time. It was much nicer driving there in my familiar little car than the previous week in that hulking great van and I arrived a good deal less stressed out. I picked my girlfriend up at university, drove her to the supermarket and then home. We spent the rest of Friday night making pizza and drinking wine in front of the television.

We got up late on Saturday and I got my hair cut and then went for a run in the afternoon while my girlfriend did some work. Then in the evening we made lasagne and watched a movie accompanied by another bottle of wine.

On Sunday we wandered round the shops for a little while then read the newspapers and sat around for a couple of hours. We ate the rest of the lasagne in the evening and I drove back to Reading soon afterwards.

Running has been going pretty well this last week. Since going out with Reading AC last Tuesday I've been out running every day. Some days have been fairly gentle recovery runs, but I've managed to fit in a couple of harder sessions and I even managed a brisk hour and a half on Saturday. The gym I looked at last Thursday was quite good, but it's also quite expensive and if I'm going to be training with the club twice a week then I'm wondering how much I'm actually going to use it. I'm going to go along to the club again tonight and maybe again on Thursday. It feels good to be getting back into regular training again. I'm not at the level I reached earlier this year during the early days of writing up when I did very little other than run, but what I'm doing at the moment is probably more sensible and more sustainable in the long term. Hopefully I can get myself back into decent shape for a marathon sometime next year.

Next weekend I'll be in Bath again. It's my girlfriend's birthday on Saturday and her parents and visiting her during the day. We've got a restaurant booked for lunch and on Saturday evening we're having a bit of a dinner party which I'm quite looking forward to.

*

December was in incredibly busy month and I didn't really manage to get any organised entries written. Instead I've written a handful of short entries on various subjects which occupied my time during the month:

Christmas Parties.

Obviously there were a fair few parties to go to over the festive season. The first of these was the Chemistry Department Christmas meal back in Bath on the 6th December. My girlfriend is jusy finishing the final year of her PhD and I figured this would probably be my last chance to have Christmas dinner with the old crowd and to act like a student for one last night. So I booked a couple of days off work and drove over to Bath on Tuesday evening (the 5th December).

Everyone met in the restaurant, a lovely place called Woods where we've been for a formal dinner or some meal or other at some point, at around one in the afternoon for pre-dinner drinks and the traditional Christmas quiz. The food was really nice, and as an added bonus one of the people who was supposed to be sitting at our table paid for his food, but mysteriously didn't turn up so we all had plenty to eat. I ste with my girlfriend and her research group, but managed to catch up with my old group and one or two old friends as well.

After the meal we went for a few drinks in town and eventually ended up in the nightclub on campus. Unfortunately, by this point I was fading badly (I'm not as young as I used to be), I had more or less sobered up and was beginning to feel the early onset of a hangover. If I'm honest I'm never entirely happy in the campus nightclub surrounded by drunken teenagers ten years younger than me, but I was highly impressed to note that one of the lecturers had made it along and I listened with amusement to an overheard conversation between some of the drunken teenagers expressing their utter astonishment at seeing him there. No doubt since he's over thirty they expected him to be in bed with a cup of Horlicks be ten o'clock. In the end though my crushing headache got the better of me and at around one in the morinng we headed off home to bed.

Next on the calendar was "Christmas" dinner with the folks from my lab at work on the 11th December. Because we all had several traditional Christmas dinners to attend we decided to go to a Thai restaurant in Caversham for a bit of a change. This was the first time I'd been out with the folks from work so I wasn't entirely at my ease, but my girlfriend was driving that night and a couple of pints of beer soon relaxed me.

I'm afraid the food could really only be described as okay even given that they were catering for a large group and considering that we'd gone to the trouble of ordering our food in advance it took rather a long time for things to arrive. On the other hand the service was much better with respect to drinks and they made sure no one went thirsty while we were waiting. But the probable reason for this became apparant when the bill arrived and we discovered exactly how much they had been charging for all those bottles of beer.

Things weren't nearly as raucous as the nights out I've grown accoustomed to with my group at university, but considering it was a school night that probably wasn't such a bad thing. I really don't think I've been with the company long enough to turn up with a hangover, even if it was earned at a company function.

The official company Christmas lunch on the 18th December was a much less sober affair. Even though it was held in the canteen on site the wine and beer (which was all free!) flowed with reckless abandon. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on your point of view) I wasn't drinking because I had to get up horribly early the following day and drive my girlfriend into Reading so that she could get a coach to Heathrow and fly to Sri Lanka for a wedding over Christmas. It was extremely foggy that morning and I was mighty glad to be completely sober (if a little tired).

Refraining from alcohol meant that I enjoyed the food, which was plentiful and something of a cut above the usual canteen fare, but that the loud carol singing and constant bombardment of food and Christmas decorations became a little annoying towards the end of the second hour and to be honest I was a little relieved when it was all over.

The final fixture of the party calendar was the Reading AC Christmas party. The organisers decided that booking a restaurant over the festive period would be too much hassle and elected to have the party at the house of a kind volunteer. I was a late addition to the guest list, but I managed to get my order in for take-away food and also gt in on the "secret santa" which one of the girls had organised. I had a pretty nice evening and met one or two new people, who haven't been to training nights because they've been injured. We played a music quiz which one of the guys had cooked up and then ended up playing Buzz on the Playstation until the small hours. Once again I wasn't drinking because I ws driving, but as I wasn't the only sober person present I didn't feel too out of place.

Christmas And New-Year.

Work finished for Christmas straight after lunch on Friday 22nd December so I headed home to pack in the afternoon and drove up to my parents' house in the evening. It had been extremely foggy all week (since the morning of Tuesday 19th when I dropped my girlfriend in town) and navigating the Oxfordshire lanes en route to the motorway was quite frightening. But luckily (and somewhat strangely) traffic was very light and I arrived safe and sound in pretty reasonable time.

As ever Christmas was a fairly relaxed occasion, but over the holidays I managed to catch up with most of the family. I took my parents to visit my grandparents on Christmas Eve and then to see my Nan on Boxing Day. Then on Wednesday 27th I drove them to Stafford to spend a few hours with my brother and his family. And I even found the time to meet a friend in town for a couple of drinks and a few games of pool before driving back to Reading on Thursday 28th.

As an extra Christmas present from my brother I got a heavy dose of flu which came on when I got back home. I spent most of Friday sleeping and being sick and then struggled into town in the evening to pick my girlfriend up from the coach station after her trip to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately she was quite ill as well so we spent the next couple of days feeling sorry for ourselves and trying to look after each other. Because we hadn't been together over Christmas we'd planned an elaborate dinner together on New Year's Eve, but unfortunately this was the worst day of illness for me. For about twelve hours I was sick every time I ate or drank anything and my girlfriend struggled to keep my hydrated by making me drink gallons of Ribena. I was beginning to feel a little better in the evening, but certainly wasn't in the mood for a big dinner and I was so tired and weak that it was all I could do to keep my eyes open long enough to see in the new year. New Year's Day was a little better, but having basically not eaten anything solid for three days I still felt tired and very weak. I ended up taking the day off work on Tuesday 2nd to sleep and recuperate a bit more and by Wednesday I was left with nothing more than a simple common or garden cold.

Graduation.

Graduation, another main eventin December, was on Wednesday 13th December and once again I booked a couple of days off work and drove over to Bath on Tuesday evening. I stayed at my girlfriend's place the night before the ceremony. We had a bit of a lie in on Wednesday morining then I went and got my hair cut while my girlfriend did some shopping and we waited for my parents to arrive. We met them at the train station around lunchtime and took them back to my girlfriend's place for a quick picnic lunch before getting dressed and heading out to the Assembly Rooms for the ceremony.

Winter Graduation is always a much more scaled down and low-key affair than the massive summer ceremonies and everything went quickly and smoothly. I remember graduating from my first degree when they read out a list of names while we jogged across the stage and someone tossed a scroll at us. By contrast, at the postgraduate ceremony there were far fewer students graduating and things were done at a somewhat more leisurely pace. Each PhD student had their own moment on stage; while our names were read out the chancellor bonked us each on the head with a plank of wood saying "I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Philosophy," and another chap helped us into our hoods. The whole thing just seemed nicer and more intimate than the undergraduate version.

Also, it ws nice to see a few old faces at the ceremony and to find out what people had been up to since I saw them last. But in a way it was also quite sad as it made me realise how much I'm going to miss university life now that it has finally come to an end.

After the ceremony we took my parents to their hotel so they could check in and drop off their bags and then we all went out for a lovely meal at il Tocco d'Italia. As ever the food was really excellent, the staff were friendly and the ambience was unbeatable (we had a wonderful table overlooking the river). We took our time over dinner and ended up getting to bed quite late so we had a nice long lie in on Thursday morning and I drove back to Reading again in the afternoon.

Reading AC.

I've been getting back into my running again since moving to Reading and I've broken the habit of a lifetime by joing a running club. It feels good to be back in regular training again and I think that running harder speed sessions with Reading AC is beginning to benefit me as well. It's also really good to have some faster runners to chase on a Tuesday evening (some of them 1500m, 3000m and 5000m track runners). But being in a running club also means I've been racing more as well and have had the opportunity to try my hand at a bit of cross-country running for the first time.

More or less as soon as I started training with the club they began trying to talk me into racing for them and they very quickly wore me down. I made my cross-country debut at the Berkshire County Championships on Sunday 17th December, a 12km course at Burchetts Green near Maidenhead. It was a beautiful day for running, cold and sunny, but the course was quite tough; there was a bit of a hill in the second half of the lap and it was quite muddy in places. Though it was my first race in a while and my first time at a cross-country I felt confident and tried to stay with the leaders for the first lap. One guy was in a class of his own and very quickly disappeared into the distance, but I managed to keep in touch with second and third place for a lap or so. During the second lap they started to get away from me. I managed to hold onto fourth place for most of the race, but faded on the last lap and was overtaken by another Reading AC runner and I eventually finished fifth. It was a good individual result for me and a very good result for the club. Reading AC had finishers in second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth and easily won the team gold medal. And as an added bonus the top nine finishers all won entries into the Inter-Counties Championships in February.

For my next race I was back on the roads where I'm most comfotable running the Woodcote, Goring and District Lions 10K. I'd been really quite ill the previous weekend (New Year's Eve), I had only started to recover two or three days before the race and wasn't sure whether to run or not. But as I live in Woodocte about five minutes walk from the start line I felt it would probably have been rude not to run. I started well and stuck with the lead group for the first 4km or so. Then on a downhill section I tried to stretch out a bit of a lead; unfortunately the second half was a good deal more hilly than the first and I slipped back to second place after about 8km. I let the leader get too far ahead in the closing mile and couldn't get back to him and so finished second. The course was quite tough, but not the hardest I've every run and the time was therefore fairly good all things considered. I was quite pleased with the result given that I was still not one hundred percent after being ill. Above all I'm glad I made the effort to run as it was a lovely scenic route, the weather was kind to us (it started raining about five minutes after I finished) and it was especially nice to be running in my own back yard.

The following week on Saturday 13th January I raced again for the club in the Hampshire Cross-Country League, our home fixture, an 8.8km course at Prospect Park in Reading. The weather wasn't quite so perfect this time; it had been raining on and off all day, but there was a break in the clouds and the sun came out just before the start. The course was also much tougher this time, there were a couple of sharp hills in the middle of the lap and one section which was extremely muddy, but it was quite significantly shorter than the Berkshire Championships. Strangely the field was actually stronger than at the Berkshire Championships event so I was quite pleased to manage eleventh place. And it was another great result for the team; we came second on the day and also moved into second place in the overall standings.

A couple of weeks after that was the South of England Cross-Country Championships, a gruelling 15km course at Holkham Park in Norfolk. I had been quite excited about this race as it was probably the most prestigious event I'd ever competed in. Once again we were lucky with the weather, it was a lovely day for racing, the weather was dry and the sun was shining, but it was a plesasantly cool afternoon. And the venue, a beautiful old stately home, was quite simply stunning. But since the stunning venue (not exactly centrally located for the south of England) was so far away from Reading we had an early start and a very long drive to get to Norfolk. We caught some traffic on the way and arrived tired and a bit stressed out with about twenty minutes to warm up before the race started and didn't really have time to appreciate the setting. In all honesty I was a little disappointed with my performance. After just two miles I already felt tired and was really just "hanging on" for the rest of the race and trying not to let too many people get past me. In the end I managed to finish one-hundred and tenth, but was a bit annoyed to loose a place right on the line even though it was another Reading AC runner so it didn't make any difference to the team. That said, it was good to race in such a strong field. The race was won by Phil Wicks (a Great Britain athlete) from Huw Lobb (a Great Britain marathon runner and the the first man to beat the horse in the Man vs Horse cross-country race in Wales) and dominic Bannister (another talented Great Britain athlete and the son of the legendary Roger Bannister).

Another couple of weeks later on Saturday 10th February was the final fixture of the Hampshire Cross-Country League, this time at Canford Park near Poole. This course was 8.8km again, was fairly flat, but very muddy. The weather had been wet all day, but held to a light drizzle during the race. I started in the lead group again and was running in twelfth place at first, but I probably went out too quickly and tired again in the second half of the race. I was fading badly towards the end and lost quite a few places during the last lap. In the end I finished twenty-second which on reflection wasn't really a bad performance. It was a really excellent result for Reading AC though, the senior men's team managed to hold onto second place in the league and the veterans were utterly dominant, our guys finished first, second and third in the individual standings and the team were streets ahead in the overall league. I was very amused to see a couple of runners nearly come to blows at the end. I'm not entirely sure what the dispute was, but I think they may have been arguing over fiftieth place. Sometimes I think people forget it's only a bit of fun.

*

So that about sums things up for the last few months and things don't look like they're going to be any quieter over the next few weeks either. Tomorrow I'm heading into London after work because I have tickets for a Tom McRae gig. Then next weekend I'm heading home to see my parents for the weekend and to compete in the Inter-Counties Cross-Country Champiionships. And at some point I have to get around to writing my annual summary for 2006. I guess with everything going on, writing my journal isn't exactly top priority at the moment.