Demolition man

Over the last few weeks I've done a fair amount of gardening work. After taking the tree down which I wrote about last time, I cleared a load of brambles and other spikey things from the back, went down to one mates allotment and helped her weed out the vegetable patches and wheelbarrow a load of compost, and on saturday last I went down to another mates allotment, very near to Old Trafford (hawk, spit!) to help him destroy the dodgy looking ramshackle glasshouse there. It was a cool bit of demolition work, we had a crowbar each and managed to take down the double-glazed windows that had been used for a roof on the glasshouse. I only banged my head once, and my friend, lets call him Dr Leverenti, escaped with just a nail gash on the top of his head.

But mostly I'm afraid I've been lost in the world of Assassin's Guild Brotherhood on the Xbox. At first I thought it was just a Tomb Raider clone with the fancy dressing of being set in Medieval Rome, but I've found it highly compulsive. Its very violent, and graphically so. When I was a fair bit younger I played an awful lot of computer games, in many ways they are a waste of time but I do find playing them quite relaxing. Even when you're running and jumping over the tops of buildings and assassinating people by sneeking up behind them and breaking their necks.

And I can do it guilt-free because I've finally got a job sorted out. I start next week so this is my last week of freedom. I'll be working for a medical communications company in Knutsford, mostly writing up clinical trials reports for drugs companies. It seems to be a thing that a lot of ex-science researchers get into. When you realise that you're not going to be a PI (Principle Investigator i.e., the head of a lab), the only way is out of academia really. With the new job I'll still be able to use a lot of my science knowledge and be able to focus just on writing. I was never the most practical person in the lab anyway.

So I'm looking forward to being out of the house, earning some money and basically being useful again. I don't know how I'm going to fit the yoga into it all, as I'll have to leave the house about 6.30 in the morning to get down to Stockport to catch the train, and probably won't get in until about 7 at night. So unless I get up at 4am or something I'm just going to have to go to a class.

The next couple of blogs should be awesome tales of office life, I bet you can't wait!

I'm a lumberjack

Today I made a new personal achievement to add to my cv - tree felling! At the bottom of our garden were two spindly coniferous trees (sorry I'm not an expert so I can't be more specific), one of which was already blocking out most of the sunlight and threatened to further loom in immensity if left unchecked. It turned out that most of the branches were half rotten and could just be pulled off. The tallest tree was about 12 ft and I took it down with the classic technique of cutting a wedge in the same side as I wanted it to fall, cut a slit in the other side then basically pulled it down. The root took ages to get out, but it was very satisfying. I'm revelling in my arm-scratches right now. I worked as a gardner when I first left school, it can be quite nice work but it is very tiring, I fell asleep after my efforts today.

My sleep was aided by watching the "Wonders of the Universe" on BBC i-player, a documentary with Brian Cox warbling on about the arrow of time, while mooching about various moody locations. There were some turtles in it, I'm not sure if it had a major revlatory point to make as I fell asleep about half way through it (the Star Trek effect). There have been quite a few interesting documentaries on BBC lately, Horizon last week had a look at whether humans are still evolving, although it mostly showed the presenter in various moody locations. It touched upon variations in human populations over the world - Sherpas in Nepal having a greater network of blood vessels to aid survival at higher altitudes (although I'm not nc that this was just a physiological rather than genetic adaptation) and the prevalence of the lactase gene for digesting milk, very common in north european populations and very rare in south east asia. Explains why I didn't see many milkman doing the rounds in Cambodia.

An aimless wander to Royston Vasey

Last week I was up in Haltwhistle with Linda, checking out Hadrians wall and Vindolanda, the remains of a Roman settlement. There's not much left of either, just the foundations really, although the supports for the underfloor heating were visible in one of the houses' remains, they looked like weird little tombstones.


The weather was getting nasty and we were feeling over-exposed, luckily Haltwhistle has a great pub in the form of the Black Bull. After three days we were well-established with the locals. They speak with an uncannily Geordie-like accent there, although they are adamant that their accent is different. I had a shock when I walked past a newsagent to read "North East man feared dead in Christchurch earthquake", as I have two good mates from Newcastle who lives there (I stayed with them last year), fortunately they were ok. Such an idyllic place, but with a terrible reality lying in wait underneath (New Zealand that is, not Newcastle. Although...)

I was feeling a bit restless on monday morning so I decided to walk part of the Transpennine trail which runs quite close to where I live in Stockport. Probably the most interesting thing I came across was the ruins of some old mills near Broadbottom, so named I think because the nearby hills look like two giant curvaceous butt-cheeks. I walked for about 5 hours in total, to reach Hadfield, I was feeling a bit fed up by then due to a very painful blister on my right heel (actually caused by my wearing "proper shoes" to an interview over a week ago) so I didn't stop to invetigate the town and just headed for the train station. Only when I read a tourist information board while waiting for the train did I realise that Hadfield was the set for Royston Vasey in the TV programme "The League of Gentlemen". So I missed the opportunity to go into a shop and be asked "Are you local?" before being subjected to some form of surreal torture.

I'll leave you with a weird scarecrow I saw in an allotment as I was coming into Hadfield: