» Ouch!

bridge of doom
long ago in a faraway place, well, the French Alps, okay, more like the Ecrins, perhaps Combe de Queyras if you're picky, there was the Bridge of Doom. The new road over an arm of a reservoir, the sign underneath for saling boats put the height retriction at 13 metres, plus about a metre or so of concrete up to the roadway, and add a metre or so below, as it had been a long hot summer, and teh water level was lower than usual... 15 or more metres i reckon.

I suppose it was a Rite Of Passage, we must have driven over it several times one week we were on holiday there. Being macho students we discussed jumping off it, legend had it that friends had gone before. Then one day we actually stopped to look at it, "just to see if it could be done" and then the jumping began. Not only that, the injuries began, but not mine, yet.

I suppose my first mistake was jumping in the first place, and my second mistake was enjoying it so much I should do it again. The first time, after a lot of umming and aahing was perfec, almost, pencilled in, went a bit deep, felt my ears pop a bt more than was comfortable, still, what a rush, again again!

The second time was my undoing, clearly instead of landing cleanly, my feet must have been pointing downwards, leaving physics to take its toll and my vertical movement of 9.82 m/s/s became horizontal as my feet shot out from under me, leaving my arse to connect firmly with the water, which didn't part as swiftly as it might. All in all very painful.

I pulled myself to the side to assess the damage: one thoroughly bruised backside, not suitable for spending a week sitting in a car pottering around various southern French places, let alone 12 hours back to Calais and then more beyond. Of more concern was the whiplash, I could barely move my head without being in agony. And then there was the mystery bruise in the middle of my chest, about the size of a coaster and livid purple - it was only later that I realised that the only thing that could have made that bruise was my chin, which meant that my neck must have extended 5 or more inches more than its normal travel, and whacked my chin into my sternum.

That would certianly explain the whiplash...
(Sat 31st Jul 2010, 0:07, More)

» Annoying words and phrases

Pukka
Jamie Oliver is a terrible terrible man..

Pukka means "proper" "genuine" "ripe". It does not mean great/smashing/super/excellent/insert superlative of choice.

It makes you look like a twat, in my eyes, when you use it wrong, and makes me look like a twat for using it right you ignorant lazy cockmuncher.
(Fri 9th Apr 2010, 0:02, More)

» The most childish thing you've done as an adult

4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid
For the biochemically minded amongst us, the above will be more familiar as one of Good's Buffers, great stuff for biological/cellylar/enzymatic experiments, blah blah blah.

For short though, it's generally know as HEPES

We may have had several bottles of the stuff all over the lab.

I may have gone round with a pen adding Rs in the (in)appropriate place.

Who says Herpes isn't a laughing matter?

A nice trick is to set someone's autocorrect on their copy of Word to do this change for you while they're writing up their thesis...

Childish? I'm a Dr me!
(Tue 22nd Sep 2009, 23:25, More)

» Filth!

Tents! Vomit! Laconism!
An interuniversity sports event, some years ago now, was (and still is) held over a weekend. This of course meant rocking up on the Saturday morning, competing all day, drinking all night and passing out in a tent on a rugby field. Nowadays there are close to 1000 folk who turn out for the comp, but in the early days there were probably 50 or 60 max, and only three from my own fair institution.

Competitions were duly competed in, however the drinking all night didn't happen so much. After a barbecue (I think) we headed off to the beer marquee to watch the sorry sight of failed attempts at interpersonal/interuni relations.

Whether it was the barbecue, the beer, or something in the air... somethign wasnt' quite right. After 2 pints (scout's honour) I was feeling properly ropey so drifted off to bed, as did L, leaving W to chance his arm (and whatever else he could) with a lovely young lady who was alas well out of his league. Would that he had succeeded, as he would then have been spared the horror of our tent that night.

After a couple of hours sleeping, I awoke with the sort of ambiguous feeling in my guts - do I feel sick? should I get up? After wrestling with the horns of this particular dilemma for 10 or 15 minutes teh dice finally fell in favour of getting up to do something about it. Not easy in a sleeping bagg zipped to the top and with the hood well cinched about my head (you can probably see where this is going).

At last out of the sleeping bag, sit up, try to open the door of the tent, time is running short, find the zip, pull it down... too late - projectile vomit all over the door of the tent, all over my sleeping bag, all over L's sleeping bag. I staggered out and made my peace with my stomach somewhere near the touchline. Eventually I felt human enough to return to my foetid pit. As I lay there mulling over the amount of cleaning up I'd have to do, in the morning and in the next few days, I drifted back off to sleep.

I was awoken about an hour later by L, whose tent it was and whose sleeping bag I had liberally drenched in vom, expecting a bollocking I was pleasantly surprised to hear "C, I'm so so sorry, I've thrown up everywhere, I'm so sorry, it's all over your sleeping bag and everything, I'm so sorry..."

"Don't worry about it love, not a problem" I rolled over and went back to sleep.

I think she burned the tent in the end as it was far from recoverable.
(Sun 5th Feb 2012, 0:40, More)