Margot's Blog

Victim vs casualty

2012-02-10T17:56:00.000+01:00

"I know it's your second language, but will you please stop calling him "the victim"! He's a casualty!"
We were wedged in a rift in Dog Hole, and our casualty(!) of the day had come into sight. We were basically being an artificial floor of this somewhat too deep rift; the stretcher would part slide over our laps, and part be crowdsurfed over our heads. That way he would comfortable come down a slope, then make a rather sharp turn, and then go up on the other side.

The last time we had tried this exercise (volunteer casualty with fake broken leg in the cave, and us getting this person out in the most comfortable possible way) things had gone haywire: the casualty got seizures in the cave, and the practice turned into a rescue. As you can't put casualties with fits into a stretcher, we had a very useful night, but we hadn't practiced getting someone out of this fairly tricky cave horizontally. And now we had another try. And this time it worked well...

Seizing political power

2012-02-09T15:00:00.001+01:00

If I vote for it, it probably doesn't make it first past the post. So as a UK resident but non-citizen I get the right to vote in the municipal elections, but as they don’t do “one person, one vote” (how politically correct do I describe it!) my vote goes, practically, straight down the drain. There goes my political power.

But then my attention got drawn to the phenomenon of the e-petition. If the public wants politics to discuss something they don’t consider on their own initiative, it can start an e-petition. If 100.000 people or more sign it, it must be discussed in the House of Commons. I remember when they started this initiative; the first one that got posted allegedly was "Gordon Brown should resign"...

I had no idea you didn’t have to be a citizen to sign them! Being a resident is enough. So when I found that out, a red mist appeared before my eyes, and I frantically started to exercise raw, shameless and blunt political power. Alright Brits, you’ve let me in, and now you have to take my thoroughly continental thoughts and convictions into consideration! Ha!

Maybe I won’t single-handedly turn this country into some Europhile, liberal pseudo-Netherlands; I am only one of what hopefully will be 100.000 at least… but still I found it satisfying! I signed two: one that asks for an official pardon for Alan Turing, one of the key brains behind the Enigma machine which did immeasurable service to the allied forces in WWII, and the spiritual father of Artificial Intelligence. He was convicted of “gross indecency” (read: gay sex) in 1952 and chemically castrated; two years later he committed suicide. He ate an apple poisoned with cyanide; some people wonder if the Apple logo is a tribute to Turing, but as far as I know this is a coincidence. I heard through the grapevine that, when asked in an interview, Steve Jobs confessed he only wished they had thought of that. And thanks to Blerik here's a link to the actual story of the Apple logo...

Anyway. There is an e-petition asking for a pardon for Alan Turing, on the basis of all he’s done for Britain, and for so much of the rest of the world. And that petition is still open until late November, but already the Justice Minister has rejected the request, on silly grounds. Is this another case of British homophobia? Or is he afraid there will be endlessly many more e-petitions asking for a pardon for people who have been convicted for breaking a law that in 21st century eyes is an abomination? Either way, I think he is both wrong and speaking prematurely. I do hope this petition, signable by citizens and residents of the UK, will make it past 100.000 soon, and that the Justice Minister will have to eat his words!

And while I was at ait anyway, I signed the petition asking for evolution to be taught at all schools, and creationism at none. A splendid cause, if you ask me! If you want to tell about creationism you can do it in a church. Schools are for education…

Coastal and ICT processes

2012-02-08T19:18:00.000+01:00

“Every disadvantage has its advantage”; would that be the correct translation of the most famous of the Cruijffisms? Either way, I decided to combine computational misery and a lack of scientific knowledge to form something beautiful. As diligent readers will by now be more than aware of, in March I will have to supervise two teams of students on coastal geomorphological projects. And my own coastal geomorphological knowledge could use some brushing up. So when my computer, which is slow at the best of times, got so slow it became unworkable I decided to run a full scan of my computer. This can take a while, but I had something useful to do in the meantime: fill some gaps in my knowledge!

The scan took hours, but it resulted in the detection and subsequent deletion of a Trojan, and while my poor computer was gargling away I read a book which greatly increased my grasp of topics that come in handy in March. And today I met all my students; they left a positive impression. So preparations for that utterly unprecedented fieldwork are going well. And even my computer is more or less back to speed!

Why does the blog tilt this picture? It's a landscape format!

Marieke

2012-02-07T21:35:00.000+01:00

I thought I would see all my (close) family this winter, except my Finland-dwelling sister. I turned out to not see anybody except my Finland-dwelling sister…

I am notoriously bad at maintaining contact with relatives, especially in person. I phone my mother quite often, and send my Finnish sister quite many letters, but I hardly ever show up. Christmas would be the moment of redemption, but my health didn’t allow it. And then my sister decided to take matters in her own hand: she came to me.

I dragged Hugh to the railway station, where soon a train rolled in. And then a familiar face appeared through the train window! Seeing family is always special (even I know that!), but Marieke and I have always had an extra strong bond. And we haven’t lived in the same country for 15 years now, but that doesn’t change things.

The first thing Marieke did after we had hugged was asking Hugh if his intentions were honourable. When he answered positively that matter was effectively settled, and we could go home for food and sleep. She arrived at the station at ~20.25, which is 22.25 Finnish time… a pie awaited us in the oven, and soon we could eat and catch up. Only so much of that before it was bedtime, but quite good anyway!

The next morning I awoke when in my living room, which doubled as Marieke’s bedroom, still nothing stirred. So I did the nerd thing and quietly checked my mail and the news and such things. Managed to get a blog post up! But time passed by. She would only stay for a few days! And if she would spend that time asleep we wouldn’t use this opportunity for sisterly reconnecting to its maximum potential. So I then did the dishes. I got louder and louder, but still nothing stirred. When it was almost noon (2PM Finnish time!) I decided it had been enough and I woke her up.

This Saturday wouldn’t be very suitable for adventures; half the day was already gone, and the weather was abominable. So we just drank tea and spoke. For hours. The pinnacle of activity was doing the food shopping (which revealed a preference for English instant hot chocolate in my sister), and then engaging in some female bonding by means of cooking an elaborate meal together. A calm day, but a good one!

Throwing the spinach dumplings into the oxtail stew! No need to explain I would never make such a dish for myself.

The weather forecast had identified the Sunday and Monday as days for venturing outside; we picked a nice 16km stroll over Dartmoor for Sunday. And under somewhat menacing clouds we combined our incessant conversation with glorious, wide views. Maybe not as empty and spectacular as Finland, and surely not as hibernal, but beautiful nonetheless!

There were no pubs on this route, and by the time we came back to the start pubs wouldn’t serve lunch anymore, so we went home, and went into town for food. I was a bit afraid we would get swarmed by the nightlife crowds, but that expectation was happily dismantled by the realisation it was Sunday. We did end up at a table next to four Dutch blokes… we did the Dutch thing and switched to another language (or two, in our case: Swedish and Norwegian) in order to avoid detection. How silly we Dutch are…

The day after we went out again. Not just because the countryside here has a lot to offer, but also because my heating had given up. And my Fennoscandian sister doesn’t like cold! This time we picked a walk that had two pubs in it. This time pub lunch wouldn’t escape us! We hoped.

As we didn’t start early we had to walk briskly to make it at a safe time to the first pub. Which was closed on Monday. No! Our best bet was to take the quickest route to the next one. Which was shrouded in scaffolding… a bad sign. Indeed, this pub was not functional. Luckily, two of the men involved in the renovation pointed us up the road, where another pub would be found. And when we walked there the surroundings seemed to familiar… and indeed; the pub we indeed reached, and which fortunately served lunch until the late hour of 2.30, was the same in which we had had our CORiF Xmas lunch! And the one in renovation was the one that had provided our initial pint… it’s a small world.

After a very nice lunch we walked back, making sure we covered the prettiest parts of the indicated walk. Not enough daylight to do the whole walk after these antics! And we were back at the car at dusk.

That was a bit melancholy, already; this was our last evening together! This time we got so deep down and personal we did not only drink seas of tea but also some alcohol. And then it was bedtime again… and the only thing left to do was sleep, do a standard morning routine, pack, and leave for the railway station. There we said goodbye. I don’t know when we’ll see each other again. I should be the next one to make the trip! But when? And in the meantime we’ll have our trusted letters to keep communication going. And the next time we see each other it will still be as if we’ve been not only sisters, but also neighbours, all our life!

Life and liability

2012-02-04T12:08:00.000+01:00

If someone's life is in danger, what is more important? That this person is saved? Or that you make sure you don't accidentally break a rule, and be held accountable later? Or that you don't waste too much effort in a rescue attempt?

The fire brigade in Scotland some time ago clearly decided the second is the crucial one. And I think some cruise liner captain (not a very popular profession these days!) made the same decision, or chose the third option, yesterday. I saw this news item on the BBC news website: "British cruise ship passenger 'seen falling overboard'". So what happened? Someone saw someone fall off an enormous ship, and raised the alarm. What did the ship's authorities do? Search the ship! The chap was seen falling overboard; shouldn't you be searching the water? And of course you should have a look on board as well; maybe the person who saw it was mistaken. But by the time you've searched a ship of that size the man in the water is surely dead. It looks like they had their priorities quite muddled. I hope the BBC just got their story wrong, but unfortunately, the Miami Herald gives the same information.
I hope that if I'm ever involved in rescue (on either side) those in charge have their priorities straight...

The ship in question. Source: Creative Commons

Clean house for neat sister

2012-02-03T09:55:00.000+01:00

If your sister offers to vacuum-clean your house you shouldn't decline. But you neither should give her reason to repeat that offer.

Since I moved to the UK my sister visited once (and I visited her zero times!); during Christmas 2010, with her husband. As the blog relates, this visit almost went wrong, as half of western Europe was snowed in, and I had trouble getting back to the UK form the USA, and she might very well run into problems coming from Helsinki to the UK. And in the end it only just worked out: we arrived in Plymouth together. This did mean, though, that my house wasn't at all prepared for her sense of hygiene, and for the dust allergy of Antero. So she hoovered my house.

The mat in the hallway being uncharacteristically clean

She'll visit again soon; I think she can actually cope with my house as it normally is, but I want to make a gesture. So I cleaned more than I usually do! I removed lots of caving mud from the kitchen, I tried to do some improvised cleaning of the windows (I don't have the tools!), I hoovered... my house looked most uncharacteristic.

The kitchen windows were the biggest challenge: I have these old-fashioned English slidey windows, but in the kitchen the upper pane is fixed. So you can basically only clean both panes from the outside by being outside yourself. You can't lower the upper pane, and then lean over! But if you stand outside you might fall down. And that's not good. There's not much to hold on to. And there's nothing you can tie yourself to either! At least, not at first sight. But at second...

Not quite sure this is the most convincing picture of a clean window ever, but do notice the free view onto the very algal outer window sill!

My bicycles live in the kitchen so they don't get stolen; I park them in front of the kitchen window. And the bikes are wider than the actual window! So I figured that if I would attach myself to the bike I could get outside and do my cleaning: if I would fall down the bike would get wedged behind the window pane and stop my fall. So that's what I did! My belay belt and a sling did a spiffing job. And I thought I was most inventive. Who would ever have thought biking and caving could lead to clean windows?

When coastal policy becomes urgent

2012-02-02T10:11:00.001+01:00

Is the government obliged to protect its inhabitants from seeing their houses plunge into the sea? If your house is about to do just that, should you A) protest about it, hoping this event will either be prevented or you will get compensation, or B) keep silent and sell your house on to someone gullible who hasn’t realised yet this event is nigh?

Interesting questions, addressed by one of the newer lecturers in the Marine School: Steve Fletcher. He gave a seminar called ‘Protest and justice in UK coastal change policy’. When he looks at the coast he has one foot on physical geography and one foot on policy, and thereby managed to fascinate the audience, of which most stand with both feet on either of these sides.

It seems that the Coastal Defence Act of 1949 allowed local authorities to decide for themselves whether they would defend their part of the coast or not. And they are also free to change their mind along the way. Which can lead to interesting surprises, for instance, for people who have been living behind some coastal defence structure for generations, but whose local government has decided this structure has become too expensive, and decides to leave it to the elements. Perfectly legal, apparently, but still bad news if it’s your house that will vanish along with an eroding cliff face.

The scenario above sounds like a cartoon, but it isn’t really; the example of Happisburgh in Norfolk was brought up. It has been protected by extensive coastal defences for donkey’s years, but the powers that be have decided these became too extensive and changed the policy from “hold the line” to “no active intervention”. At least twenty-three buildings have already plummeted into the sea…

Happisburgh teetering on the edge. Picture by Andrew Dunn.

Source: Creative Commons

I also found a copyrighted picture of the damaged sea defence here

Fletcher raised several types of indignation that can arise in such cases. The temporal one: why is it us who have to suffer this after all these generations before us have been protected? The spatial one: why are we sacrificed while London, for instance, gets protected? The procedural one: why have we only been involved at the last minute? And the egalitarian one: why don’t I get protection while I pay my taxes like everybody else?

And of course, in times of rising sea level and economic hardship it’s unavoidable to sacrifice some coastal land. And hardly anybody is interested in coastal protection policy in the large-scale, long-term stage. Only when it has impact on the individual will they rise up to fight their case, but by the time that has happened it’s quite late. And maybe you don’t want to fight; you’ll only draw attention to the worthlessness of your house!

Gratuitous picture of some weathered sea defence I saw in Sussex in 2010

Some communities do fight; interestingly enough, it seems that such protest is concentrated around London, while all the way up to the Scottish border you will find English coasts at risk. An interesting discussion followed on why that is: is it just easier for these communities to travel to London to have their voices heard? Or are these protests staged by London import who know the way in politics, while the more distal communities only have less educated and vocal inhabitants? It’s mere speculation, but interesting nonetheless.

Given that so far there is neither an end to sea level rise nor economic hardship in sight, the issues raised during the seminar will probably only get more topical with time. I think Steve Fletcher won’t have to be bored anytime soon!

Old forams

2012-02-01T14:32:00.000+01:00

The new project, on interglacial sea level variability, started months ago. But from the start of a project to the first mud in your hands might take a while.We had to start with a literature search; where are the best sediments to be found? But recently, the Durham lot, who had to be in that area anyway, drilled a core on the Isle of Wight, and brought some sediments home. Next thing to do was check for microfossils. So I prepared the first batch, and lo and behold, the first sample contained a foram! One that had seen better days, and which wasn't a salt marsh foram, but still: the first foram of the new project. I think that deserves mention on the blog!

Run for the county

2012-01-30T20:13:00.000+01:00

Divide et impera – it’s an old slogan, but it still works. Draw an arbitrary line between “us” and “them” and let the rivalry begin!

Left: St. Piran's flag, the ancient flag of Cornwall, and right: St. Petroc's flag, the brand new flag of Devon (only designed in 2003!)

One cunning race organisation had come up with the “Devon vs Cornwall” concept. They organised a 10k race near the Devon/Cornwall boundary, and asked all participants to pick a side. At the end they averaged the times of all runners of each side, and concluded Devon had run ~1 minute faster than Cornwall. And to stir up the competition even more, they organised a rematch of 10 miles. I couldn’t make the 10k run, but I was available for the 10 mile version.

The black (Cornwall) and green (Devon) race shirts. Picture by William Debois for Shred Events

Waiting in line to collect my race shirt. Picture by William Debois for Shred Events

I had felt a bit awkward about having to pick a side; I live and work in Devon, so it was the evident thing to run for this county. But I quite like Cornwall! Where would I be without the Cornish mines, and the Cornish miners? Running in the black of the Cornish flag would make me an imposter, though. So I collected my green Devonian shirt. And blended with the sea of green at the start. Not many runners for Cornwall, by the looks of it!

The start went quite steeply downhill; not my forte. But soon we hit the normal Mount Edgecumbe paths again, that I walked on several occasions in the past. On these you can make a rather good speed! And I must have; about 1.5 miles into the course I saw Hugh wasn’t even that far ahead of me. Yet.

It was yet another scenic run… the sea was a mirror, and Cawsand and Kingsand were picturesque as ever, though it was very overcast, and therefore it was hard to take pictures.

For a while I ran just in front of a lady who was running for Cornwall. She clearly had a fan; some woman took pictures of her, shouted encouragements and took over her gloves, who were not needed anymore after 3 miles of warming up. This lady turned out to be her sister… I would see her twice more along the track, and again at the finish. From the second encounter she cheered for me too! Such things make a race extra much fun.

Not everybody ran in county colours! Picture by William Debois for Shred Events

Quite soon I reached the turning point. I still felt good! Fortunately; there weren’t many runners (results indicated there had been 157) and these do get spread out over a 16 km course. For quite a while I just saw one guy in front of me, and heard one behind me. When that happens some of the race adrenaline dissipates away. But that would solve itself…

At some point I noticed the distance indicators (big signs after every mile) had small print... provocative statements as "Cornwall says it has better pasties and ice cream!" or "Devon claims it has better beaches!" That's attention to detail...

When I had about two miles to go there was a sharp turn in the route. I got to see what was behind me. Lo and behold; a young woman in a black shirt! In other words: a rival! She would not only be in the same age/gender category as me, but also run for the other county… I thought I shouldn’t let her get past me. It really works, this divide et impera thing!

The only vaguely acceptable picture I managed to take during the race

I tried to be fast on the flat bits, and not too slow on the slippery slopes down. And to have some energy to spare for the last stretch: that grassy slope we had started on, which we now had to run up! I struggled up with less and less breath. But I managed! The woman in black hadn’t overtaken me…

The day after, when the results came in, I saw I had indeed finally managed to improve on my previous performance. I had finished neatly in the middle of the field, and within my age category I was even among the fastest 40%. I was quite happy with that! And 1:33 isn’t bad for 10 miles off-road over a hilly route!

After the race Hugh and I buggered off quickly. We managed to get the 1PM ferry back to Plymouth; quite executive, given the race started at 11AM! And then it was time for a shower and a well-deserved pub lunch, this time to be enjoyed on the appreciated Royal William Yard. Another good day!

Facing your fears again

2012-01-28T13:51:00.000+01:00

I almost hoped the cave rescue call-out would put an end to the caving trip we had scheduled that night. We would go to Afton, and that’s the scariest underground place I’ve ever been. I was so happy to be still alive when I got out the previous time I had tried my skills at this at this intimidating rift! And now I would do it all again, Voluntarily. Unless, of course, we would be needed for a rescue…

But we weren’t. I left the door just as the “all clear” signal came. I went up to Ferret who would give me a ride; quite punctual I rang his doorbell. To my surprise his girlfriend opened the door; it turned out Ferret himself was at the call-out site, and hadn’t told me! Pippa kindly invited me in for a cup of tea, but I declined, and instead rode home quickly. I could still make it in time in my own car!

Quite punctual I arrived at the gathering place, finding Richard, who would lead this trip, and Skip. Lionel and Rupert were on their way. Rupert had been stood up at the last minute by his passenger; this way five cavers had used five cars to get here… but what can one do.

Lionel and Rupert seemed to look forward to the trip. Richard is always overworked, and sometimes only leads trip out of sense of duty; it seemed to be a night like that. Skip and I had only done the trip once before; I think we were both shitting our pants. I sure was!

Soon we clambered up to the entrance and went in. The first few metres are easy, and then the shit hits the fan. The actual rift! A bottomless depth you have to wedge yourself into! Richard and Lionel happily scurried through it, but I was very apprehensive. To my reassurance I found it much easier than the previous time! But when I got a bit spooked at a nasty turn I was glad Lionel immediately clambered to the rescue, wedging himself below me, so I couldn’t fall.

Richard pretending he enjoys this

Lionel actually enjoying it.

Note that the men are wedged in, and not standing on anything.

Sometimes there's a rock wedged into the rift; I'm standing on one here

Skip gratefully used this safety measure too, and Rupert came up right behind him, as if he was walking over a red carpet. Once this first rift was passed it got easier, at least for most of us; it gets tighter for a while, which is where things suddenly are easier for me than for robustly built guys such as Lionel.

For a while we just happily squeezed and clambered until we reached a tricky drop; Rupert managed on his own, but his face informed me it wasn’t necessarily comfortable. For us it was, as Rupert wasn’t above offering himself as a foothold for those coming after him. And then onwards!

Rupert helping Skip down

We had already noticed the somewhat fresher air, indicating we were coming close to the entrance again, and soon we came to the squeeze that heralds the approach of the very difficult last climb. Lionel commented on the three “stick insects” that effortlessly had scurried through the quite tight squeeze before him. He himself saw the need to utter a profanity or two when he managed to pull the plug out of his headlight twice in a row. But soon after that we all reached the bottom of my nightmare: the same rift as in the beginning, but now done vertically. Richard was up before anyone could say “rift”; I would be next. From above Richard offered to belay me; I did not have to think about that one very long. Yes please! This climb still freaks me out. There’s room enough to climb up, so room enough to fall down! And the only thing that keeps you alive is the friction between the soles of your shoes and the slippery wall. And there’s nowhere you can take a breather. Help! But once you’re on a rope it’s OK, of course. If I have the choice again next time I think I want that rope again. I can die another day!

Lionel going into the squeeze

Before I had managed to pass by Richard without engaging in too much sexual intimidation Rupert was up too. We went out, making space for the other two. This time the elation of survival was quite modest! Everything but the climb had been quite acceptable, and the climb had been made easy by the rope. Still I was glad to be outside again.

After a while the other three came out too. We had taken our time; we would have to hurry to still find a pub. And hurry we did, but both pubs we tried were closed. Oh well. I would just go home and wash my hair! And admire my bruises. I would hurt practically everywhere the next day. But it had been worth it. And the next time it will be yet again a bit less hard and dauting!

Waiting by the phone

2012-01-27T11:16:00.000+01:00

What a difference one little text message can make. I was just chasing down some relevant literature, and the occasional mug of coffee to go with it, when suddenly I saw a message from the Cave Rescue Team. We were summoned to stand by! More information would follow.

I grabbed the literature I had obtained and made my way home. I got my caving kit together, made sure my phone was at hand, and started reading. Another message came in, asking us to stay standby. But no details followed anywhere soon.

It happened to be Tuesday, so we had a regular caving trip coming up. I was wondering if we could still do that. When would we know whether we would be needed? I sent a text message to our rescue coordinator, who promptly phoned back.

I got more news now. What had happened was that a group of cavers had seen a light on the bottom of an underground body of water in Pridhamsleigh Cavern, near some unidentified yellow shape. Yellow is a popular colour for caving suits! So they had sounded the alarm.

Lots of cavers wear yellow! I do too, but that isn't so conspicuous...

Pic from trip in autumn 2010

As far as I understood it, our afore mentioned rescue coordinator had gone up there, and summoned the people on the first call-out list to stand by. Some had decided that standing by was too boring, and had shown up anyway. These eager beavers were then employed as Sherpa’s and guides for some divers that checked whether there was some hapless drowned person in that little lake.

By the time I heard all that it looked like there was no victim, so the caving trip might still be on. After all, if something would change after all, they could still summon us back. So I got ready.

Just when I got out of the front door I received the “all clear” message. Evidently it was now certain there was no body in there, either alive or dead. So in the end it had all worked out: we had done our rescue job, but I had as well spent half the afternoon working undisturbed at home, and even our caving trip was still on. So that was it; now we could go off and get into underground trouble ourselves!

Ireland recce, day III

2012-01-26T18:30:00.000+01:00

One last (half) day in beautiful Ireland! The Sunday was for doing everything we hadn’t managed to do on the Fri- and Saturday. I had a wish list; I had realised the whale on the beach could be a fun side project for the students. If I’m interested in whether it could realistically have ended up there during the storms just after Christmas, why wouldn’t they be? So I decided I needed its size and elevation.

I also wanted to have a look at some of my boulders lower down on the beach; due to tide I had been somewhat restricted the day before. And if I would still have time I could have a small look at the route I would have to walk with the students of the first day; it’s nice to have an idea on what it is you’re supposed to be knowledgeable about.

I got lucky yet again! As before, nobody else wanted to go to the far reaches I wanted to visit. As before, Chris and Pete wanted to scurry around in the south and had to somehow make that work with only one car, and Wil had appointed himself once again as Alison’s field assistant, this time joined by Lou. So it was just me and my trusted Hyundai again! And don’t get me wrong; I’m not a loner, and I do enjoy good company, and I would even had had more fun if I’d had that, but I was quite happy as it was. Workwise it was by far the most efficient!

On the sunniest day so far I drove back to Pol Sallach, and measured in the whale. The 6m long animal had managed to end up 7.5 m above sea level! Quite a feat, even post mortem.

If you look closely you can see the pale shape of the whale amidst the boulders

I also took the opportunity to take some pictures of the stunning and bleak Burren landscape. Burren (from Boireann) just means something like “place of rock”, and one can see why it’s called that. Lots of bare, eroding limestone. Beautiful!

Barren Burren landscape

The joints in the limestone, which erode heavily, can go on forever

After the whale it was time for some low boulders. Tide was with me this time! And then there was some time left, so I drove the part of the first day walk that leads over a road. And then it was time to drive back to the airport to deliver the car back. And it all worked out fine. I even slept on the plane; I hadn’t realised how tired I was.

Pretty erosional features on the boulder beach

Colourful rockpool dweller

Burren landscape in the sun

The Burren walk; I'll be doing some of that

The fatigue started to show with most of us on the drive back, but without problems we reached the campus again, and dispersed. There was technically about 5 hours of weekend left; no time to waste!

Ireland recce, day II

2012-01-25T19:32:00.001+01:00

I started the day with what they called a full Irish breakfast. This was THE day of the reconnaissance mission to Ireland, and it would be a long and tiring, but splendid, day. My plan was to check out the field sites where my students would do their own projects. If any time would be left I would go and see some of a walk I would do as a day excursion.

I was lucky; as I was visiting several sites in some far north-western corner, so I got to take a car of my own. A cute little brand new Hyundai ix20. Freedom! I would have happily given Lou a ride, but the Irish busses already catered sufficiently to her needs. So in largely the same configuration as the day before we dispersed into the region.

I had prioritised a project concerning large boulders on a beach; one of the beaches has blocks of sometimes several metres long on it, and one may wonder how that happened. Were they put there by a glacier? A tsunami? A storm? Do they move? If so, what does it take to move them? How often does that happen? Many things one can wonder.

Last year the students surveyed in 60 of these. This year a new cohort will find them back and re-survey them. That will tell them if they have moved in the past year. And if so, how far. And whether they all move or just some, and if some, then which. But I had to get there first, to see if it could be done; can one find them back? I had practiced with the GPS on campus, but now it was time to do it for real. And this time at a very exposed Atlantic beach in January.

While driving up there I saw another beach, and I thought I recognised is as Pol Sallach; a venue for a project that wouldn’t run this year. But just out of curiosity I had a look anyway. A spectacular place! And after admiring the general view I noticed there was an addition to this scene: a dead whale. Of course I had to have a look. It looked like it had been dead for a while! It was a pilot whale; they are infamous for stranding on beaches. This one had gotten pretty far up, though… Would that have been a victim of the storms raging over Europe around Christmas?

The churning sea at Pol Sallach. Notice the boulder beach on the far left.

The poor pilot whale that had gone to meet its maker

The sun even gave some acte de présence!

But enough time spent on whales: time for my boulders! I parked my car in the tiny village of Fanore, got the GPS out, and saw my boulders were 4km away. I figured that would be an appropriately sized walk. I might see interesting things on the way!

After only tens of metres I walked past a house. It turned out to be guarded by a border collie, who seemed eager to keep me away from this premise. How I obliged! I wanted to be 4km further north. And when the dog saw I wasn’t keen on entering the garden she then seemed to contemplate other possibilities. I could be a friend! So she followed me.

My charming companion

For 4 km I walked on tracks and on the beach and scrambled over more of these rocks, with a happy dog running around me. She surely liked a day on the beach! When I got to my boulders, though, I bored her a little; she saw no fun in standing on top or a boulder with some electronic device in your hand. I found what I wanted, though; the boulders weren’t marked anymore, but the GPS, which even had pictures of the measured boulders in its memory, made me find them back after all. And some seemed to have moved; the students can have an interesting project!

Work to be done!

And again, the sun showed itself briefly

Not easy, but very pleasant, to do your job with such an affectionate assistant

Tide came in with lots of foam

At some point I realised I had more to do, and was getting hungry, and still had quite a walk back to perform, and the tide was too high to get to the lower boulders, so I called it a morning. To the great pleasure of the dog! So together we made our way back inland. In order to save time I had decided to walk over the road, this time. On my way there I met a lady; she turned out to be a Franciscan Sister who was worried about me, a young and vulnerable woman alone in these remote places! I initially thought she was afraid of me falling off a rock, banging my head, and nobody finding out until I was properly dead, but instead she worried about scary men. She’d pray for me! As she said, while the dog was over-excitedly licking her boots. That was sweet. Both the praying and the enthusiasm of the dog, actually.

When I continued my path I passed another farm-with-dog; one bark from this male sent my companion racing in the opposite direction. I don’t think she likes any display of aggression! So I walked back alone, but when passing the same house again I was glad to see she had, as expected, gotten there before me.

I figured I had spent too much time on that beach to warrant a relaxed pub lunch; I went to the shop to see if they would sell a sandwich. The lady behind the counter offered to make a fresh one for me. Grand! And in order to not spent the time waiting for my lunch in silence I started a conversation. I told of my charming companion for the day. To my surprise she said “that might have been my dog! She was missing for hours!” I was glad to reassure her the dog was back. The lady didn’t seem too certain she would not one day bugger off for real with some random stranger…

Scenery on the way back

With my sandwich I said goodbye to Fanore and went further north. I had another project there; a spit (a tongue of sediment (partially) closing off a bay), of which the students will have to decide, on proper earth scientific and managerial grounds, whether it merits official protection. So I had to have a look first! But I started by having my lunch in the sun, and sheltered form the pounding wind.

Lunchtime!

After lunch I wandered over the spit. An interesting feature! But quite big. And as exposed as the beach with the boulders. I had to hold on to my note book with force; otherwise the wind would run off with it. When I came off again I was tired! But I still had another task to do. The owner of the lake wanted to show me some device. So I drove back to my little lake, where the man showed me a benchmark. Most useful! But that marked the end of my to do list for the day.

The spit starts like this...

...and 2 km further on it ends like this!

I had another half hour or so of daylight to go; I decided to drive back, but stop at interesting stuff I’d pass on the way. And in Ireland, that’s quite some stuff, believe me. I managed to fit in two ruined fortifications before it got too dark. Not bad!

The region is littered with impressive ruins

When I got back to the hotel I found out that all the others were already back. Later we would go into town for dinner, but for now some were enjoying the facilities of the hotel (pool with Jacuzzi!), and Alison, unfortunately, had to tend to a dog bite she had sustained that day. It was the day of the dogs, and I had drawn the long straw!

Ireland recce, day I

2012-01-23T21:16:00.000+01:00

When you take 106 students on a field trip to Ireland, taking them on two excursions, having them do one staff-lead project and two student-lead projects, you had better know what you're talking about. There’s a lot of opportunity there to either shine or sink. I had never been on the Irish west coast. I had decided to do some projects that had run in previous years, so I would not have to come up with projects without ever having seen the place. But in order to really supervise them I would have to see the geographical features for myself.

Of the 13 members of staff that will lead this trip this year, four had never done it before, and one had only done half the trip. So all of us (partial) newbies teamed up to go and have a look at our field sites, and Wil, who happened to be the general organiser of the fieldtrip, came along. That way on a dark Friday morning five scholars gathered at a still empty university, loaded their bags and themselves into a big car and set off to Totnes. There we picked up scholar number six, and off we were, to the airport.
We would arrive in Ireland in the afternoon, and have just a bit of daylight left to do some exploration on the first day. We would then have an entire Saturday, and then Sunday morning, after which we would have to get back.

Without incidents we arrived in Shannon, where we rented three cars. And then we were off, without any wavering, into the field! Our comic due Pete and Chris shot off, as they mainly had their business in the south. Pete, our fluvial geomorphologist, was looking for suitable rivers, while Chris, our urban planner, had all sorts of plans as to what the students might want to be researching in the various towns. Alison, our glaciologist, had her eye on glacial features further north, while my areas of interest were all the way at or near the north coast. Of Galway Bay, that is; not of all of Ireland. And Louise mainly had business in Galway itself (even further north!), but that would have to wait to the Saturday, and now she was quite happy to come with me. Wil had decided he would come with Alison, so neatly distributed in the cars we ventured north. My first glance of western Ireland! It’s very beautiful. Green rolling hills, the stark bleak rock landscapes of the Burren, and crumbling ruins from the Stone Age to the previous century on every street corner. Amazing!

My first glimpse of western Ireland

When we reached the little lake I wanted to core Alison caught a glimpse of what from a distance looked like interesting glacial sediments. I had prepared well; I knew where the gate was, where exactly I would have to core, where the owner lived and what his name was, so I was quite happy to get down and dirty on my own. Wil wanted to come with Alison, and Lou preferred sediments exposed in a section over standing over her knees in water, so they all shot off.

"My" little lake!

I took a core. I knew what to expect, but it’s always good to have a look for yourself. Mud is better than hearsay! When I was done coring is was practically dark. I dismantled the corer, cleaned it, changed back into civilian gear, and by then in the pitch dark I went to meet the owner. A most friendly chap! So far this trip was going swimmingly!

The lake seen from inside it

Done coring; just in time as light is fading!

When I was done the other car showed up again, and I stole Lou back so I would have good company for the drive home. This became a bit more eventful than it should have been; I had the address of the hotel, and all coordinates of my field sites in my satnav, but we soon had to conclude the charger was broken. So out of the window with modern navigation! We had to drive back on a map with a rather sub-ideal scale, and also a sub-ideal date of manufacture. Since that map was printed these Irish had built quite many new roads… luckily we recognised the number of the road the hotel was on (preparations, again!) and only with a mild detour we got to the hotel. Champion navigators, we! By now with empty stomachs… it was getting late, and we had had a light lunch at Bristol Airport at 11.30!

When Lou and I came in we found Pete and Chris, already working on their second beer. When we checked in we saw Alison and Wil come in too. Time to get out of our field boots, and into the pub for some well-deserved grub! And a pint of Irish stout. Or perhaps two or three. So far things were working out quite well! And this was only the first day! Stay tuned for days two and three, where it gets even better...

Underground photographer strikes again

2012-01-19T19:34:00.000+01:00

It had been quite some time ago I had taken the time to take some pictures underground... the last time I posted a picture taken with long exposure time on the blog seems to be all the way back in July last year. A waste, really! It's lovely to go down, but if you have good pictures you can enjoy the experience forever. Unaided, memory fades way too soon. And of course, often there are other photographers around; especially those with slave flashes can produce amazing pictures in not much time, but there's something to say for taking your own, in your own way.

This trip didn't look like the one to set this right; those in the know had said the adit was very small, and we would go with many people... not a good configuration for long exposure time photography. You can't have people walking through your view; especially not if they have bright lights on their helmets.But the good thing is that if you're the only one taking pictures with 15 seconds of exposure each, you end up lagging behind automatically, and then you have your stretch of the mine for yourself. So I had some fun!

The adit wasn't as small as I had imagined it, and there was quite a lot to see. We had Rick with us, who could identify, and elaborate on, every notch in the wall. He had even identified evidence for fire-setting in this adit; fire-setting boils down to breaking down rock if you don't have, or can't afford, gunpowder. And of course there were dripstone formations, flooded winzes, old timers, and all that lot. Great! I had a blast. And judge for yourself if the results are worth making such a fuss about!

Rick showed us the evidence of firesetting I just didn't manage to take a picture of

Skip crosses a flooded winze

Pretty copper staining and straws on the ceiling

Orange flowstone on the floor of a greenish tunnel

Pristine-looking timbers

There's someone around the corner, unwittingly helping me light my picture!

This mine had nice white fungi on the wall, that retain droplets of water, and thus seem fluorescent

I enjoyed that!

Find your way

2012-01-19T09:06:00.000+01:00

In March I will have to take 106 second year students on a walk, telling them about the geomorphology and vegetation of limestone areas, the effects of changing lithology on drainage, soils and vegetation, rural settlement patterns and land-use in the past and present. The day after I have to show them aspects of rural economy, show how a previously glaciated landscape and the underlying geology control forestry, drainage and agriculture, lecture on river basin and coastal planning, and the uneasy balance between tourism and preservation. Then I have to guide them in doing a small sea level reconstruction project. And that already sounds enough for one week, but no; I also have to inspire them to measure big boulders on a beach, and ponder their provenance, and supervise them when they assess whether a specific spit merits governmental protection. It’s quite a lot! Especially if you ponder how much of that I have actually been educated on myself.

The coming weekend we will go and have a look. I’ll get to see my sea level field site, my boulders and my spit. And in order to get as much out of that trip I had better come prepared.

The boulder project needs the most attention. A previous year, students have measured the position, orientation and size of 60 boulders, and marked them. I will now go and have a look; with the university GPS I should be able to find them back. Even if the marks have come off. If they are indeed identifiable the students can have a look at whether they have moved in the past year, and how that matches with data on things such as wave height. And if something hampers that they may for instance replicate the initial survey, and make sure this time it’s done better.

Surveying random objects on campus

In order to do my investigation I have to know how this specific GPS works; this week I have found back some curbs I had surveyed earlier, with Richard the technician, who had taught me the ropes. So that’s done! I then proceeded to have a look on Google Maps to get an idea of the actual boulders. That was less of a success… I hope the weather will be better when we get there than it was when Google had that aerial photograph taken!

The very illustrative Google Maps image of the field area

Road trip

2012-01-18T20:27:00.000+01:00

It's a nice tradition: first run through mud until you're tired and very smelly. Then change (perhaps shower), and turn into someone most civilized, and have some lunch and do some promenading around. The "Oh my Obelisk!" run was very good for this purpose. There were showers available, and Dawlish, where it started and finished, is a picturesque coastal town. We were even in the luxurious position to frivolously ignore it, and trade it in for even prettier Shaldon, where we had our well-deserved lunch at the seaside. Two poor pollocks sacrificed their life for out leisurely exploits.

Teignmouth seen from Shaldon

Lunch!

After lunch we drove the long way home; all along the coast, over rather small roads. Most decorative! The journey this way also incorporated a quaint ferry crossing over the river Dart, and a drive over Slapton Sands, where we briefly stopped for some fresh air, the stretching of our suffering limbs and the ogling of the enticing tank that's on display there. Running is just an excuse for exploring the region...

Stately building in Dartmouth

The pub at the ferry landing

Looking up the Dart

The ferry was propelled by a tugboat fixed to the side; as it was fixed only at the nose it could turn around in mid-journey

Slapton Sands

Aussie on the beach

Oh my Obelisk!

2012-01-17T09:09:00.000+01:00

The first race of the year! It should have been easy, but that Christmas period spent under the weather lingered long in my leg muscles. Our lunch runs kept on resulting in very stiff calves, but there’s worse things in the world. So on a sunny Sunday morning the usual racing duo Hugh and me drove to Dawlish to participate in the “Oh my Obelisk!” race. I’d only travelled through Dawlish by train, and had been struck by how scenic it lies there on the seaside with golden beaches and pretty red sandstone. This would be my chance to see it from closer by! And from above, as well; the race was named after an obelisk some rich chap had had built on top of a 250 m hill further inland, as a beacon for ships. A cheap and dark sort of lighthouse, in a way. So the race would start where the sea battered the coastal defences, go uphill for roughly 5.5 miles, allow you an amazing view on where you came from, and then take you back 5.5 miles downhill.

Runners doing a warming up in the cold wind, and with the sea in the background

It was a beautiful winter day; we have been lucky with the weather at our races for months! So just before the start everybody was running around and jumping up and down and doing a little dance, as we were all dressed for a race, and not for standing still waiting for the signal to sound. The wind was cold! But as soon as we set off the cold was forgotten. After about a second the same held for Hugh; he disappeared behind the horizon after no time. But I ran comfortably; deep in thought I plodded along the country roads and dirt tracks. Time went by rather fast, and when at some point the path got very steep I figured we had approached the Obelisk. And Lo! We had. It was good to see it; now I only had to run back down again. Downhill isn’t my strongest point, though, so I was quite tired in the legs, but well, an 11 miler with quite some vertical distance to cover too after an illness, that can make you tired in the legs without having to be ashamed about it. Especially if you've spent half the previous day in a gin distillery...

Finally; the obelisk!

The view from near the obelisk; in the background the river Exe can be seen flowing into the sea

On the way down I exchanged some gossip with fellow runners on which races we had done, and which ones we recommended each other; a race can be quite a social occasion. But then Dawlish came into sight again. The finish! I was met by a slightly grumpy Hugh who claimed to have already been waiting for over 15 minutes (it would turn out to have been 11) and who wasn’t entirely satisfied with his performance. I was quite happy with mine, though I realised that probably spelled bad news for my ranking. If I’m happy I haven’t exhausted myself, and have therefore been outrun by many. And it would turn out to be true! I had dramatically broken the positive trend with my poor achievement at Drogo, and only in Cockington done slightly better than that, but in Torrington I had broken my own personal worst record, and on Monday I would find out I had managed that again. I came in 159th of 239; poo! But for me it matters more that I have fun than whether I rank high. And a comparison of my speed versus my ranking in various races suggests that races like this one just attract a tougher crowd… not everybody wants to run 5.5 mile uphill, and down through the mud, in mid-January!

My race to the bottom!

Birthday gin

2012-01-16T11:27:00.000+01:00

What better to celebrate a birthday with than some education. Pete had his birthday, and chose to mark that event by imbibing some knowledge on Plymouth Gin. So on a crisp Saturday just after noon we gathered at the distillery for a tour.

The distillery. Source: Creative Commmons

We first got a historic overview of the beverage and the building it is produced in. The building started as a Dominican monastery in 1431; the distillery is still known as the Black Friars distillery. About a century later, Henry VIII made sure the building, as many of its kind, became available for other use; some rich merchant seems to have bought it, and converted it into a grand house. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers might have spent their last night in the building before sailing across the Atlantic. In 1793 it became the Gin Distillery, and it still is up to this day.

Gin arrived in England in the 17th century together with William of Orange; he evidently left a lasting legacy. The actual Plymouth Gin was boosted once again by royal influence; somewhere in the 19th century the Royal Navy decided to use the beverage as its default officer’s drink on board of war ships. And recently, the whole brand was bought by the Swedish state alcohol monopolist V&S, which then in turn was bought by Pernod Ricard. This allows the distillery to use the global distribution network of this quite sizeable company, but Plymouth Gin is a product with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), so it can’t be produced outside the (very limited) demarcations of the ancient town, and within these limits it’s hard to get planning permission for an annex meant for fondling large amounts of flammable liquid. Plymouth Gin is therefore likely to forever stay a small brand.

Inside the distillery itself one is not allowed to take pictures, but from the hallway an attempt can be made

After the history we got a view of the process. We were lead into the room where the actual distilling takes place; the process has stayed essentially unaltered over the centuries. The kettle used has been in place since 1855, if I remember correctly. And thanks to the soft Dartmoor water there has been no build-up of lime scale in it, not even over all that time. And it seems the first and last gin of every batch produced (they distill from 6.00 to ~14.30) is of inferior quality; the line between inferior and superior is drawn based on the nose of the distiller alone. How nicely old-fashioned! The inferior product is sold on to the industry. The waste (all that gives the gin its flavour: juniper berries, lemon and orange peel, cardamom, coriander seeds, and orris root, though the latter is more a fixative than a flavouring) is sold on as biofuel. The superior gin ends up being bottled. And enjoyed by the likes of me.

We got to fondle all ingredients, and got a taste of (diluted) gin; I was most happy with that! Just add water; everything else is pollution. But I seem to be the only one; no Brit will drink his gin without at least tonic. So as far as I was concerned we had done the gin tasting there and then. We even got a tiny, tiny glass of Sloe Gin.

After that cascade of knowledge (and straight gin) were we sent into the distillery pub for our free beverage. Another one? Just leave me in the tasting room with all these unappreciated glasses of straight gin… but it doesn’t work that way. Pete, Sabrina and Hugh went for the standard G&T, while I just had my complimentary gin straight. Why not drink buckets of gin before 2PM? It’s Pete’s birthday, after all!

Don't take your car caving

2012-01-15T21:36:00.000+01:00

Internet knows much, but not all. It seems that the only fatal caving accident in the Southwest in the last 10 years involved a chap lowering himself into a mine shaft. He was a responsible guy; he was aware of the potential dangers of bad air in such spaces, so he had brought a gas meter. If such a device detects undesirably low levels of oxygen, or high levels of detrimental gases such as carbon monoxide, it kicks up quite a racket with beeping and ominously flashing lights.

It seems that this chap had lowered himself a bit too fast - between the moment of the alarm going off and the moment he had stopped his descent he had already reached the bad air with his head. And he did try to turn around on the rope, and climb out of it, but a change-over is a bit fidgety, and he didn't make it. Most sad.

I can't find an account of this accident anywhere. My knowledge of it may be flawed. But it does illustrate a point: bad air does occur underground, and one should be careful with it. The cave rescue team has a few gas meters, and we should know how they work. We had two new ones, and we used part of a Thursday training evening to practice with them.

The last time we practiced with them someone held one near the exhaust of Rick’s Land Rover. Rick then started the engine. Without any delay the alarm went off. This time I paid a bit more attention to why exactly; the highest reading I saw was 421 ppm CO… for reference: a USA working place can have 50 ppm max. So don’t bring your car down a cave. It’s not good for you.

One of our rescuers smokes. He put his own breath to the test; he took a deep nicotine breath, and took his time breathing out onto the gas meter. Yes the alarm did go off. It seemed to be worse than Rick’s car… some people pay money for strange sensations.

Next week we’ll bring one down the next trip venue. It’s only a small adit, and if we are with enough people we may exhaust the oxygen in there. We will be able to monitor that most precisely! And whether I got the story of the unlucky guy precisely right or not; the story serves its purpose on reminding one a gas meter is only of use when used in the proper way…

Continued reading

2012-01-15T18:49:00.000+01:00

While I was ill I read several books. And that kicked my reading hunger into overdrive, and in the days I was fit enough to work but not fit enough to do things such as run or go caving I just kept reading. And even after I had recovered completely I kept reading.

I had a non-fiction book on my to do list, but still being a bit fragile I decided to not strain myself too much, and keep on the fiction tour for now. I started out with a classic I had never come round to: Franz Kafka’s “the Trial”. And as I was still trying to make space in my cupboards I also read two books I just happened to have for no apparent reason. I wanted to find out if they were worthy of a place in my cupboard. Actually, I tried three; one ended up on the “to be discarded” pile after only two pages. The other ones got approval. The one that didn’t make it was “Palace” by Claude Simon, and the more appreciated ones were “drie Rode Rozen” by Abel Herzberg, and “de Gele Regen” by Julio Llamazares.

The book by Herzberg (“three red roses”) deals with a Holocaust survivor faced with the question why God allowed this to happen. He finds a metaphoric ally in Job, though this does not help him understand; can God be excused for putting Job through all that for what looks like simply a bet? Just because you’re God, can you just kill someone’s family in a whim? Can you just allow 6 million individuals from some population group be killed off as pests? Of course there are no answers.

“De Gele regen” (the yellow rain) deals with a small village in the Spanish Pyrenees. When population declines and urbanisation beckons it slowly gets abandoned. The story is told by the old man who is the last inhabitant. He sees everybody else leave, but can’t cope with leaving this house, this village, this effort made by generations of his ancestors, which he would have liked to see pass into the hands of the generation after him. A last act of defiance before he too dies and nature takes the village back.

The Trial is the only book I figure everyone reading this blog has heard of. Often read it, I presume. I only knew beforehand it dealt with a bloke who’s arrested without him knowing why, and then the endless quest for any progress in that situation.

Franz Kafka

When I started I was surprised at how surreal it all is. It reminded me of “the Unconsoled” by Ishiguro. And when you progress through the book you start to get an idea of what this trial stands for. Along the line you also start to wonder if you get a glimpse of why Kafka himself struggled so much with life. Joseph K. seems to stand all alone in the world, and hardly sees any role other than a strictly utilitarian one for his fellow men. And to the modern eye, he is quite a snooty upper class misogynistic twat. I’m glad I finally got to read it; it was well worth it! Food for thought.

And now onwards, with Hamlet…

Crumbly granite

2012-01-14T12:55:00.000+01:00

Look at a map or satellite image of the Southwest of England, and one of the first things that catches the eye are the big granite intrusions. And on a map they may appear as large empty areas, such as Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor, but they are that because in essence they are granite intrusions. The energy that came along with these enormous blobs of molten rocks is a large part of the reason there are so many mineable deposits in the area. The southwest is really dominated by geology!

The geological map of the Southwest

Granite is an intrusive, or plutonic rock; it is formed when molten rock buoys to near the surface, and then cools down and becomes solid. That takes a while; that's why granite tends to have had time to form big crystals. Quite unlike basalts, for instance, which are volcanic rocks, and reach the surface in molten form and solidify there. That goes much faster, and hence the completely different, and much more homogenous, look.

Granite. Source: Creative Commons

As granite is formed below the surface, it tends to not be very chemically stable at the surface. And on the time scales of buildings that is not much of an issue, but on the time scale of, say, Dartmoor, it is. These granites have been lying there for roughly 300 million years, and time has not passed by unnoticed. Large parts of the granite have weathered into china clay. Many clay pits still litter the countryside.

One of the big China Clay pits in the Southwest. Notice the infrastructure-poor mass of Dartmoor on top, and the arable lands below, and the clay pit in between. It lies on the contact of the granite and the surrounding rock, where weathering would be most severe.

There are mines, too, in the granite. And where you dig a tunnel into the granite you accelerate the weathering process. So a mine in granite may become crumbly, and prone to collapse.

There is something to say for that these mines are to be avoided. Dying in a collapsing mine does nothing for the wellbeing of one’s loved ones. Doesn’t help the project one works in, either. But then again; such a mine will not exist for much longer. If one has the chance to see one that opportunity must surely be seized! The chances of anything going wrong while someone is inside is slim.

Pics by John

What is wise? Well. The answer is easy. But what does one do? I went in. It was a beautiful place. We might want to go back to explore the bit we couldn’t do this time, but one day within our lifetime we'll have to leave it to its inevitable demise.

Fashion colours of 2012

2012-01-10T10:52:00.000+01:00

This is my caving suit. It's green, with yellow sleeves and black cuffs. Beautiful, isn't it?

Caving, a pensioners' sport

2012-01-09T20:33:00.001+01:00

Finally! After almost three weeks of being all dainty and intellectual I did something silly and muddy again. It seemed to take half an hour for the water to not be black anymore after having percolated through my hair when I had a shower afterwards! And I was bruised and slightly stiff in the muscles. A good day.

Baker's entrance chamber. Pic by John

“We’re here to see that caving can be still done at 60!” And we knew that. One of those present at the underground birthday party was 64 himself. And we have the tireless Hugh and Trish. And the cave rescue team has the unsurpassable Mike, who’s in his seventies. But still, one of our more active cavers, Bernard, turning 60 was a splendid reason for a party. Not just any party; a party mainly consisting of a veritable caving spree down Baker’s pit.

Birthday boy Bernard in the archaeological part of Baker's

We went in with a rather large group. It didn’t take long for several sub-groups to form; some more keen on trying climbs and squeezes, those in it for a relaxing ramble, those focussing on taking pictures... Baker’s caters for all!

I am starting to get rather familiar with Baker’s, but in a way that makes it even better. I liked going up the upper series again; I’d only been there once before, and it stays challenging. And in the latter part of the trip I saw places I hadn’t been before. And some of that had rather nice formations.

By the time we came out hours had passed. We were starving! But luckily, we were at a birthday party, and there was food galore. And drinks! It was quite funny to see our table, entirely populated by those having been underground, being swiped clean of any food, while folks at a neighbouring table couldn’t even half finish theirs. They had stayed at the surface...

About half of the birthday desserts! Notice the little train on the white cake...

After dinner it was time for Bernard to blow out the candles on the train-festooned cake. And give his small speech. And for any lingering appetite to be taken care of by the four cakes. And then some of the workaholics started to look at their watches. Time to go home; the next day would be another working day! But then we were called to another room by Bernard’s daughters. They had something else for us in mind: birthday games... I hadn’t participated in the kind since primary school, and that was for a reason. We all participated in the first one, but after that the first people started to make their moves. In spite of the games? Hastened by them? Who knows. Either way; I hope the die-hards partied until deep in the night. And we all look forward to Bernard’s 70th birthday; the suggested venue is Afton!

Music

2012-01-08T23:35:00.000+01:00

Ophelia, you must remember…

"Ophelia" by John Everett Millais

I rarely shroud myself in silence. When I’m at home, the first thing I do in the morning is turn the radio on; unless I’m reading or writing I also play music in the office. And in the lab music is often indispensible. When I’m driving I like music too. There’s a lot of it in my life! But not much of it on the blog. Maybe because you can’t take pictures of it.

I have perhaps a bit of a strange relationship with music. As I have no musical talent whatsoever, but have a proper fascination with words, I focus quite some attention on the lyrics. And sometimes it gets compulsive. Sometimes a song starts haunting me, and as I can only play a song in my head if I know the lyrics, such a song will often tumble around like a moth around a flame; only when I can play it in its entirety in my head will it stop fluttering about, and can spread its wings.

Recently I had that with “Ophelia” by Tori Amos, from the album “abnormally attracted to sin”. And the only bit I remembered was “Ophelia, you must remember…” Not enough! Margot must remember. So I played the song over and over. Until I knew it all.

The next step should be trying to find out what it all means. I have never read Hamlet, or seen it performed! And there’s many more references in the text; for instance to “the Eve of St. Agnes”; a poem by Keats. Never read that either! And she sings “Veronica’s America is not like Charlotte’s"; who are Veronica and Charlotte? That I may never find out, but I should read the two literary works. Music for me is largely words, and words lead to more words! Should I just give this blog entry the tag “books”, even though I tried to write about music?

A painting by John Everett Millais based on "the Eve of St Agnes"

Ophelia by Tori Amos

Ophelia your secret is safe
Ophelia you must break the chain
Some girls will get their way
Some fathers will control from the grave
Ophelia you must remember

Veronica's America is not like--
Is not like Charlotte's, one to savor
Cosmic flavor
Then Alison whispers, "remember
Change waltzes in with her sister Pain
Waiting for you to send her away
Wish her well break the chain
Break the chain"
I feel you
Ophelia

"The Eve of St. Agnes",
A poem he can't reach you in
Ophelia you know how to lose
But when will you learn to choose
Those men who choose to stay
Those mothers who won't look the other way
Ophelia you must remember

Veronica's America is not like--
Is not like Charlotte's, one to savor
Cosmic flavor
Then Alison whispers," remember
Change waltzes in with her sister Pain
Waiting for you to send her away
Wish her well break the chain
Break the chain"
I feel you
Ophelia

Never bored again? Dream on...

2012-01-07T15:20:00.001+01:00

When abibliophobe meets iPhone something beautiful happens. Could happen. I, a self-confessed sufferer of the fear to not have something to read, had a bit of an Eureka-moment when I realised iPhones can be used as eReaders, and that the number of eBooks available is staggering. One needs to never be bored again! Until one's battery runs out. And that happens fairly soon with an iPhone.

Picture the moments where a supply of eBooks on one’s phone would come in most handy. Say; one gets stuck in an elevator. One visits a friend but he or she is late and can't let one in. One is driving and encounters mechanical problems. These are all situation in which charging a phone might prove a challenge.

There is, theoretically, a solution to this. There’s manual chargers; just rotate away and you breathe life back into your device! I’d bought one, as my car doesn’t have a cigarette lighter, and thus won’t charge my satnav. I unfortunately found out that so much rotation is required to produce the slightest noticeable increase in battery power on the satnav one runs a serious risk of hurting oneself providing it. But would an iPhone need so much less power it would become feasible to manually charge it?

I tried it. The answer is no. There seems not to be such a thing as a free lunch! Another lesson learned…

It could be so beautiful!

Climategate ponderings

2012-01-06T12:18:00.000+01:00

…”after all, all evidence of anthropogenic warming has been disproved…”

I don’t hear it very often, probably because I spend most of my time among people well-educated in climate matters, but every time you hear it it’s one time too many. I heard it a few weeks ago, from a person not educated in climate matters, but surely a most intelligent character. And it kept haunting me. He said this referring to “climategate”. Everyone has heard of it, but most have no real idea what it was about. As the allegations by climate sceptics who has found a flaw, and thus a stick to beat the dog with, were serious, big investigations were conducted to find out if indeed climate scientists were all crooks who made it all up and were all part of a big conspiracy, or whether they are just humans who are fallible like everybody else. Yes, sometimes people sit on their data; yes, sometimes people express themselves in a somewhat unfortunate way. Of course it pays off to display your results in such a light they look most interesting. And yes, of course there are cases in which people go little bit too far with this. Does that invalidate all of climate science?

I can’t possibly grasp how many people are working in this discipline, and how much data we gather in total, and how many papers we produce all together. It’s huge! Just suppose the investigations would have disclosed man-induced warming to be a myth; wouldn’t that have meant that thousands and thousands of scientists worldwide would have been fired? Wouldn’t governments worldwide have withdrawn their funding? Wouldn’t that have been a much bigger event than the Gulf Oil Spill*, for instance?

It’s not a useful question, for through investigation after investigation the data stood solid as a rock. (I know I'm only linking to Wikipedia in this entry, but that's a source people tend to trust more than most other sites I could link to!) That, however, is hardly a juicy piece of information. It’s more fun to keep your blinkers on and claim all evidence of anthropogenic warming has been disproved! As untrue as it is.

It’s even possible the guy who inspired this blog post was jesting, and I just didn’t notice. It's happened before. But the thought stands. There are really people out there that think it’s all a scam and such has been proven, but how do they fit that in with their vision on how society works? Are all governments in the conspiracy too?? Maybe they don’t think at all. Maybe I shouldn’t even care; governments know better to such extent they still support climate science, and how are some anonymous angry ignoramuses in the street going to affect that? But it bothers me anyway…

*ps I know the oil spill did goodness knows how much damage to the Gulf ecosystem, which hardly makes it comparable to mass collapse of a hypothetical climate scientists conspiracy, but I am certain that such event would beat the oil spill in human death toll...

From troglodyte to lady in two weeks

2012-01-05T19:24:00.000+01:00

One of the most important things in life is good health! If you don't have that it's bad enough as it is, but almost everything in life that is enjoyable suffers from it. Take me, for instance! It has been almost 2.5 weeks since I last did something remotely silly and muddy. A few days later I fell ill, and since then I have only been able to blog about literature, science, architecture, and promenading along the sea front. I haven't gone underground, I haven't dangled from ropes, I haven't participated in some race over a ludicrously muddy track, I have done nothing irresponsible or muddy at all in what seems ages! I think I'm turning into a lady. I think I'm teetering daintily on the brink of an identity crisis. I might very well switch back soon to my former troglodyte self, but there are no guarantees! Maybe this is permanent...

Not the best editing job in the world, but it serves the purpose...

Two-hour seaside holiday

2012-01-03T16:36:00.000+01:00

The plan was to have a whole week of holiday. But day after day was consumed by ill health. Even the new year came without my normal shape having been restored. But then, on the second day of the year, I had recovered enough to merit a modest and calm trip. Hugh, in spite of still having plenty of employment for his handkerchief, had proposed a little road trip, and I felt up for it. That way we could have one day of careless leisure before working routine would take over again!

After due consideration we decided to go to Fowey; it had a tiny little fortress; not anywhere as impressive as many in the vicinity, but in contrast to most this one could be visited in winter. It had some other architectural gems, and plenty of coastal path, and undoubtedly some nice pubs, and it wasn’t too far away. And we had never been there before. I couldn’t resist googling if there were any interesting remains of the quite considerable (cluster of) mine(s) with which I associate this town: Fowey Consols, but unfortunately, there seemed to be little left of it.

The other side of the estuary mouth seen from Fowey.

Through weather that couldn’t decide on rain or shine we drove thither. And were greeted by a very charming town indeed! Unfortunately, we were also greeted by a phenomenon I greatly dislike: the parking machine that only accepts coins. I had none of value, and Hugh only managed to rake together enough for 2 hours of parking. We would later decide on whether we would get change in town and refill the machine, or limit ourselves to these two hours, and seek solace elsewhere afterwards. We would in the end choose the latter, and regret it.

Fowey

View from Fowey over the estuary

We walked down to the beach from where the little fortress could be reached, and subsequently to the fortress itself. It was most charming! We even tried to scale the walls in the most innocent of ways, but from the inside that was little success, and from the outside it didn’t provide the excellent photo opportunity I had hoped. And while at it we even gave some kids what their parents clearly viewed as the wrong ideas.

The fortress

The fortress from the inside

Having seen that we strolled leisurely through town like a proper English lady and gentleman. Time was pressing though; we would have no time for lunch before our parking time would run out. And that was when we regrettably decided to leave, and find a country pub to have lunch in.

The pub of our choice was reached without problems; parking, though, proved trickier as there was some horse-related event going on which lead to many cars, often with cumbersome trailers. But that was the least of our worries; the kitchen of the pub was closed! And we feared the same may hold for all country pub kitchens nearby. We had been spoiled a bit by the pubs on more frequented Dartmoor...

By the time we got back to the car, only a minute or so later, some horse-pertaining person had already deemed it a good idea to block our exit. And acted as if our request to move his car was the grossest injustice ever hurled at man. The day had clearly taken a wrong turn! We decided to try Launceston; we had to drive through anyway, and larger towns might have more liberal opening hours. But before we could check that we had yet another encounter with a parking machine; this one delightfully did not only accept coins but also credit card payment performed by telephone; a feature I hadn’t come across before, and with which I struggled a bit with due to the use of voice recognition software that couldn’t distinguish between my “P” and “D”, but which did work in the end. I want more of that! No more Dickensian scenes with coins as the only tender.

We went into town to check our faint hope on a pub meal. Launceston presented itself to us at its bleakest and most soulless; our already slim hope shrank to nothing, and quite numbed and hungry we devoured a pizza at a depressing kebab joint. The pizza refuelled us such that we had the energy to ogle the Roman castle the town boasts on from a distance; of course it was closed. In the fading daylight it did provide an impressive sight though. One day we may be back to have a closer look, and then we will make sure we seek lunch before 2PM!

All in all our holiday had boiled down to these 2 hours in mainly sunny Fowey. It’s better than nothing! Tomorrow back to the grinding mill...

Cute seals: a good thing?

2012-01-02T22:02:00.002+01:00

The times of paracetamol and cough syrup aren’t over yet, and therefore, neither is the time for blog-backlog-reduction. Months and months ago, I attended the Second Marine Institute Research Centre Conference, and I was struck by a talk dealing with how the public views the marine realm, and its environmental issues. Some of the findings were unexpected, or somewhat sour, or funny, or a combination of the above. The full title of the talk was “Public interest in ecological health for marine conservation communication: why charismatic megafauna are not always the answer” by Rebecca Jefferson from (then)MarCoPol.

After her talk I asked if she would mind if I blogged about all this. She didn’t; on the contrary, she was so kind as to send me three chapters of her thesis, on which the talk was based. And thanks to these I could now, six months later, finally convey some of that knowledge to my blog.

What she had set out to investigate boiled down to what sort of people know what about the UK subtidal realm, how they know it, in what way they are worried about it and why, and how one should go about if one wants to communicate about these issues with them.

For finding out something about who knows, and worries, about what a survey was held among people in the categories: coastal resident, inland resident, coastal manager, recreation employed, and marine scientist. Interestingly, all groups tended to roughly worry about the same things. Except the managers. They worried about management. Nobody else did; they worried mainly about pollution and overfishing. Managers really live in a different world!

Other findings were that hose with an interest in the marine realm generally had acquired that by rummaging around on the beach as a youngster, even though that often does not involve actually seeing spectacular animals. Documentaries seemed to help too. Scientists were the most concerned about climate change, and inland residents worry about what they see on TV, while coastal residents worry about what they see themselves. Maybe not so surprising. When it came to learning more, it turned out that the best trusted source of information is, (sigh of relief), scientists. Unfortunately; these overwhelmingly mention it does nothing for one’s career (perhaps even the opposite) to engage in education of the lay, so they are quite reluctant to fulfil this possible role. (Yes we have heard this before.)

Rockpooling (even at night, as I did when I took this picture) sparks interest in the marine realm!

Addressing the question how one can make people care, the author investigated who is familiar with what UK marine species, and which of these they are interested in. Species actually most relevant to marine health are structural plants and invertebrates, but these might not spark the imagination very much. Flagship species for conservation campaigns tend to be charismatic macrofauna, such as dolphins. They arouse lots of sympathy, and can serve to make something fuzzy as biodiversity easier to grasp. Polar bears, for instance, do a good job of making people care about arctic warming. But there is a catch, of course; in the US there is a positive correlation between charisma of a species and the level of protection it gets under the Endangered Species Act, and a negative correlation between protection and how endangered it actually is

A specimen of CMF (Charismatic MegaFauna)

Source: Creative Commons

When a large number of people was asked about whether they had heard of twelve carefully chosen species, whether they thought these species occurred in UK waters, and whether they were interested in them, interesting patterns emerged. The list covered a range of charismatic and less endearing, ecologically important and unimportant, economically interesting or commercially trivial species. And of course, everybody had heard of seals, puffins and sea horses, and cared about them. Funnily enough, people overestimate the occurrence in the UK of non-charismatic species and underestimate that of charismatic ones; in the general eye, UK seas are seen as low in worth, so they can’t possibly host charismatic species such as puffins. Surely they live in more exotic waters! But dull worms; yes, they must certainly abound in UK waters. There’s potential here for raising enthusiasm for marine protection!

A sand mason worm; quite an unloved species from the study

The public might swoon over cute seals, but it is not fooled into believing their presence or absence is the best indicator of a healthy marine environment. However; what you see is what you care about, so though it has no basis in fact, presence or absence of litter on the beach was seen as the best indicator of a healthy sea.

What I thought was the most hilarious finding of this project, was that the results in who is interested in what species were also split out according to gender and level of education. And it turns out that women are interested in cute animals, while men are interested in animals they can eat. Typical! And a university education lessens that gender difference…

Requiem for a species

2012-01-01T13:29:00.001+01:00

The patient’s library has more to offer! After books full of history, politics, trivia, and even fiction it’s time for a review of yet another climate related book. I must confess I didn’t read this in my sick bed, but when I did read it I didn’t have time to write a review. And now I have, although it has become a bit of a blend between a book review and me just having a private rant. So what book is it this time? It’s the view on the climate issue from a professor in public ethics. Not a climate scientist, but clearly a man who has informed himself well. It’s littered with relevant references. And what does he have to say? Roughly this: anthropogenic climate change is a massive problem, and there are endless lists of reasons why it’s not been dealt with properly at present, but we should change that. Have we heard that before? Yes! But is this book worthwhile? Yes! So as I don’t think there are many sour climate sceptics visiting this blog I suggest, reader, you read on, if only to remind yourself of some of the matters at hand.

Requiem for a Species, by Clive Hamilton.

He starts by saying that anthropogenic climate change is as close to fact as science gets. For me, that is evident. And yes, I am a climate scientist, so yes, I may be in some global conspiracy that aims at world domination by spreading climate lies. Whatever. The science is clear, whatever non-scientists may think. The problem is, non-scientists are allowed to base themselves on cherry-picked information, or none at all, and we aren’t. And we say what people don’t want to hear. And we can prove it, but nobody will ever have a look at our proof. Is any member of the public willing to plough through piles and piles of scientific articles, which hold the data? Of course not. And one could say: we made all these data up. Hmm. Sometimes a scientist is caught making things up. And there goes their career! Anyway; I digress.

The science is clear, but politics don’t respond. Once in a while targets for cutting CO2 exhaust are formulated, but has any nation ever reached such a target? And even if they were reached: they are based on what is politically feasible, and that has NOTHING at ALL to do with what’s scientifically justified. And exhaust of greenhouse gases goes faster and faster and faster. And it is not necessary; if you want to know what could be done read either George Monbiot’s "Heat", or Chris Goodall’s "How to live a low-carbon life". But both books suggest rather thorough change. And as the neighbour isn’t making that change, we are not likely to do it either. This also work on the larger scale; many are the politicians who point at China, and say it’s no use trying to do something about climate change as long as they don’t either. But since when is “somebody else is worse” an excuse for detrimental behaviour.

And it’s scary; hardly anyone has any grasp on what CO2 does. It’s just a number; isn’t it, reader? How many of you have an idea of pre-industrial levels, of the natural variability, and such things? Even with a well-educated audience I suppose not many have a solid grip on these things. And when it comes to the changes already taking place: if you’re a farmer, you might notice changing life cycles (plants in bloom earlier and earlier in the year, strange species invading), but most people aren’t farmers, and spend most of their time staring at screens.

It has been estimated that September 25th, 2009 was what is called “World Overshoot Day”; the day at which what the Earth produces is equalled by what humans consume. So every day since then, we consume more than can be replenished. And in spite of that, every government around the globe want “growth”. That’s a collision course if there ever was one. Can we do without? This book tries to answer that question. And could, perhaps, technology save us from the link between growth and destruction? In this light it makes sense to behold the “IPAT equation”: I=P*A*T (environmental Impact depends on Population, Affluence and Technology). Trying to curb population won’t do much good; it’s the rich that exhaust most, and they already have few kids. Affluence: nobody wants to spread poverty. So technology here is the only one that might give hope; however, Tim Jackson has calculated how much technology has to provide to keep the “I” within limits. It does not inspire much optimism.

And back to growth: Stern already famously calculated for us that said mitigation is cheaper than adaptation, but nobody looks at the longer term, especially now, in times of economic hardship. Cynically enough, growth may be a good thing in societies where people still die of hunger or easily preventable diseases, but in western society it doesn’t, as above a certain threshold (and in western Europe, we are generally above it) money doesn’t make one happier, as long as it is everybody who doesn’t gets richer. It matters more how much you earn with respect to the neighbour, than what the absolute amount is. Growth, as well, is a silly thing in a society where you can make money by selling self-help books on de-cluttering your house.

This is turning into a bleak story. (How surprising). So we do know what should be done, we know how to, but these days there is no political will; many a “green” energy plan (link gives example) has recently been scrapped since the European economies started faltering. And consumers are more likely to buy into green wash than into initiatives that really make a difference. Some may say we could invest in geo-engineering, but beside the fact that I'm sceptical about it, there is even less money for that sort of jokes nowadays.

Not everybody is enthusiastic about this book

So what will happen now? A thorough evaluation of that question needs much more reading than I can currently afford, but count on changing precipitation patterns, rising sea level, melting ice (also where it’s necessary as drinking water supply), and of course simple higher temperatures. The latter will be felt worst on land, due to its lower heat capacity; and land, that’s where we live. Canada and Siberia will probably benefit, due to more land coming within the climatically arable zone, but that’s little solace for, say, African famers, whose land will migrate out of that zone. And in general, the Southern Hemisphere is screwed, as it will lose arable land, but won’t win any, as at the crucial latitudes there’s only sea there.

So what must we do? Clive Hamilton says: shake off all indifference, ignorance and fatalism, and act anyway! And that is probably the only reasonable thing to do. Though I admit that every time I write such a review, my heart is heavy. So don’t listen to me: listen to Hamilton! And Monbiot! And Goodall!

Happy new year!

2012-01-01T13:24:00.002+01:00

May you all have a marvellous 2012!

Return of the Native

2011-12-31T13:47:00.000+01:00

Take Wuthering Heights, mix in some Anna Karenina, and what do you get? The return of the native, by Thomas Hardy.

Hugh had prodded around a bit in my sense of aesthetics, and had found enough windswept wasteland there to give me this book (and Dostoyevsky’s “the idiot”, but I haven’t read that yet) for my birthday. And when I fell ill I had a chance to read it.

It starts with a very gloomy description of the fictional Egdon Heath; beautiful! And this sets the scene for a narrative where decisions on marriage, not taken after sufficient consideration, end even worse than in Emily Brontë’s classic.

I liked the modern relational bungling up of the main characters; this hardly felt 19th century! But of course, it was 19th century, and that means a lot more is at stake. So trouble was brewing. And it didn’t let anyone wait.

After a while I got a bit fed up with Hardy’s tendency to really let everything go as wrong as it possibly can; everything is timed to perfection to do the most damage. Of course that letter is delivered late, of course the suspected lover and the suspecting mother end up at the cottage at the same time. Of course everybody is asleep when they shouldn’t and awake when they shouldn’t. Of course there are always prying eyes, which will sooner or later release their knowledge. But just as I got tired of the gimmick it ended! And Hardy very elegantly lets one of his own opportunities to throw a spanner in the machinery go by unused. Even though a footnote suggests he had to make a serious effort to do so...

An interesting thing about this book is also that it was not published in one go; it started as a series in a magazine, and many versions exist of the text, which show how Hardy was, till the very end, tweaking the social status and moral standing of his characters. In a way, you can choose yourself here, which version you prefer!

So whoever is looking for a book with plenty of rainy, dark, thorny hills, and marital choices leading to agonising downfall, and well-meant attempts at social reform that are doomed from the start (here comes Anna Karenina, or rather, Kostya), the clash of dream and reality (Anna herself, here!) I can recommend this book! And yet again, I got reminded of what a great improvement it has been that women now have a life of their own. I might be a hopeless reactionary, but this is surely an aspect of modern life I thoroughly appreciate!

Still ill

2011-12-30T20:46:00.000+01:00

On the first day of my illness, my true love gave to me: a partridge in a pear tree. One may wonder where I would put that tree. If you take this song further, I would by now have eight maids-a-milking, seven swans-a-swimming, six geese-a-laying, five gold rings, four colly birds, three french hens, two turtle doves, and, of course, that partridge in the pear tree. My house would be quite overcrowded by now. And who knows, I might make it to the end of the song; I can talk again, and my tonsils have receded back out of sight, but I’m still coughing and sneezing and quite drained. After going to town for groceries today I had to lie down for 3 hours to recover. It’s been quite enough now, as far as I’m concerned! They can keep their twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords-a-leaping, and nine ladies dancing. I even resorted, quite in contrast with my upbringing, to multiple self-medication. I have commenced consuming, on top of the recommended paracetamol, pink cough syrup! Let’s hope it works against, if not ladies dancing, then hopefully lords a-leaping...

Read the year 2010

2011-12-30T20:27:00.000+01:00

What does one do if one is too ill to do anything strenuous, but too healthy to lie in bed all day? One reads. And as I was ill for much longer than I expected I not only got frustrated, but I also was in the luxurious position to read more in a week than I had done in the preceding six months. The reader may already have noticed I read a magazine, but most of my reading concerned books.

My choices were somewhat eclectic, as one can see. I started with “Essays in Cornish mining history”; need I say more? Neil had given it to me, and it had wrestled its way to the top of my to read list. But then I thought the time had come to dive into Schott’s Almanac. And then I went on to Thomas Hardy; that will be another blogpost.

The last week of the year traditionally is one for looking back. And commonly on the year coming to an end, but I chose one before; when I, at the end of the year 2010, saw this book, I figured it would be a splendid monument to my affair with the UK. It was an overview of the first year I lived for the whole year in this country, and therefore it would likely be the year in which my opinion on it would be largely constructed. The year by which I would remember it! And now, yet a year later, it may be interesting to see how someone else would have documented that pivotal year.

In reality, this almanac covers rather the academic year 2009/2010: September 2009 to September 2010, but that only makes it even better suited for my purpose. And it covers all big news world stories of that time: the Haiti earthquake, the Gulf oil spill, Eyjafjallajökull, Greek debt, and all that. And of course the big UK stories: the UK elections, the rampant UK gunmen, parliamentary expenses, the Chilcot inquiry (on the legitimacy of the Iraq war), the cat in the wheelie bin, Catholic abuse scandals, William Hague, the Stig, the Pope’s visit... the book did quite what I hoped it would do!

Some of the things that coloured the UK year were: the person of the year; the mili-cleg-eron. “A well-schooled, Oxbridge-educated, London-centric, white, married, heterosexual, 40-something male.” And some of the words of the year: media stacking (using several types of media at the same time), showmance (a showbiz romance faked for PR reasons), iPod oblivion (the inattentiveness of those engrossed in iPods, iPhones, etc), twillionaire (a twitterer with more than a million followers).

And beside that it offered an interesting range of trivia, some of which I will reproduce here. It claimed that a poll by YouGov/Softwareload indicated that 92% of Brits think that bringing a laptop on holiday will not result in arguments, and that one by Orange suggests that 58% of British men lie to their friends about having seen classic films.

The most popular baby name in 2009 (according to Bounty) for a boy was Jack, and for a girl Olivia; interestingly enough, the top ten of both genders was practically identical to a 2010 poll by OnePoll which gave the most regretted baby names. The most common regret in parents seems to be giving their child a too common name...

A Girlguiding survey showed that girls up to 11 years old are mostly dissatisfied with their hair & teeth, and older girls have as their biggest physical complaint that they think they’re fat.

Headbanging leads to modest head injury if the range of motion is over 75°.

The percentage of children that have ever smoked has gone down 1997-2008.

Homicides in 2008/9 are mainly performed using sharp objects. The next likely way to meet your violent end differs for men and women; for men the no.2 is being hit & kicked, while for women it’s strangulation.

The oddest book title in 2009 was, according to the book trade, was “Crocheting adventures with hyperbolic planes”.

The Darwin award 2009 went to two blokes who tried to blow up an ATM, but misjudged the amount of explosives needed; they also blew up the entire building, and themselves.

One of the nominees for the igNobel prize was a team of scientists that had invented a bra that could, in case of need, be quickly converted to two face masks.

A newly identified Australian snail was baptised Crikey steveirwini.

Travel website Zoover asked their visitors which Euroean males were considered the sexiest: Italy won, and Switzerland came last. OnePoll asked what accent was the sexiest, and the reply was: Irish; strangely enough, the top 10 contained 6 versions of English. Probably because of English domination, I guess...

In 2008/2009, London had 847 fast food outlets.

The global economy is suffering, and one seeks a way to try to measure the gravity of the situation; there’s many economic indices, some of which are not so well-known; such as the Hemline index (skirts get longer in economically trying times), and the popcorn index (healthier economy = more popcorn eaten in Odeon cinemas).

In the period 1997-2010, the business most on the rise was the lap dancing club, with a >1000% increase. Other big winners were drive- through restaurants and betting shops. The biggest losers were sports/social clubs, with other big losers being livestock markets and hospitals.

The National Biblical Literacy Survey showed that 5% of Brits know the Ten Commandments, 57% knew 3 or more, and 16% couldn’t name any. Curiously, 41% of non-church-goers knew the “golden rule” (Do unto others as you would have them do to you) compared to only 31% of self-declared church goers.

The science museum polled Brits for their most common lies to their significant other: the top 3 for men is 1) I didn’t have that much to drink 2) Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine 3) I had no signal, and for women it is 1) Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine 2) I don’t know where it is, I haven’t touched it 3) It wasn’t that expensive.

Nothing like some trivia to clear the clogged head!

Of lighthouses and the damage to humans

2011-12-30T12:19:00.001+01:00

"I'm surprised you don't know what that is!" I had just told Neil the story of how I managed, just before our epic hike on Dartmoor, to slip on a smooth slab of rock in a Plymouth pavement, and flop my knee inside out. Only moderately, fortunately; the hike was not jeopardised by this event. But I mentioned I did not know what that smooth slab was doing there. Evidently to Neil's surprise.

The blog reader would be excised for thinking Neil had vanished from my life after the sad events of last August, but that is a mere artefact of a specific blog bias; I preferentially blog about events I have taken pictures of. And since mentioned day in August we have only met to catch up, which is not a very opportune occasion for photographic documentation. So though he's been absent from the blog, he has not been absent from my life, and it was during one of these catching up sessions this conversation took place.

"You've seen more of Plymouth and surroundings in a few years than most locals do in a lifetime! I'm surprised you don't know what that is. That slab is part of a cross-section of the Eddystone Lighthouse. (This tower is widely used as the symbol for Plymouth.) It beautifully shows the interlocking stones. It even includes a metal slab, which symbolises a blob of molten lead that fell of the roof when this was on fire, into the mouth of a guy who was looking up, and eventually killed him."

Needless to say; the next time I was near I had a look. And indeed; I had been blind! It it a most interesting little display, for everyone to enjoy, but probably ignored by almost all. But maybe through the blog it might reach a few people more!

Blimey, it really says "it's rock base", right? How sad...

Does a bear shit in the woods?

2011-12-29T12:23:00.000+01:00

What seems evident to most can be an interesting research question to a scientist. The obvious is often untrue; those who watch QI will get a regular taste of how much we think we know but don't. And whether bears shit in the woods does contain at least one interesting scientific question.

Having become Quite Interested in the underground realm I subscribed to "Cave and Karst Science". In it I found an article called "Fish remains in cave deposits; how did they get there?*" It warned against unfounded assumptions, apparently common in archaeology and palaeo-anthropology, that fish only end up in caves** due to human actions, and fish remains thus prove human use of the cavern they are found in.

The authors rightly point out that there are more cave-using fish-eaters; eagles and bears are only a few examples. Concerning bears, they mention that many studies exist on fish eating by bears, but generally with a focus on something like the impact on fish abundance, which is of limited archaeological interest. The authors go on: "For example, the studies often list in detail how many salmon were taken on certain days, but not what parts of the fish were eaten, where the remains were deposited, or where the bear defecated afterwards - all important information for archaeological research. "

Does a bear shit in the woods, or sometimes also in a cave? Who's going to write the research proposal...

Fish remains. Figure taken from mentioned article (full reference below)
*Russ, H and Jones, A.K.G: Fish remains in cave deposits; how did they get there? Cave and Karst Science 38(3), 117-120
**this, of course, only applies in caves where fish do not naturally occur, as they may do in e. g. sea caves

Sniffly Christmas

2011-12-25T14:09:00.000+01:00

My plan was: set an alarm, get out of bed, and evaluate the situation. If I felt OK I would throw my bag in my car and abscond to Exeter airport. If I didn’t I would return to bed.

That was easy. The alarm went, I assessed I felt shit, so I went back to sleep. And slept hours more. It would have been dangerous to drive, detrimental to travel and dubious to show up at social engagements in such a state. My head was full of slime, my nose was clogged, I could not speak, my throat and head hurt and I was knackered. So my Christmas Eve was spent asleep! That was not according to plan. But sometimes the body wins over the diary. And this is one of these moments.

Falling ill just before Christmas is a bit tricky; before you know it you are left without supplies, as the shops close. But I was lucky to have a guardian angel; Hugh, who would stay in the country as well (in his case on purpose). He bought me lemons, oranges, honey and everything else someone with a cold might need. I think this time it’s just laryngitis with a severe cold, and no tonsillitis: my tonsils have reasonable sizes and colours. I’ll just go on sleeping and eating citrus fruit and honey until I feel better! And merry Christmas to all you healthy people!

Oh no not again!

2011-12-23T21:20:00.001+01:00

In about 13 hours I'm flying to the Netherlands. At least, that is the plan. But yesterday, after our normal lunch run, I felt less than healthy. And from there on things went worse. And during the last hours my voice has faded from husky to nearly absent. Shit! Is that another laryngitis coming up? Or perhaps even laryngitis combined with tonsillitis? Shit! Tomorrow morning I'll have to decide whether or not I deem myself fit to fly. And if I do I most likely won't be fit to talk! The timing couldn't have been worse... Watch this space! For those that I would meet: be aware you may be disappointed...

Underground Christmas Celebration

2011-12-23T21:15:00.000+01:00

After the office Christmas do comes the club Christmas do! In this case the followed each other at unnerving speed. I got back to Plymouth from Totnes, went to my office, exchanged my shiny new jacket for a muddy one, had a big coffee to reenergize myself, and a big tea for rehydration, and was on my way again. One of the other caving ladies had kindly offered to pick me up from campus, and thus I could make it to these two celebrations on one day.

As it had been interesting weather recently we had decided to celebrate in a well-drained mine. That meant a certain compromise on space, but the advantage of that was that a small space is easier to decorate. We had Christmas lights, Santa hats, battery-powered candles, tinsel, glow sticks; what not! And above that we had inhuman amounts of food.

Pic by John

We settled in the stope of Old Gunnislake mine; this is the prettiest part of the mine. And soon it was prettier than ever! We were with a modest group, but the atmosphere was most merry, and overeating of course is quite a robust Christmas tradition. We’re ready for another year of happy caving!

CORiF Christmas lunch

2011-12-23T11:32:00.001+01:00

The cliché is to have adulterous interaction with the boss behind the copier. But not all office Christmas parties are like that. We had the general geographical Christmas do recently, which merely involved civilised consuming in a cosy English pub. Then two days later we had the coastal Christmas do at Gerd’s; that was really nice too! Every year he fills up his picturesque cottage with loads of colleagues, family members, neighbours, dogs, and endless amounts of food and drink. Roland had even brought his newest offspring Aart; this young chap turned out to be quite generous, and shared his food, both before and after digestion.

And then there was the CORiF lab Christmas lunch. This would be a profoundly English one: first we would walk from Totnes, through the scenic countryside, to Bow, where a rustic country pub awaited us for lunch. And after that we would trace our steps back, repeating this brisk walk, and then either let our hair hang down in Totnes nightlife or return west.

And so it happened; under the inspiring leadership of Will (the Tornado), and the avuncular supervision of Geoff, the head of the lab, we walked along the Dart, over the rolling hills, in the pale wintery sunshine. And in spite of being a veritable collection of nerds we kept up a healthy pace. So healthy that, even though we had to initially wait for Will who had to deal with a small family emergency, we arrived at the pub of our choice an hour early. But resourceful people like us are not fazed by such discrepancy; we just walked on to the next pub for a noon pint.

When we came back to the initial pub I was glad to see the table arrangements; we got Christmas crackers! I had seen these in the shops, but never actually held one in my hands. This was continuing to be a very English celebration!

The pub; pic by Rob

For the non-Anglosaxons; these Christmas crackers are toffee-in-wrapping-shaped cardboard things, which two people pull from each side; it will then break with a small “bang”, and reveal its content of a thin paper crown (too small, unless you suffer from microcephaly), a piece of paper with a saltless joke on it, and a little toy. You put on the crown, read out the joke and rejoice in the little gift. How most splendid!

I should have used the anti-red eye-flash...

The most appreciated gift was a tiny notebook; we transformed that with combined efforts into a flick book of unprecedented artistic quality. It didn’t flick too well but that is but a trifle.

The pub also distributed pieces of paper on which you could list music requests. That provided some extra entertainment. We were spread out over two tables; both tables submitted a list, and there was plenty of opportunity to slack off the choices of the other table. We tried to compose a list that expressed the time of year (Winter), the day of the week (Ruby Tuesday), the nationalities at our table (with songs from Air, Midnight Oil and Caro Emerald), the company (White Coats, Even the Losers), and the research interests (River Runs Red, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay). They managed to play quite some of that!

The food was excellent but copious, so by the time we left we were all bordering on mortal obesity, but even in that state we managed to walk back at a good speed. We made it back to Totnes just before dark. There we experienced a dichotomy; four of us, including yours truly, proceeded to the railway station, while the rest had only started the celebrations, and would proceed to enjoy more beer, sample the Christmas market, and enjoy live music until who knows how late. I went back to my office; I had to get ready for the next celebration, this time underground!

Torrington Christmas Caper

2011-12-21T12:35:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know, another race. Yet again without horizontal sleet! But we did get some hail along the way. This year’s quite unlike the previous: deep into December there’s still no sign of winter. So the Torrington Christmas Caper wasn’t excessively Christmassy either, but yet again, it was fun. And yet again, it was an off-road race, so my results were shit. Even shittier than the Drogo results!

I had my running mate Hugh back, and this time I would turn out to manage to keep up with him for several minutes, so I even noticed. When we arrived at the venue we were struck by the large number of dressed up people, which made it a bit Christmassy after all, in spite of the weather.

This run, which covered 10.2 miles of north Devon countryside, was sure one of extremes. It started on the road, and there were rather large parts on the road this time, allowing me to run more than 10 km/h on average, but it also had unprecedentedly rough bits. Soon after we left the road there was a flooded bit; at the deepest the water came up to my crotch! One does not go very fast in that. And one’s muscles are a bit cold after it, which enhances sore muscles the day after. And there were plenty of very, very muddy bits.

Entering the water

It would even get deeper than this!

At some point I was running on a small track next to a properly sized forest track. The latter had big puddles in it, and one can’t see what’s in them, which may be a hole for instance, in which an ankle is easily twisted, so I tend to avoid these. But behind me I heard a runner approach, then I heard “excuse me!” and then “WHEEEEE!” “SPLASH!”. Some people like their puddles…

A race of extremes; one moment you're running through scenic wooded lanes...

...the next moment you're running through derelict industrial complexes!

It was a nice run, with a nasty ending after some very swampy meadows. I had read a review of an earlier edition, where they mentioned these very fields, and that they have patches of knee deep swamp in them. I didn’t really believe that. Until I went down into one, over the knee! It was true…

The winter sun on tinsel garlands enhances the experience

After just over 1.5 hours I crossed the finish. I received the trophy: a small Christmas pudding with clotted cream! And then it was time to check out the excellent facilities of this race; headquarters were a rugby club, so there were showers, and the possibility of purchasing a hot beverage. Both were welcomed; we would proceed from the race straight to a Christmas celebration at Gerd the Coastal Professor’s place, so we had to get that inch of mud from our bodies, and change into a befitting outfit. And it was a rather cold day, so a post-shower hot chocolate was most appreciated.

Running in the sun under a lead-grey sky. Notice "Santa" is still at my side; she already was on pic #2!

The muddy finish

I would have stiff calves for days, and had to accept I had never performed so poorly, but I couldn’t wait to register for another race!

Repair or replace

2011-12-19T19:03:00.000+01:00

Nothing like Dartmoor in late October to find out if your kit is waterproof! Unfortunately, when I went there with several splendid friends, I had to conclude my jacket wasn’t waterproof at all. I tend to be fairly fatalistic about such things, but my companions weren’t, and they inspired me to go back to the shop. And there they didn’t ask any questions; they just took it back to send it back to the manufacturer. And I didn’t really expect anything to happen before Christmas (mind you, I brought it back on November 14th), but lo and behold! On the 16th of December I got a message that the manufacturer had sent a brand new specimen back. So now I can try again!

When I picked it up from the store one detail struck me immediately: the older version of the jacket had inferior Velcro on the cuffs, so I replaced that. This newer version has a different kind of velcro; evidently they figured out themselves the old stuff wasn’t working!

My first action point was testing its waterproofness. And it wasn't raining outside so it became an indoor test. And the jacket came through well! I just hope it stays like that for a while... I hope to have lots of outdoor fun with this jacket!

Goretex testing in action

Geographical christmas lunch

2011-12-19T10:50:00.000+01:00

More than 30 geographers in the pub for a Christmas lunch, and only one bicycle outside! That’s how it goes. Every year such celebratory lunch is organised, and this year, like last year, it took place in Jon’s favourite hangout: the Clovelly Bay Inn. Last year I’d missed it due to being in the USA, but this year I gave acte de présence. And of course I came by bicycle. And when I was on my way there the sun shone beautifully on the wet vegetation and the railway relics still ubiquitous along the bicycle track, which is, of course, and old railroad. And I figured everybody else was missing out.

When I was taking a picture of a bridge I saw a man with a very small dog run over the path. When they came closer the dog turned out to be a Jack Russell puppy. And he was flirtatious. Cute! Who travels on bike gets bonuses. Though those having come on foot could have flirted with any passing dog as well, I suppose…

The lunch itself was lovely! Good company and good food. And plenty of beverages. It’s good to sometimes come together, outside campus, and socialise. Next week we’ll do it again; this time with the CORiF lab!

Belgians everywhere

2011-12-18T09:30:00.000+01:00

There's even Belgians in the Belgian government! Unbelievable. Here in Plymouth I had only met one: Tony the robotics lecturer. I even mentioned that this week to an Australian historian I met, who turned out to study the cultural identity of the Belgians. Or lack thereof, as a PhD student at Delaware University remarked.

I was in the lab, doing my thing, when two gentlemen unbeknown to me were doing some analysis on sand. I listened to them for a while, and figured one was French and the other American. Though I realised I’m crap at recognising accents; they might as well have been two Canadians. It turned out they were two PhD students: one local one, and the other one, you guessed it, visiting from Delaware University. But then we started chatting; soon it turned out the Frenchman was actually Portuguese, and the American was… Belgian. He lived in the US, though, so he sounded proper yankee. But as soon as the Portuguese left he switched to Flemish. Lovely!

He, by the way, announced I was a real Dutch girl; when he explained where he was from he mentioned Lille, or Rijsel as the Flemish call it. And he wondered if I had heard of it. Of course I had! They make Oude Rijsel there, also known as Vieux Lille. And making such a cheese reference will do just fine for nationality stereotyping. He was so kind as to say “amaai” or “allez” in every single sentence…

Anyway. It was good to meet a rare Belgian. But later in my office I went to the university webpage, and whose face was adorning the front? Tony the robotics lecturer! Now there’s none to be seen, now they’re everywhere…

The front page of the University Website last week

That didn't teach all of them equally well

2011-12-18T09:26:00.000+01:00

Student fees go up to £9000.-. You’d better offer the students some quality for that! Roland does his part: he teaches a module in which the students do an entire sea level reconstruction project, using foraminifera, from the fieldwork all the way to the writing up. Fascinating! At least, that’s what I think.

The idea is: the students take surface samples and a core, and survey all of that. They count the forams in the surface samples, so they know at what elevation the various species live. Then they count the core sample, and then they figure out with what elevation the forams live that they encounter there. If they find an assemblage typical for 30 cm above sea level at half a meter down in the core, they know that when these sediments were deposited sea level was 80 cm below the current surface. And if you know where sea level is with respect to the surface nowadays, which they do, and they have a datapoint for every level in the core, they have a sea level reconstruction! Isn’t that magnificent. And such beautiful collaboration: tens of students all together contributing to such a dataset.

We went into the field and I was quite impressed by the students’ enthusiasm and skill (though there were the inevitable traces of standing around and hoping someone else will do something). During the microscope practicals I was also quite pleased with their achievements. And it’s the better students that involve you the most. But at the end of the exercise you get to see everybody’s results, including what students have been trying to hide. Most did a good job (though I suspect many were only counting the bigger forams!), but there were students who had only counted one sample, students who had counted the wrong sample, so some had been counted thrice while some had not been touched, and one student had just picked a few sand grains and hadn’t even realised he had missed the entire point, and some were quite sloppy with transferring their data from their paper counting sheet to a spreadsheet. There’s a lot that can go wrong! I’m interested to see how accurate the sea level curve is they can produce with such a data set.

And if you wonder: the samples that had been counted more than once did not yield the same results at the hand of the different students! But it’s a splendid training for professional life: they’re all bound to end up in situations where they will have to work with several colleagues, all with their own level of skill. Will you try to lift the weaker ones to a higher level, will you do the work yourself instead, will you shrug and live with it? Relevant questions…

Combined rescue training

2011-12-17T15:41:00.000+01:00

The thing with people being missing is that you tend to not know where they are. So one could picture a call-out to find someone of whom it is not known if they reside above or below the surface. And in that case, it may be a good idea to have both above- and below-ground rescue teams involved in the search. And it’s best if they have practiced collaborating. And that’s what the plan for my birthday was.

We drove to a parking lot in the woods that was packed with big vans and SUV’s with lots of reflection and phrases such as “mountain rescue” and “ambulance” plastered all over them. These Dartmoor rescuers have the stuff! I got into my very muddy kit and waited for things to happen. Dartmoor rescue was in charge of this exercise.

Big rescue van with well-prepared banana-carrying rescuer!

We cave rescuers had just gotten new jackets (which we paid for ourselves, worried taxpayers! Though we did get a discount as it was a bulk order), and several members had realised that it was my birthday, so now a few of these shiny new garments aren’t so shiny anymore.

Teams were made with members of each team, and after some more faffing we were off. There was no briefing, but it became clear that the idea was each team would search a number of mine entrances, and once we would find the victims, which were assumed to be underground, cave rescue would get them out and mountain rescue would take them over at the surface. Each team had a caver that knew the area well and would be able to find the mine entrances; in our case that was Richard. So he lead the way.

We were supposed to search what was called adit 8 and 9. To get there, one gets past adit 7. This one was unlocked, and there were bags at the entrance. To me that indicated another team was in there. But the Dartmoor guys figured it meant the victims were in there, so they wanted to contact base to see if we should change our plan. Unfortunately, radio contact was hampered, so we just stood around for a while. Hmm!

Seemingly unavoidable in rescuing: standing around

In the end we got through to base, moved to the next adit; it was locked and the water in it was clear, so there was likely nobody in there. We were only in it for some tens of metres when we were called back; the next adit was unlocked! So we checked that one out first. Nobody there. We locked it behind us, in spite of Dartmoor rescue objecting; they figured that if someone was in there after all, they could get out. They had no idea that there’s nowhere to hide in there.

When we got out there was news: the victims were found in another adit, so we went there. The scenario was two people had gone in; the guy had crossed an unstable winze, dislodged something, and fallen on his head and passed out. The girl was unhurt on this side of the winze, but she was quite distressed. One of the mountain rescuers took it upon himself to talk the girl back to base, so we could concentrate on the unconscious bloke. Base had been informed a stretcher and rope was needed, so that was on its way. I went in with one of my team mates to inform the casualty carer who was looking after the victim to tell him that (OK; that was a lame excuse. We wanted to get in! But that was a good idea; that way we would get an idea of the terrain between the exit and the hapless chap), and happily crossed the aforementioned winze. There were some dodgy looking planks over it, and a solid metal pipe. We didn’t really take much time to behold it; we wanted to get to the victim! But on the way back we had a closer look; it was an unfathomable depth! We decided to leave the planks and cross using the more solid pipe. How would we get the victim over that?

Soon the stretcher arrived. I put it on my back to carry it in. Richard advised me against that; it’s too high and would hit the ceiling. But I had a small moment of triumph; it would hit the ceiling if carried by a tall lad like Richard. Not if it’s me! So we carried it in, and started getting the victim all packed up nicely.

Turning the victim into a muddy christmas present

The evacuation started smoothly; the tunnel was wide and the ground solid. Until we reached the winze… we came up with a plan: two people sit on the pipe, attached to it so a fall wouldn’t be fatal, and then we would pull and slide the stretcher over their laps. I was one of the sitting people. An honourable job! And it worked a treat. These are the cherries on the rescue practice cake!

The next problem was a very narrow bit. Just big enough for one person at each end of the stretcher… that’s heavy. Later we also had to slide him over the ground as the ceiling was so low one could only crawl. And then we were out! We briefed their first aider on what had happened and off they were. The mountain guys have a splendid stretcher-thingy on a big sturdy wheel which is good for transporting casualties over uneven terrain without having to carry them all the way.

By then it was late. We had a brief debriefing, and then we absconded. I hoped we would go to the pub, but it was already 11. The pub Dave tried anyway was indeed closing. Too bad. Not a birthday drink! Nor a more thorough and informal evaluation in the pub. Especially with this combined training that would have been good. But what can one do... and it had been a good night anyway!

Birthday

2011-12-15T15:35:00.000+01:00

Every year I think my birthday comes at an awkward time. It’s right in these last weeks of the year when people are still at work, but only just, so it’s the time when all the office Christmas parties take place. There never is a day left for a birthday party! And on top of that; all sorts of things tend to have to be finished before the new year starts, so it’ s quite busy with work as well. And I’m generally terribly disorganised. But this year I didn’t have to worry about what to do on my birthday: there was a cave rescue training scheduled. What better activity could one think of!

Our rescue trainings during the week take place in the evening, so during the day I was just at work. But it was a very nice, relaxed working day! Get out of bed at a leisurely time, buy cake, do some work, kiss the boss (and quite some other colleagues), play around with some hydrogen peroxide, eat the cake, fail a student, and get marvellous presents from loved ones! Hugh, Rob and Sam perhaps showed their own interests quite clearly. I got high literature from Hugh, high cuisine from Rob and chocolate from Sam! (And kisses from all, of course.) I was most chuffed. And because I had to get to Chudleigh for rescue practice, I had to make this a short working day. And I’ll report on the rescue practice later! But for now: thanks all, who made my birthday a good day!

Fruitless digging

2011-12-13T18:18:00.000+01:00

I was digging endless amounts of loose rubble in a confined space and realised not everybody would consider that a good way of spending one’s free Sunday afternoon. But I had a blast!

This day would turn out to be the end of an endeavour that started about a year and a half ago. One summer evening we went on a search for a mine shaft, and found it, amidst all brambles and hollies and other unwelcoming vegetation. That autumn we went back to descend that shaft. We found a little beauty of a mine! With a collapse at one end that looked promising. So in early spring we went back to see if we could dig through that collapse. We managed to displace loads of loose rubble, but there was always more. And now we were back to continue our efforts.

I parked my car, got out, and was immediately flagged down by the landowners. We had their permission, but they didn’t know we had picked just this day for our endeavour. But they greeted it! They asked me if we knew where we could come out if we would manage to indeed reach the surface. Lionel wasn’t there yet, so I just showed them. The last time we had searched for a possible link to the surface, and we had found a pit of sorts that looked plausible. The land owner hoped he could indeed walk in there later that day. It would not be!

When we walked back Lionel appeared. And after some more chatting we got geared up and went to rig the shaft. On our way to it we found another pit of sorts; maybe we had been mistaken, and this would be where our dig would reach the surface! If so that would be bad news. There would be metres of rubble above us.

We were not discouraged and rigged that shaft. We are getting experienced at this. I went down, only to have to wait for Lionel who did an unusual amount of faffing before coming down. I spent some dreamy minutes lying on my belly in the entrance to the shaft, tens of metres below the surface, where it was all quiet and some raindrops only accentuated the stillness, while above me the wind chastised the trees. But then Lionel touched down. And off to the dig we went!

We knew the procedure: an upward-sloping tunnel would end in a narrow bit, with up, down, left and right solid rock, and forward loose rubble. Dig some of that out and more comes down. Like uncontrollable diarrhoea, as Lionel unhelpfully commented. Just shovel that back until it falls down a flooded winze and dig some more out. Repeat ad infinitum.

Not a very clear picture, but this is what it was all about: the opening through which the rubble kept steaming out.

So that’s what we did. Within minutes we had fogged up the narrow space with our breath. Sweat was dripping down our faces. We would take turns in digging at the front; the role of the one in the back was shovelling the rubble into the winze. We were a bit reluctant to do that, as blocking the winze might stop that tunnel from draining, and then you can have a problem, but there was nowhere else to put it.

We had some dubious fun. Our method was raking rubble towards us until we could get behind it, and then lie down and push it further with our feet. These are good bulldozery things! And bigger rocks you throw down. At the best of times you thus end up sweaty and with rubble in your shoes, under your knee pads, and under your watch. And it got worse: Lionel couldn’t possibly be bothered to look where he was throwing and bulldozering things, so he would sometimes throw the rocks at me and bulldozer the rubble not into the winze but into my boiler suit. When I got home and undressed to take a shower I found half the mine in my bra! Thanks Lionel.

A sweaty Lionel enjoying a break

One of the highlights was finding a piece of unidentified pottery amidst the pebbles. Another was the creating large rockslides into the winze, see it rush down, and listen to the thunder it created by reaching the water. A not quite highlight was that I once managed to have a rockslide cover my shovel… luckily I found it back.

After a few hours, and a small wander in the rest of the mine by means of break, we called it a day. Lionel insisted of using a brought metal pole for clambering laboriously over another winze, where we also had been the previous time but which he had forgotten, only to find yet again a dead end not far behind it. And then we went out! I went up the rope first. I hadn’t done enough arm muscle training recently! But I got up safely. And then my job was to pull up that metal bar. How did I get talked into that? Lionel is much stronger! After hours of digging and then prussicking up that shaft my arm muscles had surely done enough. I was very relieved to see the top of the pole peek over the top of the shaft. Next thing was Lionel coming up, and then we together hoisted our luggage up. I would have really struggled to do that myself!

Clear evidence mineral collectors come down here too! But without permission, the rascals...

We de-rigged in a jiffy, and then went to look for our pit. The second one we had found, higher on the slope. Lo and behold; it was much deeper! This was the surface depression we had created with our digging. And the whole area around our pit also consisted of loose rubble. No way we could reasonably dig our way out of that! Too bad. At least we had had fun.

While discussing what other collapses we might have a go at in this mine we walked back to the cars. I had a social engagement to rush to so I just changed and left. Lionel provided some bonus entertainment: as it had been raining the long grass was wet. So he crawled and rolled around in it for a while in order to clean up… whoever thinks I’m daft: look at Lionel and realise it could be much worse! And daft or not: I hope we’ll be back down there one day, trying our strength at another dig. Maybe we can get into the part of the mine on the other side of the road!

Cockington Christmas Caper

2011-12-12T19:50:00.001+01:00

I expected horizontal sleet. It's December, after all, and for a while the weather forecast for the weekend had been ghastly. But lo and behold, I was yet again standing beside a stately manor in the bright sunshine!

My favourite racing diary had revealed yet another off-road race not too far away: just inland from Torquay. I am not at all good at off-road racing; I’m way too scared to hurt my knees, but I do like it. And it gets you to places where you otherwise wouldn’t go! And this Cockington Country Park was, as was the Teign Valley, quite decorative.

This was a small race; only 171 runners. And the route lead over quite many narrow paths and over many stiles, but with so few runners there was never a problem with queuing runners at a bottleneck. And the route was pretty, the people were nice, the weather was gorgeous! What more does one want.

After I'd finished I had a small look around; the prettiness of the surroundings merited that. And I noticed that the church that featured on the route was accommodating a wedding! So you had a strange blend of muddy, sweaty, lycra-clad people mixed with people in their beyond-Sunday-best, but nobody seemed to care.

I don't know how I fared; the results aren't in yet. The organisation was in Christian hands, so I suppose they can't process results on a Sunday. But whatever my results have been: that was a Saturday morning well spent! And I already look forward to the next one: ten miles next week...

The picturesque setting

This was the information available on the route: most informative! Not.

An uphill bit near the start of the race,with everyone not spread out yet

There were many stiles in the route, but it never got annoying.

If you look closely you can see the runners in front of the hedge row.

At the end of the route we ran past the local church: how scenic!

December sun near the finish line

The finish!

Me with the finish in sight

And the goodies.

PhD student

2011-12-09T18:20:00.000+01:00

...and they lived happily ever after! Sometimes I like happy endings. Where they get each other. And me and Rob just did. All the necessary signatures are on the form! It's official. I'm now his fourth supervisor...

How did that happen? Rob had three: Roland, Wil and Dan, who hasn't featured so much on this blog. Dan went to Exeter around the time I came to Plymouth. He is a specialist in testate amoebae. Rob's PhD is on using foraminifera (Roland) and testate amoebae (Dan) as sea level indicators in Norwegian sediments. Roland is the man who has the overview. And I'm in the lab a lot.

I don't know anything about testates. But most other things Rob works with I have done before. So often he asks practical things. Or even things concerning planning or fieldwork and such things. And often I stick my nose in on my own initiative. I'm often just curious what he does, but quite often I have something useful to comment when I see him doing things. I might ask things such as "why do you take such large samples? Wouldn't you want to label the lids of these sample containers too? Have you seen this paper?"

And then there's foram taxonomy. There's thousands of different species. And the lab has a really limited reference collection, a very limited library, and no access to the online foram encyclopaedia. So learning these all in that lab is very tricky, and two know more than one. So I often try to help. On top of all that I went with Rob on fieldwork.

Rob in the field

Then Hugh appeared on the scene. He is one of these people who has a sharp eye for career boosting. He noticed I was investing quite some energy, but other people would get the credits. But not on his shift! He kicked me in the arse, saying I should discuss this with Rob; maybe I could be added to the list of supervisors. So I did. And Rob greeted the idea with enthusiasm. My next step was talk to Roland; nothing moves in such fields unless he wills it. And he thought it was a great idea too! We weren't sure if it would be in line with university policy; maybe it would be too late. Maybe one can only have three supervisors. At some universities one can only have a PhD student while having a permanent contract oneself, but we knew that wasn't the case here; Wil is only a postdoc as well. But with the remaining questions I went to the Graduate School Research Administrator, who got back to me within minutes with the news that there was no objection to such procedure. And today I got the email confirming all paperwork had been done, and it was official! I have a PhD student, and not just any!

I love Rob to bits; I think he's most splendid. We get on like a house on fire. And he's dedicated and smart, so any supervision will be but a pleasure. I'm chuffed! And now I'll have to try not to take myself too seriously. Even though on Facebook our Spanish PhD student already announced she wants me too, either as a supervisor, or an internal examiner! Blimey. If you're looking for me: I'm somewhere in a central place, looking quite satisfied with myself! And with my marvellous student. Prepare to be amazed while we conquer the world!

better than repair

2011-12-06T09:19:00.000+01:00

I know how unfriendly I tend to be with mobile electronics. And then I mean the sort you can have in your pocket; a gentleman once wanted to keep me away from his laptop as he had heard of my reputation, but I wouldn't take his laptop (or mine) down a mine or onto Dartmoor or into the high Alps. But as I might do such thing with my phone (well, without the taking it down a mine) I decided to also buy a screen protector. When Tasha heard that she immediately said: "you need one!"

When you buy one for your phone you actually get two; by the looks of it, one for an iPhone 3 and one for a 4. But I only bought one phone! Then I figured I could cut up the other sheet of protective material and use it for items that are expected to suffer some wear and tear. Items that actually come underground with me. So I coated the LCD screen of my waterproof camera, and the display of my new waterproof watch! That may keep them in business a bit longer...

You can't really see it, but trust me! They both now have screen protection...

Mine familiarisation

2011-12-05T10:25:00.000+01:00

Those likely to get into trouble underground are also those who are likely to get one out of trouble underground. It’s those that hang around underground all the time that make up the cave rescue team. One could say the rescue team comprises of two halves: those from the Plymouth Caving Group (PCG), which, in spite of its name, focuses on visiting mines; and those from the Devon Speleological Society (DSS), which is true to its name and visits natural caves. Accidents can happen in either underground space, so the rescue team should be comfortable in both. We regularly drag victims on stretchers through caves, but we should also be able to do that in mines. And in order to do that we should also be comfortable with them.

When a regular training was cancelled due to some circumstance or other, Lionel and Finbar decided to give the DSS’ers a chance to play around in a versatile mine. And so it happened! This mine has both a vertical and an inclined shaft, and had all sorts of gaping holes, scrambles and flooded bits underground to give people an idea of what you can encounter in a mine. And then next time we should really have a victim on a stretcher. So we started out rigging the vertical shaft for some rope work practice while the others rigged the inclined shaft in order to practice hauling.

Lionel down the shaft

Lionel went down first, but he was back up soon: the actual mine was flooded. I went down as well, only to practice turning around on a rope without touching the ground. And then we were on our way to the other shaft. We went down, and found familiar water depths. This part of the mine is much better drained... we explored every nook of this nice little mine. For me, the highlight was a good swim. I was the only one in a wetsuit, so the only one who wanted to see how far you could get at the far end of the mine before the water touches the ceiling. There’s something about underground swimming...

Lionel getting past the deviation

Me putting on my gloves before going down

We really need to do a proper rescue training underground, with a real fake victim. We’ve never done that in my time! And Lionel already pointed out one day that in our region, there’s hundreds of mines for every cave... one day we’ll need these skills!

Me going down the inclined shaft

Rich balancing on a beam above a gaping hole

Me with two sturdy chaperones in tomato soup

The soup got deeper and more watery!

Rich climbing out of the inclined shaft

Time for repair by proxy

2011-12-03T13:05:00.000+01:00

"Excuse me, but it's raining in my bathroom!" If you're a hard-working nurse that may not be what you want to hear on your Wednesday evening, but it had to be said.

In recent times I had sometimes been confronted with a soaking bath mat. The first time I had just dismissed that as something for which there must be a logical and quite non-urgent reason, and, to be honest, maybe also the second time, but when it happened again I figured some investigation was in order. It wasn't anything to do with my plumbing, as far as I could see. So I looked up. To a stained ceiling! And the staining was recent. I had the culprit. So I phoned the landlord.

Then, for a while, nothing happened; no discernible action from the landlord, but no leaking ceilings either. Until I came home Wednesday evening. The water worryingly came down the bathroom lamp, and had already made quite a puddle. So I immediately walked up the stairs, to see if perhaps the upstairs neighbour was doing something watery. She answered, somewhat disturbed, in her dressing gown. And wasn't aware of anything amiss...

This is not what it's supposed to look like!

Closer scrutiny revealed water next to her washing machine, which she had just used. The water evidently immediately leaked into my house without leaving much of a trace in hers! So therefore she had never noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Diagnosing the problem, though, is one thing. Solving it is another. As I said; she's a hardworking nurse, and she doesn't have much time to stay home and show repairmen the way. But I trust she'll manage. And then I can enjoy a dry bathroom again...

21st century: getting there!

2011-12-02T10:05:00.000+01:00

If you try to impress people with a new trick, make sure that it works! I wanted to show off my new phone to Tasha, but I had only charged it before heading off to Oxford, and not activated it, so that didn't work. On my return I found that when the phone asks you to connect it to iTunes it isn't joking; without that nothing will happen! Nonsense. Why would you have to stick your telephone in a radio before you can make a phone call? But if that's what it takes...

So then I had a working phone. That evening I had a phone with my old number. We were getting somewhere. And before I could possibly get as destructive with it as I am with my cameras I added a screen protector - I think I need that.

Neil had spent months moaning that I should get me a smartphone so we could exchange pictures without using email, so I figured next I'd try to impress him. And sent him a text with an image.

I touched the wrong button, so my first message only read "s". A cryptic message if there ever was one! And then the phone refused to send the attached message. So one can imagine how impressed Neil was. "Find a man and ask for help!" I found some men, but none that could resolve that issue. I did find one, though, that spontaneously set up my email on my phone. (Thanks Paul!)

A few days later, after having consulted the manual which claimed it should just work, I gave it another try. And now it worked! Neil still wasn't impressed though. I had just sent a rather boring picture, taken in the mirror, of me with the phone. His response: "Freak!"

So the impressing wasn't getting anywhere, but the phone evidently worked. More people to impress! I decided to send Jon, who has an iPhone himself. And who, togteher with Tasha, was one of the main inspirators to this move. His response on my announcement of a picture: "Cool! Will you send it by text or email?" Oi! It already sat proudly in my outbox. So why hadn't it reached him?

See! Three apps! I'm using that phone to the max...

I don't think I'm born for modern electronics. But I sure now can pick up my email at random places. And when I wonder about an exotic word I can look it up, even if there is no dictionary anywhere near! I've even personalised my phone with a wallpaper. And I installed three apps already; one that gives me information on the account I have with my phone provider (boring!) and two words of the day. So though it's slow, creaking, faltering progress, I'm sure turning into a modern, communicating citizen!

Inside the picket line

2011-12-01T09:53:00.001+01:00

Economies are staggering and toppling over left and right! Old certainties have faded, We all have to tighten our belts, and get ready for hard times. And, ideally, do the tightening in a fairly distributed way. Is the UK government doing its best to spread the burden over British shoulders? I don't know, really. But on Wednesday the UK streets were clogged with people who think they do know. And they think the answer is no.

This is what it's all about

There were strikes all over the country. I didn't strike; firstly, I'm not a member of a union, so I'm not even allowed. Secondly; I haven't bothered to form an opinion on government policy on that front, so I can't say if I agree with it. And thirdly; I'm always sceptical when there clearly is a need for belts need to be tightened, and people flock to the streets to argue it should be someone else, not them, who carry the burden. And there is, of course, a fourthly; if I strike I only have myself with that. Will the government really change its way if they realise that otherwise a few forams don't get counted? Of course not. Do I care about these counted forams? Hell yeah!

So on Wednesday I was an official scab. I wondered if I should go to the picket line and get beaten up; I have vague memories of the famous miners' strikes in the 80's, so I sort of think that's the proper English way. But I did no such thing. And I think a handful of academics are less likely to be willing to grant you such experience than hordes of furious miners.

The university picket line, seen from behind

During lunch, one of my colleagues explained he would lose out on £200.000 worth of persions. That sure sounds disproportional. Still, he had voted against a strike. He figured that way you make the wrong people suffer: the students. I feel sympathy for this. On the 10 o'clock news they interviewed a protester: he was striking because he would lose out on £1000 a year worth of pensions. That's less than £100 a month! That's exactly what I have against such protests: there really is less money to go around; live with it. Do your part.

I don't know if it's the right thing to not be a union member and find out what's really going on. But if not I'll just live with that. I have forams to count, after all...

Oxford

2011-11-30T14:52:00.001+01:00

Durham: been there. Bristol: been there. Southampton: been there. Liverpool: been there. Plymouth: live there. Oxford: hadn’t been there! So when we got together for the kick-off meeting of iGlass, which has scientists from all these places, I was glad that Eelco, the project leader, had chosen the rather centrally located Oxford University as the venue.

On a sunny Sunday I got into the train with Roland, emerging into a dark Oxford. Less than an hour later, we were in a pub, meeting up with Tasha. That pub was Oxford’s most famous one, and, quite likely, also the least conspicuous: the Turf. We decided to dine there too, and then Roland already called it a day. Needless to say we hadn’t seen much of this famously beautiful town! As we had had a quieter night the previous day, Tasha and I decided to add one more pub and a few hundred metres more of Oxford streets to our repertoire: we had a last pint in what allegedly was Oxford’s oldest pub: the Bear. When we came in the first thing we saw was an elderly gentleman in a scholarly gown, reading the newspaper over a pint. We couldn’t have gotten a more Oxfordian reception...

Only when behlding this picture at full size will one see the little sign "Turf Tavern"; that's all that hints at its location!

The Turf itself! Notice the reassuring blue glow of Roland's coat inside; its owner is ordering us a pint...

We got back at a reasonable hour, so I decided to get up early the next morning, and have a stroll around town in daylight, before the meeting would start. As soon as the meeting would finish Roland and I would have to go to the railway station in order to still be able to make it home. So when the sky was still pink and the grass white I strolled around, with my camera ready. It is indeed very pretty! It’s almost becoming a series: Margot explores the prettiest town in the UK in around an hour...

Mansfield College

Frost in the park

Melancholy trees along the river

The Earth Sciences building

Keble College

The St Mary Magdalen; cute little church in the middle of the shopping area

Courtyard of the Bodleian Library

The Radcliffe Camera in the sunrise

Rather random and very old looking alley

iGlass

2011-11-29T21:11:00.001+01:00

“Don’t get bogged down in the marsh work!” Whether that was a witty comment or not I’ll leave to the readers, but it sure was the concluding remark of the iGlass kick-off meeting. Some may think iGlass is one of the newer Apple products; it seems there once was an April Fool’s day spoof claiming Apple had indeed produced some sort of cyber-glasses. And there's more of such to be found; no idea if they're real, but there seems to be an iGlasses app that distorts images, and there are iGlasses for the blind, with obstacle detecton... But in this context it’s a big scientific consortium aiming at studying interglacial sea level. The familiar team of Roland, Antony, Tasha and me is involved in that; we’ll try to find interglacial salt marsh sediments to which we can apply our usual method of sea-level reconstruction. And apart from us there are speleothem specialists, ice modellers, isostatic adjustment specialists, coral specialists, and whatnot involved, with the thought that all together we’d be best able to find out what sea level is capable of in interglacial times.

The Oxford pub where we had a swift post-meeting half

Why does it matter? We are in an interglacial, sea levels are rising, lots of people live pretty close to sea level, and we want to know what we’re up for. That’s the short version. And if we know how much and how fast sea level has been changing in past, comparable periods, this will give us an idea. Policy makers are quite interested in what they need to base their adaptation policies on. We have some of these in the project, too... if you know within what range the changes will be, you might know whether you can get by with strengthening your defences, or whether it’s time to start building whole new ones. Or perhaps plan a retreat, as defence isn’t economically feasible.

In January we heard the project had been funded. In July it officially started, but most employees started later than that. So by now we all (well, most of us) met for the first time. As colleagues, that is; the community is small, and most people saw many familiar faces around the table.

So what did we do? We had to mainly go through the not-so-exiting non-scientific details, such as: how do we organise ourselves, how and when do we report back to the project coordinator, who takes which decisions, what do we do when things go wrong, how do we make our publications recognisable as iGlass productions, etc etc. It has to be done...

For us, the swamp squad, the project has started with site selection. We need old sediments, and these are harder to find than young sediments. We did quite a literature search, but that’s not enough; if you find a description of interesting sediments, but you consecutively find out someone has built a chemical plant on them, they suddenly cease being interesting. We hope to do the first reconnaissance fieldworks in January. And a big, proper one around Easter. And then we’re go! It will be a fascinating project to be part of...

21st century; here I come!

2011-11-28T10:32:00.000+01:00

When we’re on fieldwork, Tasha always solves any problem we might have with her iPhone. When we’re at a conference or something, in a town none of us have visited before, she can still find any restaurant of choice. With her iPhone. When one day my satnav was trying to take me to Exeter instead of home, Neil saved the day. With his iPhone. When Jon is in a pub thoroughly enjoying his pint, and he still has to take a train home, his iPhone will tell him if his train is delayed, sometimes allowing him to have an extra pint, instead of freezing his behind off on a windy platform. And he can also answer all sorts of questions on German vocabulary with it. I used Tasha’s iPhone to phone my mum for her birthday, when I happened to be in the USA on that day. Mine won’t allow such behaviour.

All that might illustrate the point that I had started to warm to the idea of smart phones. One day I got an SMS from the shop where I’d bought my very basic Nokia; I was eligible for some discount on a smartphone. I went to check it out, but that turned out to be an error. I wasn’t eligible at all! I thought to myself I’d go and buy one, discount or not, mañana, but evidently, that day never came. Until I got another one of these messages. And I had to be near that shop anyway, so on a late Saturday morning I popped in to see if this time they were serious.

They were! They could offer me an iPhone 3G for only marginally more money than I currently pay with my pay-as-you-go Dickensian mobile. So I went for it… And so far I've not managed to get past charging it; it's not even activated yet. But my days as a luddite are practically over. I’ve joined the hordes of iPhoners! Who would have thought. And that's much more dramatic than getting myself an iPod, which shook me as well, back in the days. And real 21st century dwellers probably now all have a 4G, but hey, by my standards I’ve already made quite a leap…

Children in need

2011-11-27T14:21:00.000+01:00

I’d heard of Children in Need. I’d seen the mascot, “Pudsey Bear”, depicted in various places. I’d heard of various people raising money for it in various ways. But this year, suddenly, it dawned on me what a big institution it really is here in the UK.

Every year, somewhere in November, there is one day during which the BBC is entirely taken over by some broadcasting marathon, where they have anybody remotely famous doing stuff (mainly making an arse of themselves), live on stage to raise money. In between there are clips of what the money is used for. And everybody famous participates while everybody obscure watches and donates. And outside the world of television people go to school in their pyjamas or sit in a bath tub full of baked beans or do whatever to add to this big day of fundraising.

I came across a list of past highlights. And I recognised quite some, but of most I had no idea they were CiN-related. The concert in Royal Albert Hall where Take That came together for the first time. The re-release of “a Perfect Day” performed by a whole truckload of artists. So that had been Children in Need! It started to dawn on me this was bigger than I thought. Much bigger than anything I'm aware of in the Netherlands. We have “Kinderen voor Kinderen”, but that is only big for, well, the name suggests it already, children…

Another icon of Britishness, Dr. Who, with the Children in Need mascotte

From the "this is Jersey" website

There was loads I hadn’t heard of. But one performance got my attention. It seems that every year, the UK newsreaders do some kind of performance. And one year they had been asked (I think that’s how it works) to do a song from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”. So they were all in various stages of drag of the very fishnetty type. But the best part of it was this: one of the more traditional-looking newsreaders seemed to have had to read the news just before that performance, and had no time to change. No problem; Rocky Horror allows one to dress in a smart shirt and tie above the waist, and then a latex miniskirt, fishnets and glittery plateau boots below the waist. And newsreaders sit behind desks, so nobody will notice. Unless, of course, some specialist is present in the studio to elaborate on some item of news. And this could easily have been staged, but is a story that it indeed happened that an unsuspecting gentleman was suddenly confronted with the unusual attire of his interviewer. And even if it was staged, and he was prepared, it made for a good scene. If he knew he was a good yet understated actor!

There’s only very bad footage of the performance on Youtube, as far as I could find, but it may be worth it. It starts after the unsuspecting gentleman has already left, but it’s still quite fun… and I was quite impressed that these generally so tremendously homophobic Brits are willing to go in drag in public as soon as it benefits unprivileged children!

Coastal geomorphologist

2011-11-27T12:37:00.000+01:00

Coastal geomorphologists, those are people who know stuff about, well, coasts! And how they form and how they evolve and all sorts of things. I have less than four months to become one.

I mentioned before that my career needs some teaching. I have started that; every week I now spend my Tuesday morning trying to convince students that foraminifera are splendid. And I enjoy that! I’m fortunately quite comfortable with the little buggers (the forams, I mean; not the students), and it’s a nice group of students, so all goes well.

Forams on a, eh, a stem of sorts

In March I’ll be dragged right out of my comfort zone. That’s when the Ireland Fieldwork takes place; we’ll take loads of students to the Irish west coast and let them have their way with everything geographically interesting they can find. The first two days we’ll take them on excursions. The next two days we’ll let them do a research project that we have designed; I’ll have them do Roland’s old project (Roland himself is not coming). It involves foraminifera, so that will be fine! But then the last two days it gets tougher.

The last two days we have to give the students a starting point to do a project themselves. And I’ve never been to that site, or anywhere near really, but we already had to submit our projects. No way one can come up with a feasible project without having seen the place, so I had to recycle extant projects. And I ended up with two projects designed by our other Dutch professor, Gerd; he has a chair in, you guessed it, coastal geomorphology. So I’ll be offering a project on a beach with conspicuously large boulders and even bigger rocks on it, and one on a spit there (a sand barrier stretching partially along an embayment). And what the students do with these is largely their decision, but questions they could address are in the direction of: how did these structures form, what does that tell us, how are they likely to change, are these unusual features? And I, of course, have to know the answer to all that. So now I’ve started to read up on sediment budgets, wave dynamics, currents, tides, and whatnot. I’m quite sure I’ll learn more than the students! And it’s a bit daunting given that I myself was educated as a geological lab rat, and now suddenly have to be a geomorphological field geographer, but I trust I can pull it off. And be a better scientist for it!

Thanksgiving, the pie edition

2011-11-26T15:59:00.000+01:00

I’m a dedicated housewife! Or at least I sure felt like one last Thursday. I was slaving away in the kitchen at 7AM. Don’t think I’ll make a habit of that. And why was I doing that? It was thanksgiving! And Pete and Sabrina tend to celebrate that every year with colleagues, of which I have so far been lucky enough to be one. But the idea is that they provide the turkey, and everybody brings an accompanying dish. And I didn’t want to have to go home between work and Pete, so I made sure it was done before I got to the university. But that involved starting at 7, evidently…

I had chosen to produce a stilton-and-broccoli pie. And luckily, it was a success! And so was the rest of the celebration. Of course. The food was almost as good as the company. And many had chosen to bring desserts. There was chocolate cake, some merengue cake, pear-ginger-cardamom-caramel cake (ooh!), and at least four pumpkin pies. How can one not overeat? I went home feeling at least 9 months pregnant. And even the next morning I felt full. It’s perhaps a sign of the time that this is the way in which you celebrate having narrowly escaped starvation…

Not see the forams for the trees

2011-11-24T08:55:00.000+01:00

I wanted to check if I had stored some of my samples in a spatially efficient way. And when I was on it anyway, I pulled all those out I had in the fridge. Blimey! I was a bit taken aback by how many I have in there. Of course I know it's lots, but it's different when they're all staring at you from the table in the lab, on a day where you intended to not leave the lab too late... needless to say that didn't work.

It turned out not all of them were stored as compactly as reasonably desirable, but in the end I only got rid of one tray... still very many samples!

Castle Drogo

2011-11-23T09:26:00.000+01:00

If you drive for an hour to a castle to run a 10 mile race, you may just as well enjoy the castle itself too, before you go back. And this race didn't come with showers, so we walked into the impressive entry hall smelling somewhat inappropriately. But nobody seemed to mind.

Castle Drogo seems to be the last proper castle built in the UK; they started building in the 1910's, but because of WWI getting in the way, and other drawbacks, it wasn't finished until the early 1930's. It was designed for some rich industrial who wanted to flaunt his wealth. And I prefer old stuff! Not neo-medieval pretentious fake. So I was a bit sceptic when I walked in. But that would change.

The Drewe family, which had it built, hadn't lived in it very long; by 1925 they moved into the half-finished building, and already by 1974 they sold it to the National Trust. And in 2009, this organisation restored it to the state it had somewhere in the earlier years of its occupation. And it's all 20th century, but still it has style! I loved both how the architect had managed to make fake palatable, how they had built a house that looked semi-ancient but was technically cutting edge, and how it now provided a time warp into the past, far enough back to be the realm of my great-grandparents. I enjoyed it! Hugh was fascinated too. And they also had very classy gardens. I felt my colonial gown rustling. Except that I was dressed in a sweaty sports bra with a newly acquired race T-shirt on top. A good combination of first running through mud, and then getting all into aristocratic mode. I think I'll be able to find more off-road runs, but probably not one with such bonus!

The castle

The entrance hall

Would this be the drawing room?

Even the corridors were majestic

Does this need explanation? The dining room

Elegant tableware

This is servants' territory: the repair-paraphernalia-cupboard

A stove from the days when they were still beautiful

And last but not least: the gardens!

Drogo 10

2011-11-21T22:03:00.001+01:00

It would have been a beautiful walk! Great views over the Teign Valley, picturesque autumnal trees, a gentle November sun... but of course we didn't walk. We ran! And that complicated things.

On the Tamar Trotters website I had seen this 10 mile off-road run on the other side of Dartmoor, and it sounded rather splendid. And when it drew nearer the decision fell: Hugh and I would give it a go. So we both scrutinised the Drogo 10 website, as this race was rumoured to be quite a tough one. Three major hills! And indeed, they would not remain unnoticed.

On a hazy morning we parked at Drogo castle (hence the name), got our numbers, and went to the start. I kept an eye out for my pacer woman, of whom I knew she had registered too, but I didn't see her. And then we were off. There were hundreds of runners, and we were somewhere in the back, so we couldn't immediately start. And after an initial stretch over a broad, flat road we got to the off-road bit. And had to walk.

Drogo Castle itself looming over the start

Traffic jam downhill

It was so steep there running was tricky, and we were still a crowd, so we snailed our way down in a throng. And after some more running at a pace which was mainly dictated by the people in front of us we came to a bridge. A narrow bridge. With a stile behind it.

Here the runners were really standing still for minutes! Frustrating.

The bridge, with its queue, did provide a good opportunity for taking a picture of the Teign, along which we would run large parts of the route.

We waited in the queue for minutes. This isn't a race! This is a traffic jam. But that would change.

A fellow runner kindly took a picture of us. There was nothing better to do!

After the stile the actual race could begin. It started mild, with a sub-horizontal, muddy bit. Nice! But soon I would face the tougher side of the race: the first hill! Most people walked up. I even saw mr. Stubborn, aka Hugh, walk. I was even more stubborn! I ran all the way up. Marginally faster than most walking people. And slower than Hugh with his long strides, walking or not. This was the last time I'd see him until the finish...

I wheezed and panted my way up. Terrible! I got lots of encouragement from the walkers, but that doesn't give you extra breath. When I reached the top I was practically dead. And now I saw even clearer why most people walk; reaching the top they can happily start running downhill, while I was staggering down, entirely out of breath, with my calves seized up. Hmm! Maybe there is something about walking up hills...

Between hill 1 and 3 there is a stretch that does some up, down and level; I'd lost my enthusiasm for storming uphill a bit, and downhill is, off-road shoes or not, not my forte, as I am perennially afraid of hurting my knees. And on the flat bits I'm acceptably fast, but I knew I had yet another hill to conquer, so I made sure not to wear myself out.

The good news, in all this talk about being slow, is that I was enjoying the running! I had my mojo back. Maybe BECAUSE I wasn't fast. Maybe I've just been overdoing it a bit in recent runs. And the route was beautiful, and so was the weather! Enough to enjoy.

Hill no. 2 was not anywhere as serious as no. 1, so I ran up that one too, without such effort, but when I reached hill no. 3, of which I knew it was a nasty one, I abandoned my die-hard strategy and walked up. Just as everybody else in sight. And if you walk fast enough it still is demanding! But it's worth it; at the end you're rewarded with a beautiful view over the valley.

The last hill

The view from the top

Once at the top you're almost at the finish. I suffered a bit from some breathing issue I have had the last weeks; I tend to lose the talent for breathing in after having run up a hill. As long as I go up I'm fine, but as soon as I try to catch my breath going down I can only properly breathe out. That's not helping! But that lasted only a few minutes this time.

So quite happy I crossed the finish, after 1.42.09. Quite some time! But I hadn't expected anything spectacular. And I found Hugh back, who had waited for me. He'd been there for 5 minutes already. So we could get our commemorative T-shirts (they had girlie fit this time! Yay for the organisation!) and go get changed. It had been a good race! And I may never be really good at it, given my knee fears, but It's enough fun to immediately want to register for another off-road race...

ps Pacer woman did run it, but she was fast! She probably started further forward in the crowd, and got to the bridge before it got too jammed there... maybe I'll spot her again at the next race!

Cave rescue: how to and how not to

2011-11-17T21:05:00.003+01:00

Let's start with the bad news. Quite some time ago I was having a post training beer with some fellow rescuers, and we ended up talking about the things that go wrong sometimes. And one guy mentioned a case of a woman who had taken a shortcut home, across some rough terrain, and in the dark she had overlooked an old mine shaft and fallen in. As she therefore failed to arrive home her daughter went to look for her, and, upon finding her, phoned the emergency services. The fire brigade showed up, and then twiddled their thumbs and got all hysterical about health and safety, so it took six hours to get the woman out, by which time her injuries and hypothermia had gotten so bad she died later in hospital.

And this morning I saw on the BBC website that that case had indeed happened exactly as he had described, and that there had been some legal kerfuffle because of it. Rightly so! But unfortunately, nothing seems to have come of that. The header was “No apology from fire service over Alison Hume's death”. So basically, the fire brigade clung to regulations of health and safety for themselves while someone’s health and safety was actually massively compromised. They should have either decided to break a few bureaucratic rules and perhaps gotten a bollocking later (but what is a bollocking if you’ve just saved someone’s life!), or just phoned mine rescue who are trained up especially for such situations. But they didn’t. The woman died and they won’t apologise. Nice, that.

The whole story can be found online, by the way; from the initial accident, to the probe into the accident opening, through mention that the shaft had only just collapsed, the probe being told of the delay involved, the safety rules getting questioned, the fire brigade having the audacity to call the rescue operation a success, the probe reopening, the safety rules getting questioned again, a “fatal accident inquiry” being opened, the probe reopening again, mine rescue telling people that they should have been involved much earlier, the safety rules getting questioned yet again, an elaboration on the case which by now is getting complicated, to, finally, the absence of apologies. And yes these are all separate links. Enjoy!

Generic picture of a cave rescue operation (this isn't us!)

Anyway; this reminded me of the rescue operation that frustratingly took place when I was in Switzerland; I heard afterwards the fire brigade had overestimated their own capacities in cave rescue once again. And this time the actual cave rescuers had been called in immediately, but they had to not only deal with the casualty, but also with the firemen that thought that not knowing the way, not having caving experience and not having the right equipment was no reason to not go underground. Luckily that did not lead to even more casualties…

But now time for the good news. I was still quite preoccupied with the sad case of the dead woman when I heard yet another case of cave rescue in the news (happened before!), on BBC radio: somewhere in Shropshire a young woman had suffered an epileptic attack underground, and had been saved by the local cave rescue team. Sometimes it works out! Let’s hope this is not just coincidence, but a trend that leads to more effective underground rescue. But let’s also hope it takes a very long time for a proper dataset to build up!

ps They've apologised after all! Very spontaneous.It only took the prime minister to get angry to achieve that...

Dangle your colleagues from a rope

2011-11-15T20:58:00.002+01:00

Once you do down a mine you can easily get hooked. It happened to me! And the next victim is Hugh. I dragged him down a Tamar mine as I figured he should know what he’s talking about; he works on mine pollution in the Tamar valley. But soon his interest proceeded beyond the scientific, and he wanted to try SRT. And that’s a bit of a bugger. The club nowadays has two sets of SRT kit, but these are for training purposes only, and we haven’t had a training session for yonks. We don’t lend them out, as experience seems to prove you get them back soaked in corrosive liquids. And I have one set, but if he wears it I can’t come along to keep an eye on things. And sharing a set can be both time-consuming and dangerous. So that was a bit of a difficult one! But then the Cornish came up with a splendid trip, tailored for such circumstances. A trip down a mine with both horizontal and vertical access, and several other SRT novices using the occasion for practice. Perfect! I would just give him my stuff and use the horizontal entrance myself. Mark had promised me an underground lake, so I wouldn’t have to be bored.

When we got to the site, it turned out Mark had brought several spare SRT kits. In Cornwall they do lend them out! So even though I’d already donned my wetsuit I now could go in through the shaft myself as well. So we rigged the shaft while the horizontal people vanished into the direction of the adit, which would provide walk-in access. Mark talked Hugh through the kit; quite splendid as one should learn from the best, and besides that; he had borrowed a caving harness with a rack, while I cave in a combination harness with a stop, so I’m really not the one to listen to when it comes to such things.

Mark showing Tom and Hugh how to get into a caving harness

I went down with Mark’s son. Or at least: I tried. I was the only one going down on a stop, while the rest had racks; the idea of a stop is that it’s not adjustable, but if you don’t push the lever the device is supposed to stop your descent. Hence the name. The idea behind that is that if, for instance, a rock falls on your head and you lose consciousness, you won’t add to that already unfortunate situation by getting into free fall, and hurtling to the ground. A rack doesn’t have that safety feature, but by being adjustable you can just use lots of friction when you’re scared such a thing might happen. But if you just want to get down smoothly, you reduce the friction. I didn’t have that option. And the rope was quite thick. I had to struggle to get down. I was just not heavy enough! Very annoying. All the others sailed down with their racks. I think I know which device Hugh will choose…

While Tom and I were waiting for the next lot we did a little recce. One tunnel was had a dead end. One lead to daylight; it looked like you could possibly scramble back to the surface! One tunnel ended, but had a drop down that might lead somewhere. So when we were all down we explored that only chance: the drop down. The rope was long enough for both descents! But then we came to another drop after only a few metres. Luckily Mark had another short piece of rope that was just enough. This was much smoother rope, though; I loved it, for I actually managed to descend along it. Hugh simply tarzanned down. He seems to think a rack is solely for low-friction use…

Hugh had come down so fast I couldn't possibly take a picture of it

Down there we found two dead ends, and two tunnels leading to the same water body. Water! I wanted some after all the sweating in my wetsuit. And I heard the voices of the other group. They turned out to be on the other side of the water. The only way to get from our to their side was swimming, and then climbing up a smooth incline. I didn’t even bother! Let alone the rest, who weren’t wearing wetsuits.

We went back and checked the scramble to the surface. We decided it was too dangerous, so we all went up the shaft as well. A first time for me in a wetsuit I think; it actually didn’t bother me! Which is good. While waiting for the last ones to come up we had a bit of a walk around, and we found another open shaft. Maybe for next time?

A pretty underground fungus

We went to go and have a look at the other entrance too; we went down a hole inside a very impressive quarry, which had a bit of an uncomfortable descent. And below it only water waited. That was a bit of a bummer! Hugh had a big hole in his leg (which doesn’t stop him from doing wild SRT) which he shouldn’t get wet. So that wasn’t an option. So we basically just all clambered up again and got out. And it shouldn’t have been any later; Hugh had social engagements to attend to. We had to be on our way! But it had been a great day; nice rope work, nice exploration, and a swim. What more does one want on one’s Sunday!

Me in the quarry

Radiocarbon dating makes you old

2011-11-14T20:55:00.000+01:00

The first days of November I attended a course on age modelling. In the second week of November we received our radiocarbon dates. What does that mean? Work! Lots of it.

I am responsible for 4 of the 6 sites in our project. That sounds unfair, but mind you; three of these are sites Roland has already worked on, so we’re not starting from scratch. And of these four sites, two already had quite an age model; the other two were clean slates. So for these sites, suddenly things got meaning! It was very exciting. But a lot of work, too.

We date our sediments with what we can find. In practice that means we have radiogenic lead and radiocarbon dates for all cores, and for some we have extra age points such as a well-dated change in the pollen, or a datable volcanic ash layer, or such things. The pollen and the ash are quite straightforward. The lead requires some elaborate modelling. And the radiocarbon takes even more elaborate modelling.

The simple idea with radiocarbon dating is that the sun bombards the atmosphere with radiation, which blasts neutrons out of nitrogen atoms, which then change into 14C. This spreads through the atmosphere. It doesn’t last; it has a half-life of 5568 years. But they’re constantly being resupplied so the atmosphere doesn’t run out. And all that is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, such as us, gets replenished as well. Carbon-containing bodies that stop equilibrating, or in other words: breathing, will stop replenishing their 14C, and eventually run out. So if you find such a body, be it a shell, a bone, an entire mammoth, a fossilised leaf, a piece of wood; if you check its 14C concentration you know how long ago it died. So that’s how it works!

Something one could date: Tollund man!

That evidently was the easy version. In real life it’s more complicated. Because it’s true that 14C gets replenished, but unfortunately not at a really constant rate. So if you get your 14C concentration, or in other words: your 14C age, you have to hurl that through a calibration curve which represents the changes in 14C creation speed, and only then do you get your actual age, also known as calendar age.

If you look at that calibration curve from a distance it looks like straight line. But if you come closer, and zoom in to the last, say, 500 years, you’ll see the curve is all over the place. With the problem that a certain 14C age can intersect with the curve at several places, each with their own calendar age. So which one to pick? Stratigraphic position (simply said: deeper is older) helps here. But sometimes you have a whole array of dates that are all the same, simply because the calibration curve there is just flat-lining. Unpleasant! And sometimes your samples are contaminated or have ended up at the wrong stratigraphic depth. Think of a root growing down, or some burrowing critter that eats stuff at one level and shits it out at another. All sorts of things can complicate matters! And that’s why I’m working at strange hours, trying to make sense of it all. I’m tired, but it is damn interesting!

What my monitor displays these days. It's a bit blurred on purpose; these are unpublished data! But notice the fuzzy age modelling graph, and in the background the bumpy shape of the 14C calibration curve. If only that was a straight line!

Running nerd

2011-11-10T11:19:00.000+01:00

Everything can be approached from a nerdy perspective. Running, too! To the extent it scares people away from the lunch table (believe me!).

When I saw Pete again on the Monday after the Plymouth 10K he said “well aren’t you the success story!” Ad I had no idea what he was talking about. He and Hugh had beaten me by 2.5 minutes! How is that a success. But he mentioned my ranking within my age/gender category. I hadn’t noticed that, but well, it sounded like I had done well. So of course I immediately looked it up: indeed; I had come 7th out of 79 in the category women 35-39. Not bad!

Having figured that out I had a look at my older race results. All were categorized as well… and I never had done as well as in the Plymouth 10k! I might not run comfortably, but I seem to be outrunning more and more of my peers… that’s something at least. And now I will have to admit that I, too, was perhaps being falsely modest. Hmm!

Something struck me as odd when I looked at my results; my worst ranking had been in the Saltram 10K, which was the race in which I felt the fastest! And the Plymouth one didn’t feel the slowest (the Tavy 7 and Totnes 10 felt worse), but it surely didn’t feel as good as it looked on paper. Strange! I don’t know what that means. But now I have a nerdy graph, and I’m already looking forward to my next race, if only to be able to plot an extra data point! Maybe I’ll wear glasses that have been taped together in the middle, and a lab coat with lots of pens in the pocket… I’m now officially a nerd runner!

Arty pics of wet Dartmoor

2011-11-09T16:20:00.000+01:00

When I go on a swamphike I bring a waterproof camera. When Maaike went on last month's swamphike she brought no fewer than four cameras, none of which waterproof. It seemed not to have led to loss of camera life! And it did result in some marvellous artistic old school pics. I have no idea what the technical details of these pictures are, but I thought they were so beautiful I wanted to put some on the blog. And Maaike let me! So here is a selection. I hope one agrees they are splendid indeed.

All pictures by Maaike

Plymouth 10K

2011-11-08T20:02:00.001+01:00

Because the town belongs to shoppers, because the town belongs to shops… I started the previous blog post with a mutilated song, and now I can’t stop. Anyway. The Sunday has traditionally been the day for communal worship, and, quite unlike many traditions of similar antiquity, this one is alive and kicking. Only a mild shift from communally worshipping God to worshipping consumption can be observed by the keen-sighted. And I myself am so busy worshipping the idols of science, caving and running, I benefit from that, as it gives me another day in which I can try to squeeze in some necessary shopping. But there’s always a price to pay! Here too.

I could now elaborate on the dangers of consumerism, but I won’t; I’m too absorbed in my idolatry. I refer now to the Plymouth 10K, which has a lot of its trajectory downtown, which means it may get in the way of shopping, even on a Sunday. So the starting time was 8:15. A randomly chosen shop along the route; Argos, was found to open at 10.30 on a Sunday, so 8:15 enough for the last runner to finish, and then for the organisation to tidy up, before they open. And I assume they are representative for that area, so I guess that was no coincidence. All very logical, but it meant I had to run at a time at which I’m not good at that.

I met with Hugh at university which we used as a cloakroom, and at the start we soon also found Pete (or perhaps he found us); the three of us were the entire delegation from geography. I also only needed seconds to find my pacer woman; there’s a lady who tends to run at the same speed as me, so I already finished right behind her on two occasions, and I figured that if I could keep her in sight I would finish with a good time. I am now a specialist at recognising her from behind after all these races!

Pete, "pacer woman" Tanya, me and Hugh at the start. There my camera ran out of battery, so I didn't take any more pics!

In the faculty there had been much speculation going on regarding what times we would run. Hugh and Pete were excelling in false modesty, and I had been wallowing in pessimism too, but I figured I had a reason for this. I may still be the geographer who runs the most races, but that doesn’t necessarily make me fast. And I don't know why, but about 3 weeks ago I suddenly could only run with effort, while the many months before that I just happily skipped along. Very frustrating! Running is much more fun if you just enjoy it, and don't have to wrestle yourself through every km with leaden legs. My last effortless run was the Autumn Trail Run, and the Tavy 7 I ran two weeks later was torture. And this knowledge, plus what I’d been up to the week before the race, had crushed my confidence.

I don’t know whether people expected me to run faster than Pete, but I knew everybody figured Hugh would be the fastest. I did too… he said he’d stay with me in order to use me as a pacemaker, but I didn’t believe much of that. And indeed. After about 2 km he vanished, and only some hundreds of metres later also Pete disappeared in the crowd. On Friday we had all done a lunch run; that had been a good predictor for the race. Hugh, Pete and Will had powered off somewhere, and I had, for the first time, not been able to keep up. I ran up with Alison, and our ranks had been closed by Chris. So I didn’t expect to see them back; at least not before the finish. I plugged in my iPod and plodded on. Pacer woman was nowhere to be seen either…

Even though it was, due to earlier mentioned circumstances, a hard race, it was only 10km so quite soon I got near city centre again. I was cheered on by Sabrina, Pete’s girlfriend, and after 50 minutes I finished with relief. That was a personal best, though that doesn't mean much. My previous 10K best was that of the Saltram 10K, which went up and down ridiculous hills. The men had managed in 471/2 minutes! The fast buggers. As I had expected, Hugh had cunningly used running machine Pete as a pacemaker, and outsprinted him at the finish. So the difference was a mere second, which was much less than most would have expected, but this was the order in which I expected us to come in.

Three victorious runners at the finish! Not much changed, other than the medals, Pete ditching the hat, and Pete and me having gotten sweaty... Pic by Sabrina

It had been fun to finally race with friends, but I do hope one of these days I can get my mojo back! I think I should just keep running, and see if it helps… and maybe just look after myself. That’s never a bad idea!

Guy Fawkes

2011-11-07T18:38:00.000+01:00

Remember, remember, the 6th of November… How many of my readers would now think “that’s wrong; it’s the 5th”? I am indeed referring to Guy Fawkes Night (hence the title of this posting!). But I would not celebrate excessively. Not one catholic would I burn! Not even an effigy. No toffee apple passed my lips.

On November the 6th, at 8:15AM, the horn would sound to indicate the start of the Plymouth 10K. 8:15 is early. And I’m not a very good runner in the morning. This would get hard. So when I got the invitation for a Guy Fawkes party the 5th I knew I would not party hard. And not only would I have to deliver very early the next day; the day itself I had properly worn myself out by exposing my already quite exhausted body to a 5.45AM start due to an early caving trip. So the party started at 7PM; by that time I was ripe for bed, but I was so honoured by the invitation I dragged myself to the party anyway.

Richard, one of our lab technicians, and his housemate Vince had invited me and countless many others for a night of food, drink and firework. When I rang the doorbell I heard a dog go mad; this told me it was the right house, as Rich had already told me a charming bitch he often looks after would be there too. And I only came in shortly after 7, but I wasn’t the first, and before I could have taken off my coat scores of other people came in. By 7:30 it was decidedly crowded!

None of the early comers was familiar to me, but I soon found out Rich and Vince tend to invite very accessible people, that will socialise with you even when they’ve never met you before. This would be a splendid party!

Richard charmed me into having a small bottle of beer with 2.6% alcohol; this was the only toxin I would imbibe all evening. How uncharacteristic. And when I saw the enormous effort they had made on all aspects of the party I felt quite guilty for my intention to leave so early. But my fatigue was stronger than my guilt…

A lot of guests had brought firework, so even before 8 they started lighting it. It was a beautifully clear, firework-friendly evening. The guys who lit them (I think no women were involved) didn’t take full advantage of that, though; they managed to let some fall over and launch themselves horizontally, and on this dry night like this that did lead to a heavily symbolic burning bush. Fortunately, that was the most severe damage done, which is not always the case with horizontal fireworks.

I had given myself a 9PM curfew; I started to make my way back to my bike a bit earlier, as leaving a party can be a time-consuming activity, but Rich had just popped out to the shop for something that had run out, and Vince was busy in the kitchen, so I wasn’t held up, and was home just after 9. And a few cups of tea later I hit the sack. I had been looking forward to that! And I hope next year these tradition-spoiling Brits don’t plan races the morning after Guy Fawkes Night…

Entirely unrelated fireworks

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot...

The early bird gets the mine

2011-11-06T17:15:00.001+01:00

“There’s a trip down a mine on Saturday! You would have to be ready by 6AM, though…” Most people would not have been too tempted by such an invitation. But I like mine exploration, and I do have a bit of a weak spot for doing things at strange times or places, or under strange circumstances. So yes, I was tempted. And to make it worse: I agreed to it.

I made sure I had my kit ready the night before, so all I had to do was stagger out of bed, get dressed, get my stuff, and perhaps throw a coffee down my throat. At 6 sharp I was ready, but as I was waiting for “the late Mr Warne”, I figured I could have another coffee. But no! Eerily punctually he appeared.

Through the dark and abandoned streets we drove to where we would meet Lionel. I was still very tired from the Dartmoor-Durham-teaching course sequence, so I saw my chance; I graciously offered Lionel the front seat, and settled on the back seat for a kip.

We arrived at the NW Cornish coast in nice weather. Two of the Cornish cavers (not the usual lot; these were from the St Just mines research group) were already there. A punctual bunch! Not much later we were complete, kitted, and on our way in. And only a few metres from the entrance the first rope pitch was encountered.

One of the St Just group about to go down the first pitch

I like rope work! This place had several short pitches. And the place was teeming with all sorts of abandoned mining tools. And on top of that we had one of the St Just chaps who knows practically everything there is to know about the place. It was great fun! It had been worth the early rise.

One of the best relics to be found: a large kibble!

West Cornish and West Devonian mine explorers

An old fuse box (fuses in the foreground)

Lots more! Pic by Dave

Dave about to go up another pitch

Lionel coming to the top of that same pitch

Lionel and I with one of the rusty, but still working waggons. Pic by Dave

Shameless posing! Pic by Dave

It was a tin mine, but there was some copper in the rock too! With beautiful structures as a result.

Still early we re-emerged into the bright sunshine. It was a beautiful day! So we changed, said goodbye to our St Just mates, and drove to Hayle, which was quite nearby, and where some of the best Cornish pasties are made. A good end to a good morning!

A pasty from Philip's in Hayle; the best I ever had!

Our view during pasty-eating

Model your age in Durham

2011-11-03T17:50:00.000+01:00

“What’s your favourite part of the Holocene?” Antony baffled his guest Maarten somewhat with this question. Maarten, the king of radiocarbon age modelling, had come to Durham to teach a select company of scholars how to use his new and still in development software package Bacon for making robust age models. And during dinner he got this question from Antony. An even geekier discussion on how the Holocene is actually subdivided followed. Mind you; Maarten had already confessed to having at least once dreamt in code. This company was hard to shock with nerdiness…

I had come to Durham for precisely this course. I had a preliminary age model made in software I didn’t fully understand. There was room for improvement there! So on a Monday at 11.25 I got into the train with my geography laptop and made a file with all the radiocarbon dates, radionuclide dates, and whatever other dates I had. And I did some hair maintenance, offline blogging, newspaper reading and whatnot; by the time I rolled into Durham station it was 7PM. I was greeted by Tasha, who had turned into a lady since I had last seen her, and she took me home for pizza and tea.

The next morning started lazy; Maarten would fly in that very day, so the course didn’t start until about 11AM (time to do some online work for the teaching course!). And he started with an introduction. But after lunch he started really teaching us how to make age models with his command-based software. The speed was breathtaking! And I’m not much of a programming wonder. I’m glad Tasha is around; her mind works in a much more tidy way than mine, so she picks these things up much quicker. But I got me an age model! I was chuffed.

As soon as I had managed that feat it was time to call it a day. Several of us had to check into hotels, and after that the pub was waiting. I checked into quite a posh one; Tasha had put Maarten up in it, and such a distinguished guest deserves company. And that turned out to be a good call; Queen’s University had forgotten to pay Maarten that month, and Durham University had forgotten to pay the hotel (at least, that’s what the hotel claimed), so my credit card came in handy to secure his room. And when that was arranged we set off to the pub. And a while later we were assembled with ten scholars, raising a glass to a successful course.

The view from the hotel

Drinks were followed by Italian food and countless many bottles of wine. And then I figured the day was done, but that was naïve; I hadn’t counted on Antony’s dangerous penchants for science-and-health-eroding nightly initiatives. And indeed, he didn’t hesitate, but steamed straight to a pub after dinner. And then another one. I wanted to keep my mind in a programming-compatible state, so I left after the first pub, and so did Maarten, who not only had had to get up early to get to Durham, but is also a young father, so he was knackered. The next day we would look fresher than some…

The course participants enjoying a well-deserved pint: Eleanor, Tasha, Tom and Sarah

...and Antony, John, Ed and Maarten (looking suitably pensive)

People queueing at the cash machine allowed me to take a picture of the decorative Durham square

The next day I was eager to check my mail; the next day, in the morning, I had to give a group presentation within the framework of the teaching course, and we hadn’t even decided on who would do the talking. But when that was settled we could go on age modelling. Tasha and Antony provided Maarten with the challenge of making an age model for a core with a hiatus, and plot the sea level reconstruction on that, while I struggled with forcing my age model through an exquisitely dated tephra layer. And then it was already time for lunch…

After lunch, Maarten gave a talk for all of geography, as icing on the cake. And then he had to get back to Belfast while I had to get back to Plymouth, so within half an hour the entire company had dispersed in many directions. In the train I tried to tidy up my notes; not only will I have to manage on my own with the software at home; I also will have to show Roland, who was on the other side of the globe during this course, the ropes. An interesting challenge after such a short course! But that’s science for you. Maybe tonight I’ll dream “>Bacon(‘V3A’, 2, postbomb=1)”!