First day at Caernarfon Crown Court

Well! My first day at court has come and gone. It was a bit trying (pun intended).

I had to be there at 9:30, and when I got there a few minutes beforehand, there already was a queue. It was standing outside. I was glad it wasn't raining. That's not something you can take for granted in Caernarfon. There was a whole line of jurors, they all had to go through the security check which was right behind the front door. Couldn't they have organised that a bit better? At least have a little roof or something. While we were there, it actually did start raining.

After the extensive security check (they don't seem to have x-ray, so they have to do it all by hand) we were told to go up the stairs where an usher asked to see our identity document and summons letter. And then we were told to sit in a little room. It was packed. There were windows, albeit seeing into another room and not directly outside, but all the chairs facing them were already taken, so I had to take one that only looked out on walls. There were no tables or anything. It was a bit like international travel; a waiting area by a gate or something.

The usher then made us watch a little video, in English, about the process and our responsibilities and suchlike. When the Welsh version that came after was halfway, he asked if anyone actually wanted to see this. Nobody did, so he switched it off. Good. 

After a while he brought us case questionnaires. He said there were four trials planned for that day, which seems to be a lot, and he needed to check if any of us was unsuitable to be in any particular one. There basically are two ways of being unsuitable: one is, knowing anyone involved in it. So we got a list of names we needed to check for the first case. As this is Wales, and people have notoriously few names, there were instructions on what to do if the list contains a familiar but common name, like John Williams or something. You then indicate the age of the person by that name that you know, and how you know them. That way they can check if you know this particular one. I knew no one. 

The other way of being unsuitable is if the trial is longer than you can sacrifice your time. The first case was expected to last 4 to 5 weeks. I can't stay that long! They would have to cancel my teaching. The students would probably not be amused. They also gave us a questionnaire for a trial that they thought would last three or four days. Again; I didn't know any of the people on the list.

Then nothing happened for a long time. Within 10 minutes, it felt like we had used up all the oxygen in the room. It was really stuffy. The usher said that the room technically had air conditioning, but it was currently broken. That wasn't helping.

I expected questionnaires for the other two cases as well, but they never came.. I had brought an article to read, and a book, and the newspaper, and my phone. More than enough to keep me busy. But I was struggling with the oppressive atmosphere in the room. I felt a headache come up. 

After what seemed like an eternity, a whole bunch of people had their name called out, and they were lead away. After a while, a handful came back. It turned out that the people who hadn't come back were now the jury for the very long trial. I had escaped that fate! 

In the meantime, the rest of us were watching the clock move closer and closer to 1 pm, which we had been told would be when the whole court breaks up for lunch. There wouldn't be any time to do any meaningful legal work before that time. But just before we got to lunchtime, they read out 12 more names. That would be the jury for the shorter trial. This time they didn't do that ‘selecting more than 12 and sending some back’ thing. Maybe this was a less complicated case? Maybe the other case had complications that didn't feature in the questionnaire? Maybe something with gruesome evidence or something, and they wanted to check individual people how they felt about that? I have no idea. But this was just 12 people and they would be the jury; full stop. I was nr 12.

We were taken to a courtroom, where the judge was very apologetic about the delay. A court official told us what the charge was against the defendant, who was present, and then we were sworn in. I noticed that quite many jurors were swearing the oath on the Bible. And most took the oath in English. Immediately afterwards, we were dismissed. The judge told us to be back the next day, at 2 pm.

I was desperate for fresh air and hoped we could just leave, but we were brought back to the room we had been waiting in. We were not kept waiting long, but long enough for the usher to tell us we shouldn't be back the next day at 2 pm, but at 10 am. The judge had really clearly said the case wouldn't start until 2 pm, so that would mean sitting for three hours in the same terribly stuffy room. Everyone was really disappointed about that. No one had enjoyed it! But if that's what the usher says, then that is what you need to do.

At least then we could pack up our stuff and walk out of the building. That was such a relief! I hoped the next day would be less unpleasant. One way to find out…

 

Pic from the BBC website

 

Bangor 10k 2026

It was the day of the Bangor 10k and I figured a PB was not going to happen. But a category win very well might. I tend to do well in this race! Hence that I have been doing it so long. But maybe I should swap it for the half marathon. But more on that later. 

I decided to drive. I am not keen on my bike commute during a weekend. I did park on a University car park. I was a bit disappointed it had the barrier down; how badly does a university need its car park on a Sunday? My Corsa stood in seas of space with on the other side of the bollards, people struggling to find a spot. 

I went to get my number, and did a little warm-up on the hill. Maybe not the most efficient choice given my road shoes, but it’s beautiful there. 

Forested warm-up

By the start I saw some running friends. Katie was there; she was going to try to run a PB on the Half Marathon with a pacer. Richie was there, and I figured he could finally beat me again, after a string of injuries. Soon we lined up. Batala, the local drum band that festoons more races, was there too. They are fab! 

Batala in action

I didn’t want to strain as much as I had done in Pwllheli and Trentham, and even Caernarfon. I started at a fairly relaxed pace. We got to the pier, and then back off it, and to the bicycle track. I tend to feel it doesn’t really start until you reach the part of the bike track you also run in the opposite direction, but in reality, by then you have already done some 4k. And I was feeling good. First I overtook Richie. He clearly needs to come back from his injuries a bit more! And there were two young ladies ahead of me, and I managed to overtake them. One was in the uni club. 

I knew the interesting bit would be when the first runners would come the other way; then you can see how many women there are ahead of you in the 10k. Some women in front of you will be running the half marathon, but these don’t turn around until much later, obviously. First came several men. Then one woman, closely followed by another. And then only some more men. I was in third position! And I could see the two young ladies were a bit of a distance behind me by now. I was confident I could take bronze. 

I ran on, now myself running against the oncoming traffic. I got a lot of cheers! Until the route split again. We came off the bike path. I knew the ladies wouldn't catch me anymore. I trundled the second last km, and then knew I could throw it all out in the last. And because of my relaxed approach, there really still was something in the bag. I stormed over the finish! Done. Bronze. 

Done it

 

I chatted a bit with volunteers behind the finish line (I knew three out of four), and got my medal and T-shirt. I also got my bag, and drank my recovery shake. Then I found Rick (from track) and together we went back to the course to cheer others on. Initially only 10k runners, but only some 1:15 after the start, the first half marathon finisher came flying past. And then they kept coming. 

I also saw one of our recently graduated students, and our new PhD James, who is her partner. It was good to see them! And I saw the female winner of the half marathon; she said she had seen me running and decided she could use me as a pacer. That obviously hadn’t worked. But she still had had a great race! And I was flattered. 

We then had the presentation. It looked like it would clash with Katie coming in. A pity! But I indeed had bronze, with a time of 43:50. Only just in my top 10 of 10k times. But that is fine. Still 50 seconds faster than 4th woman. And some five minutes faster than the next F50 along (but frankly, there weren’t many in this race).  The first two ladies had come in really close together, some 2.5 minutes before me. A great time for two superfast youngsters! One was under 20 and the other one didn’t look an awful lot older. 

When the presentation was over, Katie found me. She had indeed broken her PB, and by several minutes! Amazing result. She said it had been hard. I think she'll be very satisfied with how it has gone. 

Then it was time to go home and have lunch. And a shower! 

Attempt at autumn beetroot crop

The seed package says you should sow beetroot between April and July. And I did. But in late September I figured I had nothing to lose by sowing some more, and seeing where it would lead. I had little to lose!

The seedlings came up soon, and grew as normal. So far so good. I have now put them in their individual pots. I suppose the dangerous stage will be after I plant them out. It may be too cold for them to thrive. But well, this summer it was too hot and dry for them to thrive. I got a a few meals out of them anyway! So who knows, I may eat some homegrown roast beetroot in November…

Autumn beetroot seedlings

Getting ready for the jury service

I had one week of term to get everything as ready for my potential two week absence as I could. I should have mainly been teaching on two modules in that period; for one of them, I basically got all my lecturing out of the way in that first week. I don't have a heavy teaching load in it. 

For my other module, I had to do some crisis management. This is a module of which we have changed the title, as its content had moved more into a climate direction, so we added that to the title. An innocent-looking email from a student lead me to finding out that student administration had accidentally assigned 2/3 of the students to the old version of the module, which we obviously don't run anymore. Oops. 

I will be quite busy on that module after my jury service, as a fair amount of work has been postponed, but I made sure that at least the students are ready for the upcoming field trip. It really depends on how long the court needs me, whether I can actually join myself or not. I hope I can! But I need to be ready to accept it if I can't.

I was also quite busy with student proposals for their own dissertation topics. I will have to keep that going in the evening, I suppose, is the deadline for proposals hasn't been reached yet.

Another thing I did was mark the student notebooks of the field trip we did a few weeks before. We don't do much marking of actual physical paper these days, and it provides complications. There are four members of staff who have to mark these (sometimes it's five, but not this year), and we have four weeks to do it all. You think that that means we all get a week, but that's not how it tends to work. Martin tends to keep them at least for a week unseen in his office. When I got them, more than 1.5 weeks had already passed. I hope the others will manage to do their part of the marking in the remaining two weeks!

Altogether a busy week. But I am satisfied with it. And then on Monday, I will get a better idea of how my next two weeks look…

Needing glute stretches twice daily now

It has been a long time that I need to stretch my glutes every day in order to minimise the chance I have to do emergency stretches when I am trying to walk or run or something. More than five years! 

A pose that works as a glute stretch. Pic by Christy Collins

This morning stretch session largely does the job of keep me going. There once was a time when the glute situation went out of hand; after a long international train ride, my glute became completely uncomfortable, day and night, and I struggled to sleep. Luckily, that situation sorted itself out.

By now I am facing a sort of a combination of the two issues. It is fairly common now for me to be a bit uncomfortable in the glutes when I am trying to sleep. That is quite annoying! It won't go away unless I do an emergency stretch. And there are obviously worse things in the world, but it is still annoying. Especially when the cat is lying next to me, because she won't tolerate such shenanigans. 

Altogether, it just seems like my glutes are slowly getting worse and worse. What is this? I have never heard anybody else talk about this. And it is clearly a slow process, and so far I can solve it with some simple stretches. But if this keeps going on like that, I will have to do these stretches several times during the day! I hope not. Maybe I should ask my physiotherapist if he has any idea. But for now, I will just do these stretches every morning and every night. Age comes with some unexpected issues…

Loot from Tom

My colleague Tom is retiring. He is in his last weeks, and he has started tidying up his office. He has a lot of books that he doesn't want to take home. He is now going around the corridor encouraging everyone to come into his office and raid his book cupboards. And I was included in that.

I got some good loot! A combination of things I find interesting such as the life of Fridtjof Nansen, but also a lot of text books for dummies about physics applied to climate, the ocean and the atmosphere. Tom is actually a physicist by training; he probably never needed those books, but might have reviewed them, and therefore ended up owning them. I (quite unlike him) would actually learn something if I read them. I'm not quite sure when I will do that, but well, for now I can just put them in my office. I made so much shelf space when I was getting ready for my foraminifera encyclopaedia I can afford to adopt a few books, even if I'm not sure I would do something useful with them!

Term starts

The academic year 2026/27 has now officially started. On the Monday morning, at 9 am, I started lecturing. And it will be a very busy term. It is always busy, but now I might lose two weeks without losing the work. That will be trying! But it might not be so bad. Maybe the court won't need me for the full two weeks. 

Either way, it will be all systems go until Christmas. And the Christmas holiday is always so short that it feels like it is all systems go until the academic year is at its end again. Wish me strength!

My bike back on main campus (not by the prettiest of buildings)