Guided tours

My parents came up to visit me for the first time in four years and so it was my job to play tour guide for the weekend. It was good in that I got to revisit some fantastic places as well as see some of the sights that I should have seen by now but haven’t got around to. That is probably the best thing about showing people around a place that they have never visited before, you see things that you otherwise take for granted.

I got to explore the Northumberland coastline again. The wife introduced me to this part of the world when we first met and I would imagine that this is the most beautiful part of the British coast. The difference this time was that it was bank holiday and everywhere was so busy (and it lacks the romanticism – showing the parents is not the same as being shown by a new lover). I was however well fed and got a tank full of petrol paid for!

I think that I did manage to make my parents see why I am happy to settle here. Many people, my parents included tend to have this pre-conceived idea that this is the poor end of the country overrun with poverty and in decline since to the loss of the mining and ship building industries in the 1980's. They seem to have gone home with a different view and have realised that this is actually a pretty good place to live. I now need another long weekend to recover, instead it is the final push to get my thesis finished and submitted a.s.a.p. then perhaps the wife and I can get back to our normal way of life and spend some more time in these fantastic places.

An entertaining shopping trip

Dear Manager of Supermarket number 1,
Please find the lost tomatoes under the salad display cabinet. Please accept our sincere apologies for dropping the fruit, I hope that the ones you found weren’t too badly bruised but please be aware that there is more under there.
Yours.....

Dear Manager of Supermarket number 2,
I am writing to inform you of a lost packet of chocolate cakes behind the freezer containing sausages in isle 1. Unfortunately the wife dropped them just as 5 year old child lifted the lid the aforementioned freezer causing the cakes to slide off the top and down the back.
Yours....

Animals

It's such a shame that the family that runs a farm breeding guinea pigs for research feels they had to close. I hope that the remains of Mrs Hammond which were taken from her grave last year will now be returned to the family. The regulations controling the use of animals are so stringent in this country and if farms like this continue to close we will have to obtain the animals from elsewhere, where there are less strict regulations.

Unfortunately, there are no alternatives to the use of animals in either drug development or in order to understand more about the biology of health and disease. Computer simulation and in vitro methods are not yet able to replace the animals. I use animals in my own research and if there was an alternative I would use it, it is the least favourite part of my job, unfortunately I have no option. Having said that, the animals we have are better looked after than a lot of pets are!

I was interested to read that around 2.8 million animals were used in the UK in 2003 (of which 80% are rodents). Last year there were over 3 million deaths from AIDS worldwide (approximately three-quaters of these were in Africa alone) and nearly 40 million are infected with HIV. And this is just one disease that scientists are using animal research to try and come up with a solution to.

More choices

The harbour house has moved down the list of possible new abodes. Yes the location is fantastic, especially on a gorgeous, warm, sunny August evening. But this is the North East and we don't get huge numbers of days like that. We do get a fair bit of cold, damp days however and summer or winter (especially winter) we can go for several days hidden in the fog coming in off the sea. Besides which, in the house itself there isn't even room to swing a cat. Not that we have a cat (although I keep saying we should get one, our family is supposed to include a cat isn't it?), but you never know when you might need the room for swinging a cat. It is right at the top of our budget as well and what's the point in spending that much on a house if there isn't even the room for a greenhouse.

May favorite house now has a sold sign up outside which has cured my obsession and I haven't driven past since! I thought I would be gutted about not getting it, I really liked this place, but I'm not. It's obviously not meant to be.

Tonight we're going to see four more houses. One of them is a viewing with an estate agent we met a few weeks ago and I'm dreading it. She is so strange, I struggled to keep a straight face, we had to visit each room in a particular order - I dread to think what would have happened had we gone the wrong way. As for telling her we weren't interested, we didn't dare!

Choices

I grew up in the middle of the country and so only got to see the sea on holiday. Now we live about 10 minutes from the beach and it is the perfect escape, at any time of the year (this picture was taken last winter just before sunset). We went to see a house at the harbour last night, with a view of the boats at their moorings and the beach just a two minute walk away. It is however a bad location in terms of the wifes job and my daily commute and it's expensive. But it would be a complete change of lifestyle. We're torn!

Lessons

All work desktop computers should have a back-up battery so that in the event of a power cut I don't lose an afternoons analysis. Alternatively I should learn to save analyses more frequently than every time I go to the toilet!

[All expletives have been deleted from this post].

Bricks & Mortar

Where do you start compromising when you’re looking for a house? We can’t compromise on price, that’s definite. We need three bedrooms. We want a garden and off road parking and a study (so that I can “work from home” as much as possible). Do we lose out on room size in order to get the kitchen we want or swap a garden for a fantastic location? (And the garden has to face the right direction to get the best of what little sun we get up here). Should we be looking at cheaper and then doing some work to get what we want? I have also realised that privacy is an issue since the neighbours have built an extension – they are now perfectly positioned to gawp into our kitchen (where the wife now has to tell me to leave her alone as we have an audience - it is however their own fault however if they get an eye full of me in the shower, that’ll teach them to be looking).

Yesterday we saw a fantastic house, lovely location, had everything we need including the most amazing bedroom and en-suite (complete with the bed the wife’s planning on buying anyway) but the living room and study were tiny. It’s just so frustrating, especially as we are nearly in a position to be able to put in an offer on our dream home. We also need to find somewhere we are both happy with and fast because I keep driving past my current favourite and having a good look at it – I could soon be arrested for stalking!

Reassurances

I was very reassured by my doctor this morning when he said he had never seen anyone with a blood pressure that high who wasn't brain dead. Thankfully he blamed the machine and not me!

On another unrelated health matter, medical ethics. So many issues surrounding medical ethics are so complicated that I can often not make up my mind either way. The nature of my own research means that we have to be strict about ethical procedures and there is an article today which illustrates why this is necessary. As yet, human tissue is the best way to investigate the workings of the body as well as the causes, prevention and treatment of disease. But what if we were to screen all embryos to avoid people even developing disease? There is a new debate about whether embryos should be screened for certain cancer genes. It sounds great in theory but where does it stop? It's great if it can prevent people developing terminal diseases. There are already techniques out there that would allow the every single gene a person carries to be screened in order to identify genes which may or may not cause disease and my biggest concern is that it would be taken too far. What is the cut off point for saying there is a chance your offspring might develop disease X, 1 in 10, 1 in 100, 1 in 10,000? Most diseases are caused by environment and lifestyle as much as genetics.
I guess I'm saying that in cases where there is a strong family history and a very high probability of disease, screening sounds like a way to go. Other than that, it's a no.

Nonsense

I don't mind being rebranded. I don't mind being a "British Citizen ™"! Can we have a flashy logo to to in our passports!

And people get paid to come up with ideas like that!

Destruction

I bought a new chair yesterday for these long nights at the computer. I was trying not to as I'm hoping to be finished writing this week but when the second caster fell off and I toppled off the old chair I decided something had to be done. So of course I spent more than I wanted to but got a nice comfy new chair. Having deciphered the instructions destructions the thing was put together securely, but the lever thingy doesn't work so as soon as I sit on the damn thing it drops so that I can barely see over the desk. Taking it apart and rechecking the destructions hasn't helped and now the dog has peed up the box to prevent me taking it back. I think I'm in more danger of falling off the pile of cushions than I was of falling off the old chair. The only reason it didn't end up going out of the window was the wife's tea and biscuits!

Oh Brother!

I'm not going to go on about how good or bad Big Brother has been this year
but I would like to get a couple of things off my chest. Firstly, Craigs
obsession with Anthony; the sexual harrassment going on there was awful and
Craig should have been warned about it. Secondly, Kinga and the wine bottle.
Now I'm not easly shocked but to stick a bottle up there, twice, in the
middle of the big brother house shocked me. I like to think that I am quite
open minded and what people get up to in private is entirely up to them and
I like to enjoy myself as much as the next person. Indeed I regularly take
great pleasure in a bottle of wine, just not in that way. (I have heard
hospital tales about how glass bottles can break at just the wrong time).
Have people no shame? On national television of all places! Tut tut.

Too little time

So much to blog about, so little time. There is however a light at the end of the tunnel, I keep catching a glimpse of my life on the other side of this thesis. Seems that I do have time though to check the BBC site several times each day (excuse: I have to keep an eye on latest health and technology news – honest!)

Firstly, nanotechnology: although in the early stages, this sounds amazing. Hopefully this will go on to become a cure for all sorts of diseases one day. And people wonder why I get excited about biomedical science!

Secondly, does 2am count as early morning. The only reason I am at my most productive at this time is because I realise the day is over (yesterday that is) and I haven't finished everything I was aiming to (yesterday).
But that's enough for one day. Thank you and Good night.

Food glorious food

The wife and I have decided that we are happy anywhere as long as the food is good. Last week we went out for lunch and I thought the wife was going to be physically sick, the meat was so badly off, it was disgusting. Some of our fondest memories are of meals we have had. Particularly in Spain last year where the hotel food was pretty poor but out in the little villages the seafood was some of the best I've ever had and the paella was heaven! So to celebrate the wifes birthday this weekend we stayed in and I cooked. The mussels were fresh off the boat that morning along with sea bass, king prawns, smoked salmon pate, Mediterranean roasted vegetables and bruschetta, washed down with a good bottle of wine. Mmm mmm. She certainly seemed pleased with it!