Housing and Surgerying

Guys, this update is late. I'm sorry. You know. House. Life. Lifehouse. House.

What I'm trying to say is:

So we have finally moved into our new house, which, man. Effort-tastic.

I am so pleased to no longer be sharing a house (read: leave dirty dishes all over the place/eat cereal in my underwear on the sofa). It’s all more or less in place now, and we have a study, and the waffle-maker is out, and there’s a piano and it all feels like home.  Though it was a massive struggle to get it that way. Naively we thought that taking a week off to move in was more than enough time. We’ll just sort everything out in a couple of days, we thought. Then we’ll go and chill out and maybe even go on a minibreak. Stonehenge would be nice at this time of year.

Well.

Turns out moving house is a MASSIVE ARSE. Even when things go perfectly, they take about 30% longer than your generous estimate allowed for, and when things go badly, they really flipping mess things up. Our wardrobe, for example, I ordered the wrong size of. Then they delivered the right size – but two of the panels were broken. So then they had to do an exchange – but they exchanged it for the wrong size one again. And then when I finally got the right ones, I kicked in two of the supporting struts by accident. DAMN YOU IKEA. You and your flimsy MDF. We had aimed to do the wardrobe before we even moved in properly – we ended up finishing it around 9pm on the last Sunday evening of our week off.

Also, curtains. Hanging curtains will make you want to hang yourself. True story.

I also made some poor life choices, such as deciding that reupholstering chairs was an essential thing to do during the house move. They are now wonderful. But in retrospect, perhaps not as essential as I thought. Similarly, we built the china cabinet before we built the dining room table, almost entirely for the purpose of unpacking the Höglund art glass we got from Nelson for our wedding. If you got me a contract, I’m sure I could churn out a book entitled Poor Middle Class Life Choices based solely on that week’s experience.

Still, it’s all up now and all the wedding presents are unpacked, and our stuff has expanded to fill an entire 3 bedroomed house and part of the garage. WTF stuff? It’s how I imagine the Big Bang to have been – nothingness, and then MATTER, expanding ceaselessly. MATTER that includes an art easel my parents wanted to get rid of, and a billiards table. MATTER.

We now also have an impressive selection of hammers and power-tools, like the orthopods. I’ve always kind of wanted to be an orthopod, and the electric screwdriver really does bring home its appeal. I genuinely did want to be an orthopod, by the way. It was so logical. So clean. Kind of like ophthalmology, but big and full of bones. I had to let go of that dream in the end because when I was a medical student a male orthopaedic consultant offended me by offering some kind of massive screw device to my male medical student colleague to have a go at screwing some kind of joint (look, I would have been a great orthopaedic surgeon: this is highly technical language I'm using here) into place and I was like,"um, how come I don't get to have a go? Is it because I'm a girl so you think I can't do it?'

Consultant: (looks me up and down) "Be my guest."

I should probably have realised I'd over-egged my Yeah-Feminism pudding when I saw that my reasonably well-built male friend was completely unable to turn the screw but suffice to say that I did not, and I thoroughly humiliated myself by basically hanging from the device trying to turn it with my entire body weight and not being able to. Oh, how everyone laughed. And that was the end of Connie and orthopaedic surgery. 

Eyes, on the other hand, much less strengthey, much more fiddly. No screws. I have now finally completed my first whole cataract operation. Hurrah! And it only took me 50 minutes. Haha. As I (laboriously) finished, I had a vivid flashback to Graham telling me and anyone else compelled to listen (i.e. his patients) that he could “do a whole phaco in 7 minutes.” Oh, Graham. 

For me, the capsulorrhexis is the most terror inducing part of the operation. Basically you have to make a 3mm diameter perfectly round circle in the anterior capsule of the lens using a needle to make a straight line, and then lift up a flap in the capsule, and then a pair of forceps to tear it into a perfect circle. If it tears out or if the circle isn’t round or has a weak point then during the rest of the operation, it can tear into the posterior capsule and you can drop the lens into the back of the eye, and that is a massive disaster because you need to call your vitreoretinal colleagues (who will come and sneer at you in a very special way*) in to make 3 more holes in the back of the eye and fish the lens out and it’s not very good for anyone, least of all the patient.  What I particularly enjoy about this terror is that it’s illustrated so cheerily on youtube, usually with jaunty music and special drum beats to highlight the special bits where it really specially goes wrong. Wonderful stuff.

*One of the more navel-gazey fascinating aspects of specialization is realizing that there are in-specialty stereotypes. Hours of sub-classification fun await you!

On the subject of surgery, I’m also enjoying being with two different surgeons who have different operating methods, often contradicting each other, so I have to remember what they each prefer to avoid being told off in their different theatres.  Surgeon A is a cheery, bubbly, short and plump, faff-hating, hands-on surgeon who says things like, “GIVE IT SOME WELLY” and “I WANT TO HEAR SOME NOISE” and frequently takes my hand during the operation when she considers things are going too slowly and pushes it around, a frequent source of terror to myself (you may notice that many things in surgery cause me terror: I leave theatre basically mentally and physically exhausted after each session*.)

Surgeon B on the other hand is a very tall and thin, extremely silent, even-tempered and patient surgeon who is like the Farmer Hoggins of cataract surgeons. He basically says nothing at any point, and would probably rather die than touch my hand, let alone seize it and start waggling it about during surgery. However, his silences are laden with meaning, and while he was out of theatre** (letting his Fellow supervise me), she and I had a heart to heart.

Fellow: “I feel like all his silences have such different qualities.”

Me: “Sometimes I look up from the microscope and he’s just looking at me with his eyebrows raised. I don’t know how long that’s been going on.”

Fellow: “But he hasn’t said anything. So I can’t say anything.”

Me: “Once I opened my mouth and he just said, “not yet”.”

Fellow: “Did you ever manage to…?”

Me: “No.”

Fellow: “Despite this I feel I know what he wants me to do all the time. His silences are very expressive.”

Surgeons. Fascinating species.

* I used to think Graham was massively overstating it when he talked about how interested he was in the way surgeons psychologically prepare for surgery and that it would make a good book. Sounded like a boring book to me, and I didn’t prepare for surgery except for rocking up in theatre with my scrubs on, looking lost.

I now totally agree with him, except I’m not sure it would make a good book exactly. It would make a very navel-gazey book that surgeons would all love to read, perhaps in the same category as my Poor Middle Class Life Choices production.)

**Obviously not while he was in theatre (see above for silences.) Theatre time is Quiet time.

February catch-up

Dear friends, 

Sorry for my utter failure at updating this blog and, no doubt, at actually seeing you all in real life too. The truth is that buying a house, going to work, and acrobatic rock and roll have swallowed, digested, and thoroughly extracted the nutrition from my life such that I am left with only the fibrous remains, not enough to make a tasty blog post. 

So in no particular order, here are the events that I have encountered since I last saw you.

1) House buying

Yes, we have a house.

,!!!

Yes, everyone warned us the process would be unbearably slow and frustrating, and yes it was both of those things in abundance. Having seen and offered and been accepted on a house in September within a matter of 48 hours, it was not until 2 weeks ago that we finally managed to seal the deal. But now it's ours. And we have filled it with a million items of ikea furniture. We are getting ready for DIY hell, or possibly heaven. Tim has bought a book that weighs a ton filled with useful-looking pictures that actually convey remarkably little information. I have already tried and failed to remove some offending wallpaper, and also half screwed a load of things into walls where they clearly didn't want to be. Also, there is a random square of carpet that has been cut out of one of the upstairs bedrooms. Why? Why not? I am a bit doolally with excitement, and can't wait to put it all together and then - then - we can finally unpack our wedding presents and have a housewarming! Waffles, anyone?

2) the wedding

So we attended Luke and Julia's wedding on the weekend, down in Cornwall. God, Cornwall is far away. But it was a beautiful weekend, and the day of the wedding itself was bright and sunny and absolutely freezing. Notable highlights included: skimming stones into the sea.

; Helen and Jamie arriving in a convertible that didn't convert and had no windows to glamour and acclaim on Friday but leaving to downpour and towels on Sunday ("right. We need to fully waterproof ourselves."); seeing the NZ crew again ("don't you know that Palmerston North is the centre of the universe?") and of course the lovely couple, looking splendid and very happy. Who doesn't love a good wedding?

Stylish fur tippeting from Julia

The cravat was tied by Tim, more or less because he happened to be there, following instructions on youtube. "I feel as if I just walked into a very important job by accident" said Tim afterwards, but I think he did it very well, even if he did get unnecessarily close to Luke as part of it. 

3) Acro

So Tim and I have got into acro rock in a big way. It is possibly one of the silliest dances ever invented and looks ridiculous and perhaps that's why we love it so. Naturally we're shit at it just as good as the people in that video. Everyone else in the team appears to be doing a phd in chemistry and outrageously young, though it turns out we are not the oldest ones there! Hurrah! So we are going to team practices on Sunday and Tuesday and the Thursday is authentic rock and roll and I really didn't imagine there would come a point in my life where I'm doing quite so much dancing. Well, life is full of surprises. And upside down spinny flippy twirly things too.

4) the job

Goes on apace. I've finally managed to get the hang of the PASCAL laser and directed it at aomeone's retina with good result. No one went blind. Hurrah! Surgery progresses. Things get better. And I've commandeered Tim's electric bike. It's all uphill (easy-pedal-assisted uphill) from here.

5) Skiing.

I almost forgot we went skiing in the end of January. God it feels like forever ago. We were on this fantastic week long deal which included copious breakfast, a 3-course meal in the evenings with wine, and endless free cake. I ate so much cake. And so much potato, cheese and bacon, which seemed to be what more or less every meal consisted of. In fact, on going home I've been inspired to make my very own version of tartiflette, but on a pizza. Consider that, boys and girls. Potato, cream, cheese and bacon on a pizza. It doesn't really bear thinking about. But it really is delicious. And it's just what you need after acro rock (but definitely not before.) And it definitely aids in going down fast fast fast down a mountain, even if the laws of physics deny it helps by adding weight and acceleration, it helps in motivation in getting down there in double fast time so you can have double helpings. 

 

Xxxx

Happy Christmas!

Dear friends, I hope you all had a good Christmas, whatever Christmas means to you, and a chance to rest and to catch up with your nearest and dearest, hopefully without some kind of board game induced family breakdown (though those are also some essential part of the holiday season.)

I had to work Christmas Day so spent the first hours driving through a blissfully, eerily empty England, listening to Classic FM's dulcet tones and going very, very fast around roundabouts. But before that, when I woke up at 5am, Tim insisted on giving me my present, which was...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah I know! Exciting, right?
I was excited.
A zoom lens!
Excited and slightly concerned about how much money this present may have cost.

So excited I...

 ...
...
....
....
...

 ....
I see.

An ingenious cup!!!

At this point I was possibly even more delighted, due to relief partly that he hadn't got me a ridiculously expensive gift,  and partly because I'd noticed it didn't say Canon on the 'lens' and was wondering how to break it to him that it just wasn't going to fit my camera. But that was fine, because it was going to fit my MOUTH.

....

Except

 oh wait


then he brought out this one too.
An actual zoom lens.
And this one says Canon on it.

Thanks Tim!

So if you have a camera-loving partner and want to set them up for a fall on a special day....this is definitely the way to do it. I for one was unbelievably impressed. Even now when I suddenly catch sight of it lying around on the worksurface, it makes my heart tighten just a little bit in momentary anxiety because a camera lens really shouldn't be lying around in the kitchen like that...

And take it from me - you wouldn't even have to buy them a real lens afterwards. Though that was also tremendous.

***

So I had a lovely Christmas break at the in-laws, and looking forward to spending New  Year's at my family's too. Christmas Day, however, was spent with the Bennetts - very tolerant and generous souls to whose house I'd summarily invited myself at Christmas as they were the only people I knew in Reading - and by people, I mean, their son, whom i met in New Zealand. Moral of the story: don't live in Reading. They fed me and entertained me and also gave me a tremendously generous stocking filled with goods, which made what could have been a somewhat depressing Christmas Day a very lovely one instead. So thank you, Bennetts. Thenetts.

***

While I was in NZ, I really, really, really missed the whole build up to Christmas, especially the cold weather, and the mulled wine, and the Christmas markets, and the bratwurst, and the mistletoe, and mince pies, and stollen, and panettone, and all the SEASONAL TAT that comes with Christmas. And it was so so so so so nice to have that again this year. Although i haven't managed to eat quite as much turkey, panettone, mince pies, and mulled wine as I'd hoped. And in fact not a morsel of stollen (if such an item can be counted in morsels) has passed my lips. What kind of Christmas is this?

***

Great book I read this Christmas: Being Mortal - excellent and insightful meditation on ageing and death and the way we tackle these natural processes in medicine (clue: unbelievably poorly). Very interesting read - and lots of good ideas. It gave me a lot to think about - particularly the communication model of the ''informative doctor'' and how this, though it seems to be promising patient autonomy, can actually trap everyone in a futile diminishing cycle of suffering and overtreatment. Eye opening stuff, I recommend it to all.

Much less high brow: Crossy Road. http://www.crossyroad.com/ Perhaps the best (and free) ipad game I've yet experienced. Even though it is basically Frogger, it is so much better than Frogger. Like woah. And you can play as a kiwi. Sold.

***

Enough Christmas musings for now, time to think up some New Year's resolutions and see you in 2015.

Love to one and all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Timothy of Morocco

Does not have the same ring as Lawrence of Arabia, but is a more accurate subtitle to this month's shenangs.

So, we went to Morocco.

This is my favourite photo of the whole time there, when we went to southern Morocco and the sand dunes at Merzouga, a little outpost of the Sahara, and right on the Algerian border. It was an impulsive decision, and one I'm so glad we made, though getting there was somewhat stressful. The country had suffered a huge slew of flash flooding and terrible destruction of houses, roads and most tragically lives - so far I think 32 people died in the floods. Along the way we heard from other tourists who had been trapped (one couple for 20 days in the desert) by the floods, others who narrowly escaped disasters - a bridge fell down after one couple drove over it, killing the occupants of the next car behind them. 

It was all very grim, and in fact when we heard about the floods we suggested that we might just cancel the whole trip and stay in Marrakech, since clearly that would be the sensible, intelligent thing to do rather than go galliva. But unfortunately (fortunately?) our driver appeared not to speak any English, French, or Spanish apart from, 'IT'S FINE. NO PROBLEM.' And obviously we didn't speak any Arabic apart from 'thank you.' So basically we sped along on this journey whihc we were quite concerned might, if not kill us, then maybe trap us in some part of the country for the next three weeks, just saying, 'thank you, thank you' every time our driver drove through a massively flooded road that was essentially a fast-flowing river, while he said, 'is normal. No problem. No problem.' 

BUT IT'S FINE. Because there was not a problem. And we got there. And it was unbelievably good. 

Please forgive me for taking as many clichéd photos as I possibly could cram into my greedy little aperture of the desert, because how often do you get to trek in the Sahara with camels? 

Camels, by the way. Unbelievably uncomfortable. Also, stirrups. Best thing ever. Why ride an animal without stirrups? Massive error. The Mongolians had it down.

I love this photo because it looks like an oil painting. Tim took this with his phone (just on normal settings) after sunset in the desert, and it came out like this. I like to think that my harem pants only add to the romantic atmosphere, even though Tim made retching noises when I bought them. I even bought only the most conservative ones, with a crotch that was basically at the normal place rather than dangling two inches off the floor, and of a normal colour rather than crazy tie die. Frankly, they look a bit like scrubs. Maybe I can start wearing them to theatre. They are outrageously comfortable...

Tim tried them on. He did at least agree they were tremendously comfortable. 

So in the desert we stayed overnight at a Berber camp. It was all very touristy and as fake as you can possiby imagine, but also absolutely fantastic and amazing and wonderful. There were two guides at the camp who could speak English, French, Portguese, Spanish, and Italian (and possibly more languages than nthat, though that was the sum of our little band), and they exercised them all. Except English. One of them decided to address me solely in French, the other one in Spanish. This was terribly, terribly confusing.

I took over 1000 photos but I thought I'd share this one with you. Before I got a camera that could take multiple shots, I never knew how funny people looked just as they were about to jump. Don't they look funny?

No need to thank me.

We stayed up for sunset and got up for sunrise and in between slid down the sand dunes on an extremely rickety snowboard and ate a lot of tagine. This will become a running theme.

Tagine!

This was my favourite one, with seven vegetables, cooked over a charcoaly fire, all smokey and delicious. 

We ate a lot of tagine. 

This is one of the towns in Southern Morocco, in an oasis. Turns out, oases are fricking massive. And they feed whole towns. How foolish was I, imagining a little oasis in the desert with a couple of palm trees. Nope. They host hundreds and thousands of palms, and the health of an oasis and its wealth is measured by how many palms there are. And the palms provide shelter for growing all sorts of other things - pomegrantes and olives, apricots, potatoes and carrots in the earth beneath, and so on. 

I like the way the buildings, all made from the same ochre earth, just blend into the background along the luxuriant palms. Apparently one way to take a besieged kasbah (i.e. another name for a walled house or fortified palace) was just to divert the waters of the oasis so it washed away the kasbah foundations after a while, being made out of mud. Cunning. 

We did a whistle-stop tour of the south, which was pretty splendid. Our driver, Ibrahim, explained to us that he liked the south and the mountains in a series of extremely informative mimes. Marrakech, he explained with his hands and a particularly sad face, was too full of people 'blah blah blah blah'ing all the time. 

I would like to say this is a very accurate assessment of Marrakech, and if you do find yourself in Morocco, head straight for the mountains and the desert right away. You won't miss anything in Marrakech, which is really a very disappointing and boring place, full of people who I'm sure are very pleasant and lovely but compelled to be a bit awful because they live in Marrakech, where everything is a bit awful. 

Go to Tagazhout instead.

We stayed with a surf company, called Surf Maroc, there, and surfed as much as we could for two days, which isn't very much it turns out. We were both destroyed after a scant 2 hours in the water in the first day, and about 4 hours the second - with a sizeable lunch to pep us up, of course. Paddling is hard work. But the water was warm, the waves were good, and our driver in Tagazhout wasn't really sure how to drive a car - he coudn't switch gear, it seemed, which made life quite difficult for himself since he appeared to got lumped with the manual - and so the time passed quite pleasantly.

If you are ever thinking of going surfing in morocco, then Surf Maroc is definitely highly recommended. Great food, lovely location, and one of these demons to keep you occupied:

This is one of the most fiendish balance games I've yet encountered. That little penguin game you play on the Wii has nothing on it. It looks so easy, yet it's so fiendish. Lots of fun. I'm not really sure if it helps your surfing (or indeed anything), but who cares? 

In short, Morocco was lots of things we hadn't looked for, and not others we had, and a strange mixture of the unsatisfactory and the divinely inspiring, which is really all you can ask of a mid-November holiday.

But don't bother with Marrakech. 

*** 

I realise I never told you about acrobatic rock and roll, by the way. It was splendid. Tim loved it. And I think we're going to join the team (!)

xxx Connie

An eyot is an island in a river

It has been so unseasonably warm for October (who can believe it's now November?), and I've been fidgeting about at work, desperate to go outside. So now the weekend is here, the first thing I did was go for an Epic Walk, starting in Botley, down the Oxford canal to Iffley and then up again through The Kidneys (who knew there was a nature park called The Kidneys in Oxford? It's my new favourite reference point now, "oh, you know - just south of the Kidneys"), and coming back on Aston's Eyot, which informed me that an Eyot is an island in a river, often used in reference to the Thames. So there we go. 

It's really lovely being back in Oxford and discovering places that I never knew about as a student - the train station, the JR, and Temple Cowley forming the borders of my consciousness. And also introducing my sister to it all (and blowing her mind, naturally.) This is where the Eyot comes out, by the way - just the other side of the boathouse island.

It was nice too to walk by the river in full boating season - lots of very posh men with very posh voices cycling along the path and shouting, 'PUSH WITH YOUR LEGS!' and 'FASTER!' etc. 

(Ps. Did anyone else read Alice through the Looking Glass when younger and not realise that when Alice rows with the Sheep from the shop and the Sheep keeps saying 'feather! feather' and 'you'll catch a crab' - to which Alice's response is 'a dear little crab! I should like that' - that they were boating references?)

(Posh men in boats.)

I walked and walked, went back through the centre of town, narrowing avoiding Ben's Cookies (a dangerous place to dally), and then met Tim up in Port Meadow to go for a late lunch at the Trout. So late that the sun set while we were still there.

It was a clear night and a very bright moon and we walked back in the darkness, accompanied by a lot of joggers who were more virtuous than we. Who jogs in the dark? Mad people, that's who. And Sophie Pooley. 

***

Last week we went to see Gary and Debbie in their new house up in Shropshire for their Halloween Harry Potter Housewarming (I love my love with an H). Did you know that Shropshironians are in fact called Salopians? This is all according to Wikipedia, which I have no cause to distrust. Debbie and Gary are some fine folks we met in NZ who used to live down the road from us and now live considerably up the road from us. About 2 hours worth in fact. It was so nice to see them installed back in the UK and gadding about in their fancy new place. And we got dressed up in honour of the occasion too.

I think this is one of my finest Halloween costumes to date, involving 2 pillows and a good deal of gold spray paint. Debbie is also featured, as Hedwig of course. Tim came as Dobby (cue everyone trying to free him by hiding socks all over the place.)

***

Otherwise life continues apace. I have finished my supernumerary 3 months in Reading and from next week I'm flying solo - and by flying, I mean, eyeing. I've been enjoying myself tremendously at work, learning how to operate the various lasers (lasering eyes - incredibly satisfying. Who knew?), doing more in theatres (I made my first opening incisions the other day and sideports - the first I've ever had to make with my left hand, which is definitely increasing in sinisterity daily), and generally feeling a bit more confident and at home with things. In fact, work is pretty much perfect, apart from the commute, which is soul-destroying. But I suppose you can't have everything. 

Tim and I are also going to start going to acrobatic rock and roll dancing after I watched a video in which someone gets thrown up into the air and then does a triple flip or somesuch and decided this is the kind of dancing I could be into.

Tim: "I don't think we can do this Connie. The guy has to be incredibly tall and ripped and the girl has to be incredibly tiny and ripped. I'm tall. That's it. And I think you've gained some weight recently." 

Me: "IT'S THE FREE DRUG REP LUNCHES."

Anyway, tomorrow's our first session (Tim took some talking into this. I exercised my finest rhetorical skills, Cicero-style. Aka I talked so much I bored him into saying, "FINE LET'S JUST GO, JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT." Another triumph for team Cicero!) so I will let you know how it goes. 

xxxx 

Connie

Fungi foray

Dear folks,

Sorry for not updating for so long. After the excitement of, you know, getting married and all the rest, posting about commuting to Reading really seemed like too much of a let-down. Not that I can complain about Reading. Reading's great. Going to Reading really makes me appreciate how great the other aspects of my non-Reading life are, in much the same way that hitting yourself repeatedly on the thumb with a hammer feels so great when you stop.

I should disclaim here that this reflects in no way on the hospital or the staff. This reflects solely on the fact that Reading, as a concept, exists. In Lonely Planet, England, the only paragraph describing Reading states, ''An industrial commuter town with little of interest, except a 3-day music festival which occurs on the August bank holiday each year. Expect traffic." And speaking from personal experience, the word "interesting" seems curiously lacking and inappropriate to describe Reading festival.

But there have been other aspects of non-Reading life that have occurred.

We've put an offer in for a house, which is wonderful because it turns out I can no longer house-share.  My slovenliness and desire to walk around the house wearing minimal amounts precludes most housemates' comfort and mental stability. Naturally I have reigned in my natural proclivities but I really can't wait until I can leave the washing up in the sink for the next day or leave my shoes in a jumbled pile in the hallway for when I really can't be arsed to pick them up and stow them away in the cupboard upstairs.

We've also made some sloe gin, which is almost as exciting as a house, in a slightly different way. It's part of our slow descent into unbearable middle-classedness.

And this weekend we went to Batsford arboretum, which is part of the grounds of Batsford House, which is, I discovered, associated with the Lords Redesdale - and naturally with part of the lives of the Mitford family, with whom this whole country appears perennially obsessed with.

It is a lovely spot and I do find all the Mitfords and their chequered history very charming, but I also find it completely unbearable that any one family could own such a pile, down with the aristocracy etc.

Anyway we weren't there for politico/social/economical discourse but to hunt for mushrooms.

I've forgotten the name of this one but it wasn't edible. I think it was called a "sulphur cap" (lovely) and it grows at the roots of trees, especially trees that have been "going through a rough patch" (divorce? mid-life crisis?) and are particularly vulnerable. The fun thing about mushroom hunting of course is that once you see one then you start seeing them everywhere. 

We were quite excited about the fungi foray because in Eastwoodhill Arboretum we'd seen so many very odd fungi - one that looked like a cage and indeed turned out to be called a cage fungus - surprise surprise - that we thought we'd like to identify some. Though some people turned up with a basket, obviously hoping to cart home some goodies. They were out of luck. On this foray we identified only disgusting mushrooms "technically edible, but really, don't" or deadly poisonous ones. Worryingly, one of the poisonous ones had been classed as edible for many centuries until recently someone found out that a spate of unusual deaths in Eastern Europe was in fact due to ingestion of these little beauties: below - 

The brown rolled-cap. Apparently the reason no one discovered they were deadly for so long was because they have a cumulative effect - eating a few won't kill you, even eating quite a lot over many years won't kill you - until one fateful meal and your kidneys have had quite enough and make it clear to you once and for all. 

I've never really had the urge to forage for mushrooms but really, that was enough to put me off for life. Even leaving out the dangers of incorrect identification (and there are many tremendously terrifying tales you can read about people dying/poisoning their nearest and dearest/conking out their kidneys with a charming little side dish of mushrooms fried in a little butter), the fact that you could identify a mushroom correctly but STILL DIE because the BOOKS WERE WRONG should surely strike fear into your mushroomy heart. 

 I remember distinctly once James and Maria brought back the biggest mushroom I'd ever seen - about the size of James' torso - they'd found on a tree, and they spent about a week cooking it, to very little effect. We did all eat some, and no one died, which was a relief. It turned out it was a bracket - a family of fungi growing on trees of which the tastiest is called "chicken of the woods" (bringing back worrying memories of Anchorman 2) and which "Americans would kill for" and the rest vary from "bland" to "wood-like and tough." The specimen PJ and M brought back was definitely of the latter category - apparently boiling for several hours would have been a better option than any of the cooking methods we tried. Still, it was pleasing to know that there aren't any deadly poisonous varieties of that one, and the only damage you're likely to sustain is wear and tear to your molars.


Anyway, Tim and I didn't eat any mushrooms but instead ate a substantial amount of jaffa cakes washed down with tea, which seemed much the safest option in the face of these revelations, and decided we would get all of our mushrooms from the supermarket forever and ever and ever.

xxx
Connie

Summer in the city

Ok, so we got married.

It was superlative in every sense.

And then we went on honeymoon, where we stayed in the most ridiculously twee hotel ever seen on the face of this earth. It even had the words 'Romantik' written on the side. You can't argue with that sort of branding. 

The ensuing month was spent drinking a good deal of wine...

...then moving location to a perhaps even more romantic Polish castle...

(Yes. For tuppence, you too can stay in this castle, swim in this lake, and eat more sausage than you can shake a stick at)

....but mainly attending the weddings of our beautiful friends, Maja & Maciej..

...and Amanda and Ed...

...and I fondled all the brides fondly.

This is me fondling Amanda's pouffy dress.

She was very patient.

Words cannot really describe how fantastic that month was, so I think it's best if we pass over it as any attempt will sound like hyperbole. The sun shone and everything was superb, and it was just a very, very happy time.

And now we've started work.

And I've baked a pie! Partially in honour of the Bake Off (which is great, right? Am I right?), but mostly in honour of my stomach, which had been much exercised on holiday.

A blueberry pie! Like Yogi eats. 

Excellent choice, Yogi. Turns out, it's delicious. 

No wonder he turned to theft.

Work has been somewhat tiring, but we've taken a lesson from NZ as we promised ourselves, and we have purchased a Lonely Planet, and this weekend Lonely Planet suggested to us we should go to Cornwall and do some surfing, and so we were like, 'great idea, Lonely Planet! Superlative!' 

So we did.

Turned out, one of Tim's school friends works in Cornwall now. At this surfshack. 

Superlative.

The scenery was beautiful, but it was a little bit chilly for August. 

And the waves were...well.

They weren't quite swell.

(I am the wit.)

Still, it was really fun to be back in the water and standing up on a board. I missed it so much as soon as I was out of the water, in fact, that I ordered a Ripstik which is slightly embarrassing as I think maybe it's marketed towards 8 year old boys but WHATEVER. Would Wolverine be put off by marketing? I say NO. Anyway, my consultant's wife (in Gisborne....obv) had one and she played on it all the time, and she is at least 10 years older than me so I count that as PEER ENDORSEMENT. 

She was well cool, innit.

(classic British seaside holiday scene! Oh how I have missed you.)

We ate ice creams and fish and more fish and more ice cream and Cornish crab and scallops and all the rest and we finished it off with a visit to Rick Stein's place in Padstow. I say Rick Stein's place, he basically owns all the property in Padstow now so if you just stumble blindly into a building in Padstow it probably will be Rick Stein's place. Still, it was very tasty and all that, and it was nice to gaze on Rick's very familiar-looking face as we munched our dinner. Speaking of which, we both saw John the other day in Oxford wobbling about on a bicycle in his white linen summer suit and he looked basically unchanged, which was also very nice. I accosted him by shouting JOHN STEIN! in the middle of Holywell, and then failed to remind him who I was, which left us both gawping at each other for about 20 seconds before it all clicked. 

I also ran into my old lab supervisor whilst up at the JR for a teaching session, just in the coffee room. She didn't have any kids when I left...and now she has 2. 2! And she is a senior researcher in the Foster lab. 

How times-a-change. Etc.

Anyway, here is a nice picture of the saltwater swimming pool in Bude to cheer us all up.

The sea comes washing up over the sides in high tide, which is tremendously pleasing. 

We also went for a walk around Tintagel, which I kind of imagined as tremendously romantic and huge but in fact is sort of ruinous and crumbling. I recognise that my illusions about this all stem from a BBC production of King Arthur in which Helena Bonham Carter played Morgan le Fay and Miranda Richardson played basically another version of her character as Queenie. Curse you, BBC, for instilling me with such false cultural expectations. I expect higher standards. 

Still, it was extremely beautiful. 

Here is a shot of the cove below Tintagel.

I leave you with this sunset view over Bude.

The best thing was, I found a copy of the Mousehole Cat and I read it to Tim, and he loved it just as much as I did when I heard it as a child. 

Superlative all round.