Happy St George's Day

Or so I'm told - it's not a holiday alas.

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

William Shakespeare, "King Richard II", Act 2 scene 1

(Thanks Pete)

Things I love about England - there are no cockroaches! Well, I haven't seen any anyway and that's good enough for me.

There are no doubt many other things I love about England too but the things I don't like tend to roll off the tongue a bit more readily (I always say that the stereotypical whinging pom has nothing on this whinging aussie). So I dedicate this St George's day to thinking long and hard about everything I like here.

I will probably do that when I'm on my treadmill in that early period before I get too out of breath to think about anything other than not falling off. I've been a bit busy trying to finish a very long and boring report (that's what I'm doing right now, not writing this blog at all, oh no no no). After I've finished this very long and not very interesting report, which comes hot on the heels of another long report, and I'm going to write a short magazine article then a mid-length conference paper - my first. This could well result in a trip to Frankfurt to present said conference paper, here's hoping anyway. April's been a strange month so far, I've had at least one whole week in the office every day and trips only to Newcastle and London, not out of the country at all. Don't worry, I will fix that in May with a trip to sunny Nice at least.

Finally in this post of utterly random thoughts I thought I'd give an update on my technology progress. So far my list of household appliances includes:

• rice cooker
• treadmill
• kettle
• mini fridge
• mini toaster oven
• stove/oven
• washing machine
• ironing board and iron (mum bought that)

but does not include:

• TV
• proper size fridge
• dishwasher
• dryer

and all the other unnecessary luxuries of life. I've now been without a TV for over a year and I can safely report that I do not miss it at all (plus I don't have to pay the £200 or whatever a year for a "TV licence"). Of course, if I didn't have the internet/my laptop it could be a whole different story.

all sorts of things

Two weeks ago, I wandered across the road to the pub, got my pint and settled in to watch the running of the famous Grand National. Fortunately before I got too settled someone pointed out that there's a bookies just down the road, so I went and put on what turned out to be a winning bet.

All I can say is what absolute carnage!!! An unusual year apparently, neither horse nor man was put down. But the number of falls was absolutely incredible. One thing's for sure, made the 2 miles around Flemington look like a tame walk in the park. For quite a significnat part of the race at least half the field was made up of riderless horses. Eventually they got wise and realised there were ways around those gigantic fences and headed off on their own somewhere else.

Oh and the winner - how could I go past a horse with the name "Comply or Die"?

Rico joined me this week and on Saturday we went into the the science and technology museaum to see Body World. I can safely say I've never seen anything even remotely resembling this exhibition. Real human bodies that are stripped of skin and fat and plasticised sort of to make them last. Then put in all sorts of weird configuration. For example, one (real) body, separated into three (eg one with bones and organs, one with muscles, one with blood vessels) joined at the complete foot and playing badmington with itself. Or the relay runner, whose skeleton hands the baton over to the muscles version of itself.

Check out some photos here. http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/media/picture_database/thumbnails.html?category=14
and more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2008/01/02/220208_bodyworlds_interview_feature.shtml

I imagine certain bits of the exhibition were a little disturbing for the blokes too.

If you got bored of the complete specimens, you could see all the bits of pieces, healthy and not separately. I now know exactly what an advanced case of arthritis looks like for example. Or the complete body that had been cut into about 100 slices all hanging suspended together like those perpetual motion office desk toys.

It's hard to describe the effect. The most disturbing thing was that at one stage I was definitely getting hungry!

On the science theme, I noticed both that Saturday and Sunday travelling to and from Liverpool airport that there was an absolute plague of identical twins.