New Year Catchup (not ketchup) !

Hello everyone, and Happy New Year to you! I know, I know... only two and a half weeks late!

Since the end of the Christmas break I have been rather snowed under with uni work, trying to get my 15 credit open project finished before the exam board at the end of January. Let’s rewind a little bit though, as I need to tell you what we got up to in the Christmas break...

End of term capers:

When I say ‘end of term capers’ it sounds fun, but actually it was rather hectic! Knowing that we were going to be thrown out of the building at 12.30, I was making a last ditch attempt to finish my SEM (scanning electron microscope) photos of my foraminifera beforehand. They were excellent actually, and far exceeded my expectations! Here are a few of the funniest...

Christmas Eve:

Christmas Day:

Cornwall:

On Boxing Day we headed to Cornwall to spend four days with my family... The thing that really stood out was the bravery of my Uncle ‘P.’ Every year we usually have a Christmas talent show involving all the family, which is remembered more for the laughs it generates rather than the competitive element ! Sadly my Uncle ‘P’ is in the very latest stages of prostate cancer, and we had already decided not to have the show this year and keep things low key... Uncle ‘P’ however had other ideas, deciding that we should go ahead with the show and ‘after party,’ on the grounds of ‘not being defeated by the situation.’
The itinerary was as follows:

It turned out to be a fantastic evening and was great fun! We were all really glad that Uncle ‘P’ decided to press ahead and not let the situation get the better of us...

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertypes/Prostate/Prostatecancer.aspx

J’s record of the week:

‘Water get no enemy’

by

Fela Kuti

Lately I’ve been just a little bit obsessed with a world music show on BBC Radio 2 called ‘Spin the Globe’ with Nitin Sawhney on Thursday nights http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/n5z4m/nitin-sawhney-spins-the-globe--episode-1
Two Thursdays ago I heard this song by Fela Kuti (a fascinating character, look him up on Wikipedia if you get the chance!) and have been listening to its full ten minute duration of wondrousness many times each day ever since... Let’s just hope that the neighbours don’t too fed up! Jerushah X