Life in the home lab :

I’m sure if you have a family it cannot have escaped your notice that it is half term this week ? I had a slight logistical difficulty, in that although I can take ‘mini me’ along to the library or cafe on campus, the labs are strictly off limits... and with good reason too, we work with some very ‘narrrrrsty’ chemicals and the occasional biohazard.
I was discussing this difficulty with lovely ‘Dr F L,’ one of the academics who has given me an awful lot of support with my lab work.
She came up with the ingenious solution that if Jerushah cannot go to the lab, the lab (only the safe bits of course) could come to Jerushah ! Dr F L very kindly lent me a binocular microscope, picking equipment and identification books to take home...
Last Friday, I spent most of the evening setting up my ‘home lab’ under the stairs, also incorporating an old garden table, a rickety Victorian chair and my daughter’s purple ‘groovy chick’ lamp for extra illumination. When I had finished the task, I proudly emailed the picture around to a few friends to which friend ‘L’ replied : ‘Jerushah, that is truly the lair of a mad scientist !’ such a way with words, but I took it as a compliment !

...and what was I picking and identifying under my microscope ? Beautiful and intricate, six million year old microfossils gathered during my trip to Spain (it has taken this long to process them), called foraminifera.
They are very small, these particular specimens are 125 microns in size, and just about visible to the naked eye. Good thing too, as I have to pick them up with the dampened end of a one stranded paint brush and glue them to a slide, and at 300 individuals per sample, it is very intensive work !
Here are a couple of pictures I took during the course of my picking this week :

J’s record of the week :

‘Hold me tighter in the rain’

by

Billy Griffin

In 1982, Billy Griffin (the former lead singer of the Miracles), released this song, which was a UK top twenty chart hit in the following year. I first heard it featured in the ‘quiet storm’ on the BBC radio one soul train show, while tucked up in bed with a secret radio under my pillow. This time last week, remember that Bryony’s provision of record of the week resulted in a huge downpour ? Actually the rain gauge total for last week was 6.5mm, 5mm of which fell on Thursday night alone ! So this week, with plenty of rain forecast for the south east on Sunday, I thought I should choose something more appropriate and dedicate it to meteorologists everywhere ! Jerushah X   

Family history :

Do you remember way back in February when I moved house ? I’m sure I told you that I had grand plans for the garden... My lovely dad has been staying with us this week, creating a wonderful deck  for us using reclaimed timber. I intend to give you a full update on that, with lots of before and after pictures later on in the week, but before that I tell you about something else we’ve been up to...

My aunt in Canada recently scanned some of our old family photo’s and put them on a cd. Dad and I have had a few late nights looking through them and recounting the stories attached.
The pictures span the period from the early 1900’s up to the 1960’s.

This is the earliest of the photo’s,  and shows my great-grandparents Annie and Aaron (in about 1910), with their two eldest children.  If you look carefully at Aaron, you will see that he is missing his right arm.  He was the unfortunate victim of an industrial accident in a sawmill when he was only twelve. Luckily for him, the family had a little bit of money set aside and were able to send him to university, as he was no longer able to work in the sawmill. He spent the remainder of his career as a teacher.

The second picture in the series shows my grandmother Marie, at her graduation in 1925.
She had a distinguished career, firstly as a district nurse in the extreme north of Canada (undertaking her rounds by a combination of dog-sled, horse and bush plane).  With the onset of the second world war, she worked in England, caring for the injured in London’s hospitals.

The pictures below (taken later on in her career) shows her in an interesting combination of clothes, wearing her district nurses uniform (including shoes, cape and wide brimmed hat), with leather riding chaps over the top.

J’s record of the week :

‘Everything stops
for tea.’

Written by

Al Hoffman

After deciding to feature my old family pictures in the blog this week, I just had to choose a retro song for my record of the week. My grandmother, Marie would have been 107 this year. One of my favourite memories of her, is reminiscing about her war time experiences, when I was about ten. The upshot of which was in her teaching me the words to this song – one of her favourites  ! It was written by Al Hoffman in 1935 for the film ‘Come out of the pantry.’  Thanks Marie ! Jerushah X

Going Underground

Non-flattened fauna :

Well... While most of the country were poised in front of the television waiting for Will and Kate to tie the knot, what was Jerushah doing ? Making the most of the extra day off and driving to Cornwall of course !
The journey down was for the most part uneventful, but with two notable exceptions... At approximately 11.20pm a very skilful badger managed to dash out in front of me on the A303, pick the exact spot in between my front wheels, stay there for a split second then dash out from between the wheels on the passenger side of the car – I saw his little white tail disappearing in my rear view mirror.
At approximately 2.15am, when I was approaching our first stop in Calstock, I saw two glowing eyes in the distance on the road. I realised it was quite a large animal as the glowing eyes were about three feet off the ground... ‘Is it the beast of Bodmin ?’ I asked myself, to which I replied ‘No silly - you’re on Dartmoor, not Bodmin Moor!’ As I came closer, I could see antlers and realised it was a deer – wandering very lazily across the road. Perhaps he was returning from a night out on the tiles ?

On the way home it was a bit sad to see that there were many, many animal casualties on the roads as a result of the extra bank holiday traffic. Obviously as an environmental scientist, I am all for recycling, but being a vegetarian of many years standing, I can’t really encourage any ‘recycling’ of animal road casualties. However, I recently read a newspaper article featuring a man who likes nothing better than badger sandwiches :http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article96189.ec

All I can say is I am really glad our badger lived to tell the tale !

Going underground :

In addition to our mandatory amount of sun, swim and sand, we did something equally Cornish and spent a large proportion of Sunday poking around in a tin mine. Knowing it was likely to be rough going, ‘S’ and me wore our best wellies and waterproofs. It was good thing too, as it was raining on the surface and there were waterfalls from the roofs of the tunnels – there was so much water that some sections of the floor had to be pumped out before we entered them, as the water was too deep to walk through.  It was a shame that no one had told the lady in front of us though, she was wearing a very swanky leather jacket and expensive looking leather boots !

J’s record of the week :

‘Going underground’

by

The Jam

As you know, I’m usually more of a soul, R&B and reggae aficionado, and apologies in advance for the rather dodgy link, but this week I’ve chosen ‘Going underground’ by The Jam. I don’t quite know why, but I found myself subconsciously humming it as we crawled through the dark dampness of the mine ! I remember this song getting to number one when I was only five, and playing along to it with an upturned biscuit tin and two wooden spoons ! Enjoy ! Jerushah x

Trashy Swans, Darwinism and a 100 trillion dollar note

A blast of a barbecue : 
I was feeling very virtuous after doing a large chunk of my literature review on Friday, so it was without guilt that I went to a barbecue at my friend J’s house on Saturday night . I was quite touched to discover that there were loads of nice couscous stuffed veggies ready just for me ! We spent most of the evening out in the garden, but when the biting insects got too much we moved inside and the conversation turned to J’s recent travels in Africa. He had pots of interesting tales (and tails !) to tell, but probably the best thing was the ‘One hundred trillion dollar’ note  that he brought back from Zimbabwe.

One swan’s trash is another one’s treasure:
On Easter Sunday after having an egg-cellent Easter egg hunt in our garden, (plus up and down the street) at seven in the morning we decided to chill out by the beautiful River Medway. Lately we’ve been keeping an eye on some swans  who have taken the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ message to heart and built the most amazing nest using recycled materials.  They have also gone for the ‘smallest dwelling in the poshest area’ approach to real estate as their address is at ‘The Esplanade’ Rochester !

A day at Charles’s place :
After a really cool ‘chill out’ by the river on Sunday, ‘S’ and me decided to have a day out at Down House on Easter Monday. Down house is the former home of Charles Darwin and along with beautiful gardens and the Darwin family’s living areas just as they had left them (we loved the ‘stair slide’), there was a fantastic visitor’s centre with a holographic display of Charles Darwin’s cabin on the Beagle. He appeared to be examining some microscope slides ! The most poignant item displayed was his very own mounting needle -a piece of equipment still used in slide preparation in our micropalaeontology lab at the university today... It was a shame that English Heritage had mis-labelled it as a dissection instrument !
There were also lots of delights in the garden too, including a ‘worm stone’ built to test the validity of Darwin’s theory on earth worms, and a hot house full of carnivorous plants.   

J’s record of the week :

‘Pressure drop’

By the Toots and
the Maytals.

The Toots and the Maytals songs  have been covered all sorts of artists from The Clash (who covered ‘pressure drop’) to The Specials. The Toots and the Maytals version of ‘Pressure Drop’ was released in 1968, although  I first heard this song at Easter four years ago. I was in Canada with my family and was bemoaning the fact that I had forgotten to bring my CD wallet on holiday. Luckily my cousin’s partner ‘A’ had a few sneaky reggae tracks up her sleeve and made a CD for me. So even though most people might be visualising palm trees and sand when they listen to this song, I always think of driving through the Rocky Mountains in the snow at Easter ! Jerushah X

More Glorious Mud!

More Glorious Mud:

On the Sunday after returning from Spain, we were out doing fieldwork again...
The good thing was that I seemed to have brought the sunshine back with me – Yay! Our trip was mainly focussed on examining a submerged forest in the intertidal zone of the Thames at Erith and Purfleet.
We were accompanied by a mixed group of geographers and lapidary/mineral enthusiasts from Kent and Essex. Among them were some old friends ‘S T’ and ‘N C’ who I hadn’t seen in years, which was a really nice surprise!
Now I’ll give you a question: What does an eminent Quaternary scientist do before eating his packed lunch? Only read on if you have a strong constitution...
He sticks his finger in a brown, slimy layer that has accumulated on the surface of the river mud (see photo), smears it across his palm and says with an excited look on his face: ‘Jerushah, look at this!  I think we’ve got live diatoms here...  Either that or it’s raw sewage...’
...And in answer to the question posed in the title, actually Kent Mud and Essex Mud are exactly the same, as the submerged forest extends from one side of the Thames to the other.
Pictured here is my illustrious research supervisor  ‘Dr BAH’ with my main mini field assistant ‘S,’ plus  ‘R’ and ‘D’ from the Essex GA.

J’s record of the week: 

Don’t forget, last time I promised two songs for this week, and as I’m a woman of my word  I thought  I would provide you with ‘something old’ and ‘something new’ so here goes :

Something old:

‘Let’s do it again’

by

The Staple Singers 

This week, I was bored on my way to work and put my iPod on shuffle... As a result I discovered this little gem of a song, full of sensual lyrics and the sweet harmonies that only families of singers can seem to create. It was a hit in 1975, when it reached number one in the US chart. Guess what ? It was very apt, because being an extremely catchy song, I listened to it, only to play it again immediately after !
 Innocent Jerushah says  ‘Of course that’s the meaning of the title !’

Something new:

‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’

by

Black Eyed Peas

This song was released last October, but for reasons only known to myself, I’ve only just discovered it ! I downloaded it last night and I’m really looking forward to dancing round the living room to it (which will hopefully not be too embarrassing for ‘S’ ) later. Haven’t got round to listening to the rest of the album yet, but I’ll let you know how I get on ! Enjoy reliving those Dirty Dancing bits everyone ! Jerushah X

My field trip to the Almeria province!

Earlier this week I returned from my field trip to the Almeria province with the School of Science. We were away for twelve days. Our time was so packed with activities, that I thought it would be nice to give you a day by day account of the trip...

Saturday: 

We had to be at the Medway campus to meet the coach at 3am, and miraculously no one was late – not even me!
After we arrived in Almeria we were soooo tired, and slept for most of the evening...

Sunday:

Today we were given a geographical overview of the entire Almeria area, and boy was it good to be back! I studied there sixteen years ago, and you’d be surprised how much information I had retained... Half of our group were human geographers, so it was also nice to have that extra dimension to the day.

Monday:

Monday was spent around a beautiful little town called Sorbas. The second year undergraduates and some of the masters students were doing some ‘ground validation’ of work they had started the previous week on campus. I made the mistake of asking them if they were ‘ground truthing,’ which is apparently a big ‘no no’ in remote sensing circles...  Oops! That’s Jerushah, never known for her subtlety!
We also learnt about the ecology of the semi arid environment in the area - See my lovely photo’s of a butterfly and a bee orchid?

Tuesday:

Today was doline day! Actually it looks like we’re performing some strange ritual doesn’t it? Our group were standing around a doline. These are large bowl shaped structures in the ground, caused by the dissolution of the gypsum geology. Lucky (or not depending on your opinion), it rained shortly after the photo was taken, so we could see the process taking place before our very eyes! Health and safety alert: Each doline has a hole in the centre which can be several metres deep !

Wednesday:

On Wednesday we had a full itinerary of human geography in the city of Almeria. Although I’m not a human geography specialist, I do love old buildings, so a day in Almeria was architectural heaven ! My favourite part was a visit to the Alcazaba, which is a Moorish castle on a hill above the city.
It was very atmospheric , there were fantastic, panoramic views over the city and out to the Mediterranean.  The Moorish gardens had been accurately restored, and were shaded by spectacularly pollarded trees. Down almost every set of steps there was cascade (see photo) of water, which in addition to the birdsong  and bullfrogs calling from the water tanks created quite a cacophony – in a good way of course !
There were also a group of little Spanish school children there on a trip, who had obviously hand made their own ‘Moors’ and ‘Christians’ costumes for the day  - so cute, I wish I’d managed to catch a photo of them for the blog too !

Thursday:

Thursday was an interesting day... Geologically, ecologically and meteorologically ! We spent the morning at the old lighthouse (called a ‘faro’), examining the ecology of the limestone pavement, there were also some ancient lava flows, topped by a fossil coral reef – talk about geologist ‘eye candy!’
In the afternoon we stopped in the town of Carboneras, and found ourselves engulfed in ‘sea fog’ within a very short time, which was very spooky...

Friday:

On Friday we awoke to a beautiful sunrise – as pictured looking out towards the beach from our hotel.
The undergraduates were looking at development in the fishing port of Garrucha (which everyone said sounded just like my name!) in the morning, followed by tourism in Mojacar (the town where we were staying) in the afternoon.

Saturday:

I wouldn’t say Saturday was a ‘day off’ as such. It was allocated as a project planning day, so while the academics did a few reconnaissance missions to investigate field work sites for the rest of the week, the students planned their mini projects.
As for me, I managed to take half of the samples (and accompanying photo’s) needed for my ‘open credits’ diatom project.

Sunday:

Today can be summed up in two words ‘geomorphology heaven!’
I spent the afternoon with the doline mini project group, who found all sorts of really interesting structures in the gypsum. Not only dolines, but also tumuli. These are giant blister like formations which are caused by dissolution and recrystallization of gypsum. Some are so big that six undergraduates can comfortably stand in them!

Monday:

Not wanting to be accused of too much repetition here, but if yesterday was ‘geomorphology heaven,’ today was definitely ‘palaeoenviroment and geology heaven.’
Two of the undergraduates, ‘JJP’ and ‘LN’ were working on the fossilised Carriatiz reef (you can see it in the picture behind me). They encountered an army of spiky plants on the way, but found some fantastic fossils: Echinoids, pectens, stromatolites, gastropods and two different types of coral.

Tuesday:

Our last full day!  I spent a little bit more time collecting my marl samples today. I wanted one last swim in the sea before coming home, but alas it was not to be! I had too many scratches from our encounters with all those vicious plants on Monday L.
Pictured here is a beautiful piece of geology from the Carboneras fault zone. I know I am supposed to be a geologist, but I have to say that this area is so structurally complex, it defies explanation – however I can appreciate its aesthetic qualities instead!

Wednesday:

Another early start! I had anticipated feeling cold on arrival in the UK, so I wore as many layers as possible... After a fairly early start, and an uneventful flight we arrived back in the UK to... Not drizzle and chills, but lovely warm weather!
It was a great trip, but it is lovely to be back, as I was really missing my daughter ‘S’ and Twilight kitten of course !

J’s record of the week:

Apologies blog readers ! I have no record of the week, as I didn’t
listen to any music at all while we were away...
I’ll have to promise you double next week! Jerushah X