The St Helen's House (half) years

So, it's been quite a while since I last wrote a proper update. As most people in the UK will remember, last summer was a complete washout – I think I only went to 2 bbqs! At the end of August I went down to London to catch Prince at one of his O2 residency appearances. After months of faffing around with tickets – who's going and – more importantly – when? I booked 3 tickets for myself, James and someone else. as the tickets were sold out I figured there's be loads of people who wanted to go, but as the day drew close, both everyone both James and I knew who lived in or around London declined the tickets. Eventually I put an add on the DVDForums, but didn't hear anything. The O2 dome was crawling with security looking out for touts. We were beginning to get the feeling that we weren't going to be able to shift the ticket, when my phone went. It was someone from the DVDForums who wanted the ticket. He'd been 5 times already during the run, but still hadn't seen Prince at an aftershow party so wanted to try again. We met up and went in. The O2 dome is amazingly big – the upper levels now have a warning that you shouldn't book tickets if you are scared of heights. We were head on the the stage and about 30' back. I was a bit nervous as I'd never really been into Prince before the summer and still didn't know a lot of the songs. Thankfully, Prince treated all the different nights like greatest hits performances. Starting out with 1999 the band was awesome and Prince certainly knows how to play guitar. Sadly he tried to wedge lots of songs in so some were cut down versions. In among were some gems such as acapella performances and the favourites such as Purple Rain and Kiss. Just when it seemed to be over the band returned and knocked out a cracking version of Let's go crazy.

After that work got a load better – after our project's Q2 meeting in Cambridge I went back into the labs in Durham to do some synthetic work. It was supposed to be for 3 months (lab insurance and fume cupboard space is expensive) but I'm still there as I type this making polymers and other cool things.



I went on a few trips with Emma – firstly we went up to Bamburgh Castle via the beach and Seahouses and then in November we went down to London to see Matt and Mel. We went out and had some great food (Chinese in Soho, Lebanese in Kensington, Mexican in Angel, random things in Borough Maeket) and took some trips to Greenwich (more than one) to see the planetarium (after the demise of the planetarium at Madame Tussauds) and around the South Bank. We even had a awkward moment where, on leaving, we got locked in their garden with no way out. We eventually climbed a fence into the neighbours' garden (complete with suitcases) to get out. Random.





At the end of October I went to a conference in Frankfurt with some of the Thorn and Durham teams. I've always loved air travel and not understood how people get bored and fed up with it. However, flying inside Europe on these small planes really felt like being on a bus – and KLM have some really strange sandwich fillings...



The conference was ok (a bit too industrial so we didn't really get a lot of information beyond results. The hotel was really nice though (and at E175/night it should have been). The banquet was a bit of a joke as tickets sold out really quickly and when we got there it was a really small room with a German oompah band in the corner.

December brought our Q3 meeting and another nice hotel – this time in Grantham. I could get used to this lifestyle.

Eventually December came and we spent an tiring few days cleaning the flat before we left. It was a very odd development – the flats were over £300k each and there wasn't enough parking for everyone and if you wanted it it added £17k to the flat price. Our landlady hadn't paid so I had to park up at Trevs resulting in 20 minute walks to get to and from the car. The flat was really nice and new, but the finish was lacking – the bathroom had no shower(!), there was damp coming through the wall, the dishwasher was plumbed in wrong, the grill tripped the electrics and I've never really liked the idea of a combined kitchen/living room.



Overall it was a cool 6 months or so. Obviously, as I didn't find time to update the blog!