Sometimes I write my thoughts down.

Well, hello there.
I realise I haven't posted in a while, but I've been worked into the ground recently and besides, nothing particularly exciting has happened to me! Apart from Jesters, which was (of course) fun. I'm back home now, happily doing nothing. But now I can tell you about it :)

I'm glad that all the classic Christmas songs are on the radio at the moment. I like the fact that they all reliably get rolled out every year. I see them as old friends; familiar faces. I know most of them are, strictly speaking, shit; but unlike most shit pop songs, you are guaranteed to only hear them one month a year. So let's hear it for Slade, Wizzard, The Waitresses and whoever it was that did "Stop The Cavalry". And Shane and Kirsty, obviously. And even East 17, if I'm honest. They're as much a part of Christmas these days as trees, presents and carols (in fact they are, in a sense, modern carols), and I for one kinda like it that way.

On Saturday night I went up to Bristol for James's houseparty, in honour of the fact that in a couple of days he will be old. Err... older, sorry :)

He lives in Clifton, which is justly famous for its bridge but more generally is just a really pretty and interesting place to live. There are loads of small shops, cafes and bars that all have something enticing about them, and in some of the back streets you could almost imagine yourself to be in a small French town.

But back to the party. The theme for the evening was "Anti-Christmas". I was considering being the Easter Bunny but frankly that was going to be far too much trouble. Instead I found an anti-Santa hat, which you'll be able to see in the photos when I get round to uploading them. There was also a Santa-GW Bush (pretty damn evil!), a Nazi, and some sort of skull-wearing shaman-Santa get-up. And a devil and an angel (no clue there). And lots of others without costumes :)

I had a really good time. I drank all the drink, had lots of random conversations with strangers, stayed up till 5am, and had a suitably terrible hangover the next day. The house next door was full of students and they had a party on as well (theme: gothic book/cartoon characters, I think) so we went over there for a bit too.

I ended up arguing for ages with one guy who absolutely point-blank refused to accept that religious or spiritual people could be anything other than irrational, crazy or stupid. It'd be interesting to hear what you guys think here. I was brought up Christian (protestant) but have since developed a deep suspicion of organised religion. On the other hand, although I am a rational, scientifically-minded person, I do think it would be nice if there were someone or something out there, and I'm not averse to acknowledging a possible role for a God in science. Spiritualism and rationality are not mutually exclusive, and furthermore, surely it's as wrong to foist on people your opinion that no-one in their right mind should be spiritual as it is to foist religious dogma on them. Discuss :)
(NB I'm thinking here of general belief in an unseen deity - individual religious dos and don'ts such as homosexuality are a separate issue!)

Anyway, as I say, it was a great night, good to see everyone (though it would've been nice to see more of you - especially Dom and Maz!). I've uploaded some photos now: they are here. (I've named some photos with people I know in them; I'm shit at names so I can't remember anyone else's that I met there!)

It's a fairly obvious idea, I guess, but I hadn't done it before. I refer to googling one's name.

I have some interesting namesakes - on the first page alone I am a mathematician or computer scientist at 3 different universities (which is odd, as I am one myself), a character in 6 Feet Under, a wedding photographer, a glaciologist, a missionary radio broadcaster, and "a son, a husband, a father whose life was abruptly taken from us by the crime of driving under the influence".

What I didn't find, however, was anything connected with me. Ah well...

I was going to have a quiet evening in last night... watch a bit of football, maybe start thinking about Christmas presents (argh!)... just have some time to myself. But I got badgered into going out and having fun. Damn.

Me, Ben and Hannah went to the Joiners ("The best live music venue in Southampton by miles!"). The first band on, Alice and the Enemies, were a three-piece fronted by a spiky rock chick and sounded like PJ Harvey or Elastica. I really liked them. I bought their EP, although I haven't had time to listen to it yet.

Next were a band who looked vaguely similar (frontwoman with male guitarists & drummer) but sounded quite different. Over repetitive Placebo-esque guitar patterns, the singer wailed and screamed and writhed around on the stage. She looked and sounded quite, quite insane. They were only on for about 15mins or so. Ben really liked them... I found them bemusing to say the least. I can't remember their name.

The final act were different again, and really quite impressive. Three Johnny Rotten-a-like guitarists thrashed in unison over a fearsome drum machine, with punkish call-and-response vocals. The experience was a lot better than I'm making it sound, I promise you (although I wouldn't listen to them on record I don't think!). It was truly exhilarating. And just to add to the effect, they went by the arresting name of Selfish C*nt. On the gig posters they were just "Selfish -" with a blank space. On the one behind the bar, someone had filled in the gap with "Chap".

Hmm. I don't think I'll ever be a music journalist, reading that lot back. Ah well.

I've been reeeeeally quite busy over the past week. It's karma, I guess: over the previous 2 weeks I had hardly anything to do since my boss was away and other bits of work depended on people replying to emailed queries, which they were annoyingly reluctant to do.

I've been working with an Indian lady who is only in the country for 2 weeks and wants to get a paper completed by the time she leaves. I was rather apprehensive, as I'd been told beforehand that she was very traditional and hardworking, whereas I am an untidy slacker. But in fact she is very pleasant. One thing that is annoying, though, is that she uses quite an old version of the main computer package we use, and also favours copying results down on paper from the screen and then passing them on to a secretary to be typed up again. My first morning working with her consisted of her calling out numbers every 30secs or so, and me writing them down. I had become a scribe - it was very frustrating. Things have got better since, though, so never mind :)

I just had a meeting with a senior scientist who I've been doing some work for. He also happens to be the boss of the whole Southampton unit. It's clearly gone to his head: his parting words were "we'll touch base on this soon". Gah!