Bloody hell!

Two posts since I started my job. This really is taking the piss. Not that there is much to write about. The time seems to fly by, and I'm not really marking it in the way that I used to when I was at college. The adjustment to nine-to-five grinds on slowly, though it's hard to believe that by Christmas, five months will have passed in this job.

The story so far? Getting used to how things are done was a big of a struggle at the start, but I seem to be getting there, albeit a bit slowly at times. My strike rate has gone down somewhat, purely due to the current lack of spare time on my hands, and I'm much more conscious of squandering my spare time by languishing in bed with a hangover, with only two days out of seven to play with. I found out that I was rostered to work on St. Steven's day, which would have put paid to any plans to return home for Christmas, but I managed to get someone to cover me, so on the 20th, I'll be flying out of here, with my new recently-renewed-in-the-nick-of-time passport. One piece of feedback I receive at work every now and again is how I need to work on my time management. It's not difficult to see why...

With regards to work, something else has come up. As much as I've never directly mentioned my place of work by name, if someone at work were to stumble across this, it would not require a rocket scientist to work out the identity of the author, and that is actually what is after happening. Add to this the fact that a lot of employers are googling the names of potential job applicants, and also that the online presence of healthcare professionals is something of a hot topic at the moment, and I've decided that from here on in, I'm going to have to make this blog accessible only by password. I'm not entirely sure how the process works, but I think anyone who wants to read this will have to have a google account, and once I've granted them access, will have to log in using the username and password that they would use to access their google account. I'm not a fan of this in general: I think that what I do in my spare time has little bearing on or relevance to what I do for a living, but unfortunately the time has come where I have to cover my ass.

So there you have it. In the next day or two, I'll be changing the settings on this thing, and a password will be needed to read it. If you want this password, e-mail me at denis.g.ryan@gmail.com and everything being cool, I'll give it to you.

And now I'm off to get ready for work tomorrow. Oh fun...

FINALLY!

... I manage to sit down and write another post 2 months after my last one. To say that the routine of having to get up early five mornings in a row out of seven comes as a shock to my system would be understating it somewhat, and to say that I am finding it hard to keep up with certain extra-curricular activites would be understating it even more.

The graduation has been and gone, and a laugh was had. My name appeared in local paper The Argus that day. Never one to be outdone, of course, Brooksy got his own section, complete with photograph.

We've all moved on now, and it makes me sad that we will most likely never again get together as a group again like we used to. The night of the graduation we all got together in the pub for one last time, though I had to leave, as I wasn't able to get the following day off from work, which I had already started at that stage.

I am now firmly esconced in East London, in Bethnal Green, in a hospital residence, paying £400 a month, which for that area is a great deal. I've already sussed out the area, and I smiled to myself when I found out that I happen to be on a direct tube line to Soho, a mere 15 minutes away. I haven't yet located a Kung Fu class up here yet (there are loads, which makes choosing one a bit difficult) but I have joined British Military Fitness and am going three times a week in Victoria Park, which is just up the road from me. I'll have that six-pack yet, even if I have to resort to anorexia nervosa!

I'm almost two months into the job, and slowly starting to find my feet. The interaction is not 100% ideal. There has been at least one rottweiler encountered already, and some of the people I work with... well... let's just say we didn't initially click. Still, when I have moments of despondency, I remind myself of how lucky I am that things have worked out the way that they have. I'm getting paid again in two weeks, but still have £500 in my account. It's a long time since I've had that level of comfort. Long may it continue.

Having said that, I start my rotation in General Medicine tomorrow, and the manager of the dispensary I'll be in in the afternoons is supposed to be blunt, to say the least of it. Fingers crossed things will work out.

The London Underground, which always seemed so metropolitan in films, fast loses its sheen when you have to take it during rush hour. Thankfully, where I live makes using it unnecessary for most of the journeys I have to make to work during the coming year.

I've already discovered the nuances of London nightlife (the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - yeah baby!) and met some very nice people up here, including Rick, who I met in XXL last night and brought back to mine. Apparently, it says somewhere in my accommodation contract that I'm not supposed to use my room for 'improper, immoral or illegal purposes'. Oh well, I don't think anyone saw us...

Wednesday night will see me fly out to Holland to meet the dutch side of the family, as my cousin is getting married there. Unfortunately the easiest option once again was to fly with DireAir (Ryanair). Hopefully it'll be the last time I fly with them, and hopefully not because the plane plunges out of the sky, which is what almost happened on a recent flight with them that I read about in the news.

Anyway, off I go. I had a stinking hangover earlier today, and while it's more or less gone now, I'm still a bit tired. A night in front of the couch for me, I think...

The end of my degree

When the results came out last Friday, and I saw that I had got through with a 2.2, my initial feeling was relief. A 2.2 was what I expected to get, but I knew that I had been cutting it fine with some subjects and the main thing was that I could continue with my plans for London. Then I had a look at the sheet overall to see how the year got on, and saw that a lot of 2.1s and firsts were given out. Add to this the fact that everyone who exchanged comments with each other seemed to get higher than me, and a bit of the shine was taken off my achievement.

As undertakings go, this one seemed to get harder towards the end, and in the last few months it was becoming an uphill struggle to the finishing line. The lack of money was really starting to get to me, and Andy passing on around the time of my exams didn't help either. It would be fairest to say though, that I could have just worked harder. Throughout my entire degree course.

Of course the whole experience of the last four years couldn't possibly be summed up by a number, and I know that I most likely got more out of Brighton than anyone else in my class. Some of the memories I will always have:

- Snogging four blokes at the same time in the Bulldog
- The two threesomes I had
- Getting entangled with Daffy, and subsequently finding out what it was like to long for someone who will never be available to you
- Copping off with a guy who felt that as long as he didn't take off his underwear while in bed with me, he wasn't cheating on his boyfriend (who happened to be in prison)

Yes, yes, I know: a trend is starting to emerge. Other things:

- Being on the piss for a solid week during international student orientation week
- Turning 30 while in first year
- Seeing Hot Foreign guy, whose name I will now reveal as Roberto Martin-Arrabal, naked in the gym showers
- Going into the Bulldog for the first time
- Going into Shwarz bar for the first time
- Changing myself completely by shaving my head and growing a goatee, and consequently getting a lot more attention from all the Brighton bears
- Drinking in the Winchester
- Moving twice during second year and still managing to pass my exams
- My first proper Gay Pride festival in 2006
- Walking out on my first pharmacy job because I hated the supervisor so much
- Trying to sell food waste digesters to the public on the street
- Skinny-dipping on Brighton beach at 2:30 in the morning.
- The Pharmacy Ball
- Getting fitter than I arguably have ever been in my life by learning Kung Fu

And of course, making friends whom I will always remember and never leave behind (you lot know who you are!).

The night before my flight back here, I went for a walk around what I knew would be one of my last nights of being based in Brighton. To be sure I'll be back, but for the forseeable future it'll be as a short-term visit. I don't think I could fully quantify what the experience of all of it has done for me, and if there ever is one place in which I could see myself putting down roots, Brighton would be it.

Before I left to come to Brighton, I was humming and hawing about whether to stay in Dublin and do the degree in Psychology and Maths that I had been offered, and if doing Pharmacy was just taking the safe option. In that regard, I know now for sure that I've made the right decision.

So there it is...

Yesterday morning the academic transcript arrived, with a breakdown of all my grades. It had the grades for all the years I sat exams throughout the course, not just my final year, and I noticed that the grades I got overall this year haven't been so good since I finished first year. I got 69% in my research project, 67% in Business studies (which I never had any interest in), and 65% in my practical clinical exam, an exam I could have failed, as I missed my allocated time slot thanks to taking the wrong time off the exam timetable. I was also VERY lucky: 40% in one exam, 45% in another, and 52% in an exam which required 50% to pass. I had trouble calculating my overall average, so I rang the school office to ask them and they told me it was 58%, 2% away from a 2.1. My first instinct was to think how I could have gotten into the next honours category if only I had gotten a few extra percent here and there, but now I can't be bothered. What I'm going to put on my CV is 'second class honours (58% average)' and then include the good marks under the sub-heading of 'Results of note'.

Overall, I don't think it's going to matter. I couldn't have got a better pre-reg than the one I ended up with, and I don't see myself being held back in any shape or form. The only thing that is ruled out is further academic study, and there is no way in hell I was going to do that anyway.

So. Great times and a great job at the end of it. And four years in one of the coolest cities on the planet. That'll do me.

I PASSED!!!!

Oh joy, oh rapture, I'm off to London!

I didn't break any records, but the main thing is that I got the degree, and I'm off to London, to a good teaching hospital. I've got the opportunity, all I have to do is take advantage of it.

WOO HOO!

More to follow when I can be arsed...

Hoovers and third-party molecules

My dreams have been getting extremely weird lately. Again.

There's always been the odd one where I wake up going 'What the FUCK?" - especially when I've initially woken up but then gone back to sleep again - but the ones I've had in the last few days have taken the biscuit.

The night before last:

I'm in a pub with my pharmacy project supervisor, where we are drinking together as part of a group. Playfully(!) he grabs my goatee, and starts to tug REALLY hard on it. "I'm going to have to pull this off!" he says, refusing to let go, and pulling as hard as he can. I struggle, doing everything I can to make him let go. Eventually he relents. Later on, I'm talking to him about the graduation ceremony that will be taking place at the end of July. "You're not going anywhere" he says, which I take to mean I won't be going to the ceremony, "You've left out key points in your thesis." "Such as?" I ask queriously. He responds by pointing out that I never discussed third-party molecules that mediate receptor-ligand binding. It was the fevered rantings of my imagination, of course: The existence of such molecules has never been established, but I'm making a note of it here anyway, in case the circumstances that transpire mirror those of Kekulé. If those molecules end up being discovered, you read about it here first boffins!

Last night was really taking the piss, though. In this dream, I left my house, which I think was in London, to get a hoover, as there was some inexplicable and urgent need for hoovering to take place somewhere. I acquired the hoover, which was yellow and grey, the same colours as that fancy Dyson one that doesn't lose it's suction, but was of modest, common-garden standard hoover dimensions. Satisfied, I started to make my way home. I arrived at what looked like an overground railway station, but felt like an underground transport facility, as it was dark, and the station was housed in what looked like an aircraft hangar. For some reason, I had to cross from one platform to another by crossing the tracks. Hoover in hand, I jumped onto the tracks, walked across, and then prepared to climb up onto the other platform. It was then I noticed that my hoover was stuck in the tracks, and no amount of yanking at it would set it free. Then I was a train, driving along the same line, coming right for me. "For God's sake, Denis! Leave it behind!" shouted someone who apparently knew me. I left the hoover behind, and walked away. I looked back, just as the train was riding over where the hoover was, expecting to hear a crunch. Instead, I saw a jet of water shoot up from the location, between the carriages. I was mystified, but wanting to dissociate myself from the incident, I turned around and kept walking. Then I looked back again.

There had been a pile-up. The train had derailed, and the carriages had all piled up on one another. Time to leave, I thought, hurrying towards the exit. All of a sudden, I noticed I was still carrying the same hoover. Well, the cleaning does need to be done, I thought, I may as well hang onto it. That I should question the fact that I was carrying a hoover that should have been previously crushed under the wheels of the train on the track didn't dawn on me for one second. My friend and I headed towards the exit turnstiles. "For God's sake, ditch the hoover", hissed my friend, "Otherwise you'll get us all into deep shit!". I refused. I had fought long and hard for this hoover, and some house in an nearby location needed to be cleaned. Holding the hoover over my head, I walked through the turnstile. Apart from attracting a few comments from the railway staff, no-one stopped us...

And then I woke up.

Hoovers always occupied a substantial position in my childhood. I had a fetish for them up until I started going to school, and there are many photos in my life album that show me playing around with them. One is of me in the garden, playing with a makeshift one that I had fashioned out of a cardboard box and a hose (after I busted the family household Nilfisk one day while playing with it, my parents had ruled the genuine article out of bounds). It would appear that this aspect of my subconcious has surfaced again, though why that is is anyone's guess.

The source of the other dream is painfully clear, though. The results of my finals are out tomorrow at 2pm. If I fail any of the exams, and have to retake in August, I'll lose the job in London that I hung out so long for, will end up in some crappy village dispensary somewhere, and won't be able to go to the graduation ceremony. Please God don't let that happen.

PLEASE!

My Bloody Valentine

I was dimly aware of the existence of this lot back around the time they were gearing up to release Loveless, in 1993. I saw someone I knew wearing a t-shirt with a picture of the group on the front of it. Their stare looked somewhat vacant, and combined with the long fringes they had then made them look like derivatives of the Manchester baggy scene, even if their name alone was interesting. I didn't really think much about them after, for quite a while.

It was only in time, when the single that was released from Loveless, 'Soon', started to get played on indie stations at night, that my interest was piqued. My taste in music was music was starting to lean towards atmosphere and texture at that time, and the vocals and swirling guitars in that song fitted the bill perfectly. Around that time, Billy Corgan out of the Smashing Pumpkins cited the production by Flood and Alan Moulder on the Loveless album as a substantial reference point for him. And so, around the year 2000, when I started making money for the first time after college by working in IT, I went out and bought it.

It was that album, and Radiohead's Kid A, released that year, that I'll always remember when I look back on starting work in Dublin and the music I got into then. Initially, I found that the sound on Loveless was quite uniform, and the songs tended to run into one another, were sometimes indistinguishable from each other. My taste in music was still a bit towards more linear and compact song forms, and Loveless was like an album-long song with different movements. Now that my taste has shifted towards longer moodier more layered stuff, the Valentines are firmly up there in my top 10 bands (NOT like the sodding Jesus & Mary Chain whom loads of critics claim were ripped off by MBV).

I did some more searching around, heard some more, and then heard about the legend that was The Holocaust, a noise piece at the end of the song 'You made me realize' that they expanded on (and increased the volume of!) in their live sets. At the time of reading all of this, the band had gone into one of the most epic hibernations in the history of rock music, and I had given up all hope of ever seeing them live with my own eyes.

Until recently, when I heard they had reformed, and were playing a series of gigs in London. My partner in gigging and drinking crime, Sarah Al, was duly contacted, and her presence requested (not to mention her payment, as I was too broke at the time of booking to pay for the tickets. Thanks babe). I contacted another friend, to gloat. "Wear earplugs", he warned me. "They can be ferociously loud".

We arrived Monday night. We came to the door of the venue and I did the usual last-minute frantic fumble for my ticket and eventually found it. Then I noticed that they were actually giving out complimentary pairs of earplugs. Just how loud can this lot be? I thought.

It's been a long time since I've been to a live gig, so memory does not serve me well, but I don't ever remember being at a gig as loud as this. The thing was, I can honestly say the experience was all the better for it (and I say experience, because that's what it was. Using 'songs' in this context would be like describing Francis Bacon's renderings as 'drawings'). There was no new material here - it's definitely nothing more than a reunion tour at the moment - but that was fine by me. I was there for the aural assault, the experience, the epiphany, not to mosh to power chords. I got pretty much all of these things. I got the trawl through Loveless (I'm still not too familiar with its predecessor, Isn't Anything). I got great background visuals. I got to ogle the cool Fender Jazzmaster guitars (I'd first fallen in love with these when I saw Robert Smith play one on the video for 10:15 Saturday Night). I got The Holocaust.

They launched into You Made Me Realize at the end. I knew then that anyone of a delicate disposition was in for it. The background visuals went from dreamy and surreal to stark and minimal. The end of the musical section was reached. The noise began. It grew, expanding to fill everyone's sensory space, roaring. People with loosely secured hair found it being moved back from their faces. The noise rose and rose, and then hit a plateau, where it was held for quite a while. A good 15 minutes altogether. I looked around and saw people looking towards the stage solemnly. Not everyone, though. Some people decided that they'd had enough, and walked out of the main hall. But there was no way I was going anywhere.

And then it ended. Quite abruptly, just like in the song. After The Holocaust came the exodus. We left too.

It wasn't a flawless performance: The vocals should have been higher in the mix, and they didn't play Loomer, my current all time favourite of theirs, but it came close. Save for these things, it would have been perfect. As was always the case, there was zero interaction with the crowd, or inter-song patter.

I saw loads of people make use of the earplugs at various stages during the night, especially towards the end. I didn't.

Ages ago, I bought the guitar chordbook for the Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. In it were a series of interviews Billy Corgan had given with some guitar magazine with his personal take on guitar playing and songwriting. One of the things he talked about, was how to motivate yourself and persevere, when you feel that geniuses before you have taken songwriting and the guitar to seemingly unsurpassable heights. In another interview he gave, he recalled how he heard Soundgarden's singing and riffing on their BadMotorFinger album, just before they were going in to record their debut Gish, and wondered how he was going to compete with that. Obviously he overcame that mental obstacle, but there's something of that with this band.

Anyone experimenting with heavy distorted or slow guitars in the future will inevitably be compared to My Bloody Valentine, amongst other bands. Part of it is lazy journalism, but part of it is that their fingerprints will be all over a lot of left-minded guitar playing for some time to come. But like Corgan, you can't help but think if something this incendiary has already been done, trying to surpass it might simply just be a waste of time.

Nah, but fuck it, it's going to be a bitch.

It's over!

The last while has been utterly mental. Manchester bear bash, death of someone who I've known for quite some time while living in Brighton, exams, funeral of said friend, more exams. But now, thank God in heaven, it's over. The last few days:

Thursday 5th June:

5pm: Leave exam hall after last exam and take advantage of the complimentary drinks in the Student's union. Everyone gets hammered. People cry, as they realise they may not see each other again ever. Denis also gets hammered and tries to bribe lecturers into giving him pass marks in the exams.

6pm: Denis and Dan break off from the crowd and go drinking elsewhere. We end up in a bar splitting a bottle of wine between us. Dan falls over. We move outside, away from the eyes of the bar staff.

10pm: June comes to collect Dan. Dan leaves. We hug each other goodbye in the pub.

11pm: Denis goes home, collects himself, and then decides, for some reason unbeknownst to everyone least of all himself, that he wants more alcohol, so heads into town to meet the rest of the class.

12am: Denis meets rest of class in town at nightclub. Denis and class shake their booty. Emotions run high, with all the alcohol, and the last-night-together feeling. Denis hugs them all, telling them it doesn't matter, that he loves them.

2am: Denis and class leave club. Damien decides that all the blokes should go skinny dipping. Never one to need a good reason to take off all his clothes, Denis goes for it. As Denis re-emerges from water, he sees a crowd of girls with digital cameras, all pointed in his direction, with flashes going off. Denis shouts at them, warning them that the pictures had better not end up on facebook.

2:20: While getting dressed, Denis realises that his underpants is missing. Denis demands to know where underpants is. No-one knows. Denis gets dressed without underpants. Another girl indignantly demands to know who took her shoes.

2:30: Everyone decides to go to Legends nightclub, a gay nightclub. Two of Denis's straight male classmates pull girls in there.

6am: Denis finally makes it home, falls into bed.

Friday 6th June:

12pm: Denis wakes up with a thundering hangover. Forces self to get dressed and heads out to Falmer to watch the Pharmacy lecturers play the final year pharmacy students at cricket. Students buck tradition of being trounced by the lecturers, by trouncing the lecturers.

3pm: Denis, Dan and others head off for pint with lecturers. A laugh is had.

6pm: Denis heads into town for more alcohol with class. Lots of alcohol is drunk. Denis tries to get into Walkabout, a horrible Aussie sports bar (the rest of the class have gone in there), but the arsehole bouncer on the door won't let him in. Denis goes home.

Saturday 7th June:

2am: Denis gets home, and sleeps for the best part of 24 hours.

RIP Mizz 'Flee

Andy Howarth, sometime commentator here under the handle of 'Flee, and contributor to the blog BN2 Beeyatches, passed away early this morning. He was 37.

Below is the most recent photo I have of him (left), taken last July at his civil partnership, with James.



Farewell, honey. It was fun propping up the bar in the Bully with you all those times.

OH MY FUCKING GOD!

Yesterday turned out to be an uninspiring day. I toddled along to the sixth floor results noticeboard to find out the result of an assignment I handed in ages ago. I passed, but the result was less than stellar. I was furious, partly because the guidelines for what was required for the finished work were unclear, and I know that's at least part of the reason why I didn't do so well. I went home, resolving to e-mail the course co-ordinator and at least get to the bottom of why I hadn't done well. I had yet to hear from the hospital I interviewed at last week, and felt in my heart that I hadn't done well enough to get a place.

Today I came into uni to work on a presentation that I have to give tomorrow, and to do my laundry in preparation for the Bear Bash at Manchester for the weekend. I was still smarting from the mark I got the day before, and was moaning about it to anyone who would listen. Specifically, Denise and Karina, with whom I was having coffee when I first came in.

Suddenly my phone rang, with a blocked number. Sensing that it was the hospital, I excused myself from the girls, and went into a quiet corner.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Denis, this is Fiona here from [London Hospital]. You had an interview with us last week."

My heart sank. It wasn't the chief pharmacist, but his deputy. He had probably delegated to her the task of telling me I was unsuccessful.

"OK"

"We've had a chance to review your exam and interview, and you've done very well..."

"OK..." My heart sank some more. I anticipated she was about to begin her next sentence with 'but'.

"...and we'd like to offer you the position".

OhMyGodDidSheJustSayWhatIThinkSheSaid?

To say that my heart skipped a beat would be an understatement. The woman asked me if I needed time to think about it. "No" I managed to squawk, "I'd like to accept."

After that, it was just small talk about how they'd formally notify me by post.

So, to my absolute disbelief, I have managed to snag a hospital in London for the next year. And not only that, but one of the premier teaching hospitals in the UK.

It would be understatement to say that in the last while, my faith in myself to make a success of myself has waned substantially, and the future was looking uncertain. To say that the phone call I received today goes someway towards helping would also be downplaying things.

So. Operation Soho.

Status: Success!

HOT!

One of the kissers is gay porn star Eric York, apparently.

I turned 33 yesterday.

It passed with little fanfare but large hangover, thanks to the party I went to on Saturday night (and like, where did that massive bruise on my arm come from? And how did I get food all down the front of my pants?)

A special mention to Luke Brooks, who also had his birthday yesterday. He is 2.

The continuing saga of college

Well, it's not like I have anything else to write about (except for that time on Tuesday night where I went out for a friend's 30th birthday party and we stayed out until 6am and my 30-year old friend got hilariously drunk and in the grand old student tradition robbed a traffic cone and one of the girls we were with decided she wouldn't be outdone and robbed a sandbag from the same roadworks site but anyway I digress where was I?).

I still haven't scored a job for after graduation. I have accepted that I most likely will be working in a community pharmacy for a year. This is fine by me in some respects, as it would be a gentler introduction to working in the field. The only thing is that because I'm going to be working in a relatively confined space for a year, I have to make sure the supervising pharmacist who takes me under his wing isn't the kind to soar high into the sky and then drop me, i.e. relatively sane and decent with people who sometimes need things explained to them more than once.

Having said that, I'm still keeping an eye on the hospital sector. I recently applied to a hospital near Birmingham. The location certainly wouldn't be anything approaching my personal preference, but I figured I might as well try. It turned out that I didn't even get shortlisted for an interview. I was a bit annoyed with that, but figured that at least it saved me a long train journey, and I sent them a mail asking them for feedback on my application.

They said my application was strong, as usual, but that while I listed my pharmacy experience, I didn't specifically mention what I gained from it. I took this on board, and also the advice of one of the tutors at university who said that I should emphasize the hospital experience I gained from within my course (I previously tended not to think of this as an asset, as every pharmacy student does it throughout their course). I redid my CV, and sent it off on Thursday for another vacancy that has arisen in a well-known London teaching hospital. I wasn't very optimistic, as the Birmingham hospital had about 60 applicants for one position, and as the London one is a popular hospital, it was bound to have even more.

I must have done something right, as I got a phone call the next afternoon, asking me if I would like to attend for interview this coming Wednesday. They asked for my e-mail address and said that they would send on the details. I haven't got them yet, however, so I'm ringing them on Monday morning.

It's all a bit of a juggling act at the moment, as I have a presentation to give in 10 days, a draft of my thesis to hand in at some point this coming week, and now I have to prepare for this interview as well, which by all accounts is supposed to be a fairly gruelling process, according to the people who have done it already.

I picked up my graduation pack earlier in the week, which felt a little weird. It had all the arrangements for the ceremony in it, along with a brochure for gown hire. I've bought the tickets, and reserved my place at the ceremony. It feels a little strange that the whole degree will be over and done with in just over a month (not to mention scary: all I can think about is how much I still don't know, and how I'll eventually be responsible for the drugs that loads of people will be taking). At this stage, I'm fairly confident of passing (the introduction for my thesis was well received: my tutor told me that as long as I keep writing as I am, I'll be fine), but I can't yet put a finger on what kind of degree I'm going to get.

In the middle of all this, I've almost forgotten that I'll be 33 next Sunday. I've plans to celebrate with the venerable Luke Brooks, who'll be 2 this year on the same day. Other than that the Bear Bash in Manchester will be the following Friday, so that should suffice. Fingers crossed there'll be some hot furry action, though I am NOT looking forward to the 7 hours on the bus (all the cheap rail tickets were gone. Aaarrrggghh!)

Now back I go to that wretched dissertation...

A random conversation from the Pharmacy Ball

Me: "My ass has really come on in leaps and bounds since I started going to Kung Fu."
Claire: "Yeah, me too! Check out my Kung Fu ass. Yeah!"
Me: "Yeah, check out my Kung Fu ass! Yeeaaaahhh!"

Enter Denise, another Kung Fu student.

Denise: "Hey Guys, whatchya at? Kung Fu asses?"
Claire & Denis: "Yeah, check out our Kung Fu asses."
Denise (not to be outdone): "Well, check out MY Kung Fu ass. Yeeahhh!"
Claire, Denise, and Denis: "We got the best asses! Kung Fu, yeeahh!"

Enter Sinéad, a non-Kung Fu student.

Sinéad: "Wow guys, your asses look really great. I think I might take up Kung Fu."


I blame the four free glasses of red wine before dinner.

Reactionary old gits?

I've just been out to get my free copy of GScene in the Bully, and after leafing through some of it in RedRoaster coffee shop (who happened to have a good album by someone called Loop Foundation playing over the speakers), I found out that a conviction against former Tory Brighton councillor Peter Willows has been overturned in an appeal.

For those of you who don't know this story, it goes something like this.

At a civic ceremony for the then new mayor of Brighton a while back (August 2006), Peter Willows, a member of the Brighton Conservative Party, made a comment that 'all gay men are paedophiles'. He made this comment to Paul Elgood, a Lib Dem councillor and himself a gay man. At the end of the ceremony, Willows was re-approached by the councillor and James Ledward (the editor of GScene) and taken to task on it. When asked by Ledward if he thought that Elgood too was a paedophile, he said no, but that 'all other gays are'. It was an isolated and somewhat pathetic incident, and Willows really should have known better, but he refused to recant or apologise. Matters were complicated some more by the fact that Willows sat on the Brighton Community Safety committee, which had pledged to make LGBT safety its top concern at that time. He really should have kept his mouth shut.

The conservative party refused to take action, so Ledward went to the police. He made a complaint on the grounds that Willows committed a public order offence. Willows went to trial in December 2006 (after not bothering to turn up for the first hearing) and after a fairly pathetic defence by anyone's standards, he was convicted and subsequently resigned as tory councillor for the region he represented.

It was the aftermath that held my interest the most. One man, a friend of Peter willows, was interviewed in The Argus and said that the conviction was unjust, that too much of the law had been brought to bear on the Councillor and (if I remember rightly) that he had merely exercised his right to free speech. That friend of his was gay. The opinion underpinning the editorial in the newspaper at that time was that poor old Willows, being a 75 year old war veteran, should have been left alone. I came away from all this with a few things.

The standard defence that is trotted out on behalf of an older person who comes out with racist or homophobic comments is their advanced age. Why? Is it because they grew up in a time where the mainstream was less tolerant than it is now? The assumption behind all of this is that they have absorbed the values of the time when they were younger, and have since reached the point where they can no longer take on board newer ones, or adjust to what is going on around them. As lines of reasoning go, it's bollox, but when you think about it, it is the pernicious undercurrent that informs a lot of the ageism that you see around today: Older people are physically more frail, therefore they must be frailer in mind and intellect as well. They're not as resilient or adaptive as their younger counterparts, and therefore are not as useful as members of society in general. Blah blah blah. It is the logic that sees the elderly experience great difficulty in securing gainful employment, to name one of the many problems that are thrown their way.

The flip side of the coin is that Willows has been around for a long time. He's been living in Brighton and Hove for quite some time now, so will have had some exposure to the gay community. He's had a great deal of time to amass the wisdom that is the preserve of those who have been around for longer than the rest of us. He's seen more of the world and has seen more of the suffering wrought by wars than the average bloke, so by now he really should, at the very least, have some bit of wisdom and humility in his current dealings with people. His age is no defence. None at all.

Also, you have to wonder about that friend of his, a gay man friends with a man who obviously has issues with gay men. What does that say about the self-respect of the former? The way it worked out in court *could* be likened to the killing of a fly with a sledgehammer, but no-one else was prepared to do anything else.

One pet peeve of mine is that point about free speech. It's somehow seen as a violation of someone's personal rights when they are taken to task over making homophobic comments, and that casual homophobia is still acceptable, nay expected, in everyday circles.

Whenever I hear this, I think, if you replaced the homophobia with racism, would people still find it acceptable, if slightly unpalatable? Not at all, and like I've said before, homophobia can almost be put into this category at this stage. The fact remains though, if Willows had been racist instead of homophobic that day, his feet wouldn't have touched the ground and the door wouldn't have hit his ass on his way out. But because he was being homophobic, a case wasn't automatically made, and when it eventually was, it was done so in an awkward and haphazard way.

It's like this: Willows is a politician, and in a public position. There is a certain responsibility that goes with this position that he wasn't willing to live by. He tried to have his cake and eat it. He was fed an enema and...oh you get the picture.

Willows was a serial homophobe. When LGBT police liaison officers went on a fact-finding mission and training course to San Francisco previous to that time, he attacked them in the press, and the result was a tabloid feeding frenzy which resulted in the officers being followed and photographed in San Francisco nightclubs. It was more than a little invasive for the officers in question, but Willows was never cautioned by his own party, and again refused to apologise for it.

Ledward said his fundamental motivation for going to court was:

"...for every young LGBT teenager who is taunted and bullied at school for being different because bigots in public office have for years been able to spout this type of hate without being challenged."

He was running for office himself later that year, but denied that this was also a factor in his pursuit of this case. The first reason is honestly good enough, and I don't give a shit if he was looking to bolster his public profile or not. He did the right thing.

Alas, it looks like the right thing has been undone. Surprisingly, the editorial in The Argus seems to have executed something of a U-turn, and has now summed up the result of the appeal quite well:

"This is not a case of common sense triumphing over political correctness. It is a vindication of a narrow-minded minority's urge to slap crass labels on those who exercise their freedom to live their lives the way they choose."

Indeed.

Did I mention...

that I passed that Psychopharmacology exam? Yay me!

Perhaps there's something to be said for the divine power of prayer. Or the journal article on depression I managed to cram into my brain the night before.

Graduation ceremony arranged for 30th July. My own attendance at it might not be such an outlandish possibility after all.

Just glad it's over

I have not had the best of weeks this week.

Monday saw me go into the lab to test my drugs as usual. For the most part, I've moved onto testing their influence on animal behaviour. I arrived on Monday morning with as much preparation done as I could do for an procedure I had never done before in my life. In other words, I was expecting a little bit of support.

Unfortunately, my project supervisor doesn't really seem to believe in... erm... supervising my project at this stage of it. The students who had already done it were nowhere to be seen, and when I arrived at the animal lab for testing, the technician was of the opinion that as it was my experiment, he could just leave me alone to get on with it. So there it was. I spent about 15 minutes looking at the mice in their cages, psyching myself up to deal with the task at hand. Oh, and struggling not to pass out from the smell of the place, which is really rather rank.

Basically what is involved is that you have to 'expose' 12 mice to a 'unfamiliar environment'. The environment in this scenario is an open-topped tub with gridlines traced on the inside of the bottom of it, and two coffe cups turned upside down and placed on the base as well. Behold my carefully constructed plan below.

The idea is that you place two identical coffee cups in the positions marked on the plan, and then let each of the 12 mice explore their new environment for 3 minutes. Once the 12 3-minute sessions have elapsed, you begin the cycle again, allowing each mouse another 3 minutes to explore the same environment (for 'explore', you can read: Run up and down the box like a blue-arsed fly, shitting all over it).

Because there is more than one mouse per cage, and they all look the bloody same, you have to give each one of them an identifying mark on their tail so you know which one has been in the tub, and which one gets which drug by way of injection later. Let me tell you, dear reader, the marking of the tails is really quite a pain in the arse. By Christ, those little shits will wriggle, and given any opportunity at all, they will bite. Before I began the experiment, the technician informed me that he had been in the business for twenty years and had only been bitten twice, so that side of things wasn't really anything to be worried about. I must have been on a run of bad luck, because I was on my fifth mouse, during the first exposure cycle, when the little bollox managed to sink his teeth through latex gloves into my hand, drawing blood. I had been gentle with them and considerate of their plight up until then, but that was the watershed. After that, I was brisk and business-like.

It's at the end of the second cycle that each mouse gets injected. Mercifully, by the technician. Four will receive injections of saline (placebo) and the other eight will get injections of supposedly memory-enhancing drugs. Then they go back into their cages and chill out for the night. The next day you come along, change one of the coffee cups to a different one (the 'novel' stimulus marked above) and videotape each of them as they do their 3-minute thing in the tub again.

I was left on my own again, to work out the video camera.

The theory is that the mice injected with the memory-enhancing drugs will have better recollection of the environment that they have been put into previously. They should have greater recognition of the new coffee cup as an unfamiliar object, and spend more time exploring it. So far, this has been the case for all the mice, even the ones that got placebo. You also have to count the number of gridlines each mouse crosses during the 3 minute session, to determine if the drug has a stimulant or sedative effect, compared to placebo. I have yet to do the statistics on the results to show if the ones injected with the memory enhancers display a significant difference. I do know one thing though: This part of the experiment blows, and I have to do it two more times before I'm finished. The only thing that motivates me now is the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can get on my write up and work on getting as good a mark as possible.

I came in yesterday, to try and work on some animal tissue. That didn't even get off the ground. Still, there's always next week.

This morning I woke up (well, this afternoon, but I digress) and found a letter from a debt collection agency addressed to me. When I left the old house 6 months ago, there was some loose ends with regards to bills. The landlord took the gas bill and told us he would take care of it, and deduct the appropriate amount from our deposits. He didn't take care of it, hasn't returned my deposit to me at all, and he's not returning my calls (I left him a message on his voicemail today threatening to pay him a personal visit at his address in London). Somehow the fuckers at the gas company have found out where I live now and are pursuing me over it to the tune of £120. I'm getting well sick of this, and am going to try and take the buy-to-let monkey to court. What bugs me is why the gas company are coming after me rather than him. I'm tempted to go to court and argue my case, but it's hassle I don't need. And the bitch who left the house before the end of the tenancy seems to have gotten off scot-free. It really makes my blood boil. So now I'm assembling paperwork for an application for an emergency grant top-up when I really could be doing something else. Gah!

On the plus side, the pharmacy ball is next Friday, and I've managed to organise a tuxedo. Should be a laugh. The facebook pictures should be something to behold anyway.

This says how I feel...

(Nicked from BN2Beeyatches)

I had my first experience with Vista back in October, when I started back in my part-time tech-support job at the university. The influx of first years had begun, and with them their laptops, needing to be configured to connect to the university network. I just about had the patience to do it on XP (just), but on Vista? Bloody hell. Negotiating the 'innovative' interface gave enough cause to tear my hair out (if I had any), and why, when you try to launch an app or open a file, does it ask you if you are sure that this is what you want to do?

When I worked in software testing, part of the pleasure of my daily grind for the first half of my tenure - about 2 years - was testing various desktop applications on various different versions of Windows. Most of the applications were themselves written by Microsoft, who dictated that they had to be tested on every version of Windows going. As a result, I built up my experience with - and subsequently formed an opinion of - everything ranging from Windows 95 to Windows XP. You want the definitive guide? Of course you do.

Windows 95: Superceding all versions of the Windows GUI before it, it was supposed to feature universal Plug n' Play. It didn't. Although lacking in features compared to what came after it, it was reasonably stable, although I'm sure you'll agree that when it comes to Windows in general, that's not saying a whole lot.

Windows 98: More unstable than a nuclear bomb primed for detonation. Microsoft quickly realised their mistake, and released...

Windows 98SE: A slight improvement on it's predecessor, and as far back as Microsoft were willing to go when testing their applications in 2000. Bought a PC with Windows 95 on it and didn't feel like upgrading a mere 5 years later? Too bad. I have fond memories of frantically trying to locate various device drivers at work because this one came with f**kall as standard.

Windows NT Workstation and Server: A widely distributed (in market terms) business OS, it still wasn't what you'd call the first choice for setting up a stable network. One of guys I worked with who generally tended to work on distributed applications described its day-to-day status as 'up and down like a whoor's knickers'. Other than that, the interface was about the same as Windows 98SE.

Windows Millennium: The follow-up to 98 SE it was universally derided as one of the most bug-ridden unstable version of Windows out there (PC World called it the fourth worst product of all time). I ran this on my own PC for a while, however, and it did generally tend to behave itself, though I never really used it for much, and it wasn't what you'd describe as overflowing with features.

Windows 2000 Professional and Server: In my opinion, the first time Microsoft started to get it right. As a client OS, whether you were a business or home user, Win 2000 did the job adequately, and as far a I can see, is the most stable of all the client operating systems Microsoft have released to date. The Server edition didn't have too bad a track record in most of the places I used to work. Also the last of the operating systems that didn't require online activation, thus making the installation of pirate copies a breeze. Mystifyingly, it holds only something like 2% of the current Microsoft market share.

Windows XP: Never one to operate by the adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', Microsoft ploughed on. This followed shortly after 2000, and has most of its features (with a few extra unnecessary bells and whistles), but not a whole lot of its predecessor's stability. Oh, and it's ugly. It's seemingly shorter boot-up time compared to Win 2000 comes at the inconvenience of waiting around for over a minute while it hourglasses post-login. Sneaky little trick, that one. I tried to get away from XP when I came over here, but a computer I was given for free 2 years ago had XP installed, and most of the computers in the college did too, so I was forced to get used to it. Not the worst, as long as you don't try and work quickly with it: that confuses it, and it promptly hangs.

Windows Vista: As far as I've seen, a complete rip-off of OS X. All major features have been regrouped (like, what's with the bloody Network Connections section? It was fine as it was) and God forbid you try and install any of the leading anti-virus applications, that way lies tears. Prone to spontaneously shutting down on Dell laptops, which is a bit of a bummer when you're working on that essay that is due in the next day and you forgot to save your work as you went along (this happened to my flatmate). The update patches are already out in force. How embarassing...

So there you have it, folks. Burn yourself a copy of Windows 2000 Professional (in the next two years, before they stop supporting it) and off you go.

At last...

I am now officially in the firmament of Brighton's gay social scene, and move and shake with the best of them. What am I talking about? After four years, my picture has finally appeared in that coveted monthly glossy, Brighton GScene.

Spotted! On a night out, sir Denis Ryan esq.

Coincidentally, the picture of a man whose knickers I would very much like to get into is featured later on in the same edition.

This bloke has seriously got the broad-shouldered, inverted-pyramid, barrel-chested thing nailed. Alas, whenever I pass him in the local fleshpots, I am lucky if he even acknowledges me. Well, he'll have to revise his opinion of me now!

So there you have it folks. If you ever want me to deign to attend one of your social functions, I shall need at least one months notice, and even then I'm not promising anything.

Now back I go to my pedicure...

College

The exam is done and dusted and I really don't give a shit about when the result is out. As long into the future as possible, with a bit of luck.

I'd have liked a bit of a break this week, but last Friday I emailed my project supervisor to ask him if he wanted me to come in on Monday and pick up my work from where I left it before Christmas. Personally, I'd sooner have stuck pins in my eyes than go back into it, such was my frame of mind at that point, but I felt that I should at least pretend to give a shit. So I got in touch, asking him if I should come in this week. Secretly I was hoping that he - like most of the other supervisors - was taking a break for the next two weeks. "Why yes", he said, "Come in on Monday, but I'll be teaching for most of that time, so I won't really be around to help." Bollox, I thought.

Yesterday wasn't too bad, though I was stuck in there until 5:30, as per bloody usual.

Today is looking rather different. Have you ever worked with animal tissue, dear reader? No? You should be profoundly grateful...

Basically, a big part of my project involves working with parts of dead animals. It's not particularly nice, but the work we're doing could result in the development of drugs to slow down the mental decline associated with Alzheimer's disease, so I suppose it's for the common good. Well, for the common good of the human population. Less good for the playfully cute mice that end up donating their brains and internal organs to us.

This morning, another one shuffled off this mortal coil and we...erm...honoured her by taking out her uterus and suspending it in a solution, where each end of it was attached to terminals designed to measure muscle contraction. The idea is that you inject novel drugs into the solution, and from the response of the tissue, you get an idea of whether or not the drug will have a noteworthy effect if used as a psychiatric drug later. Unfortunately, the reliability of the tissue as this kind of indicator relies on its uniformity of behaviour, i.e. it should stay still in the absence of external stimulii and contract in presence of drugs with an established mechanism of action.

Right now, it's not staying still on its own at all. The ghost of its pissed off host must still live on in its uterus, because it's spontaneously contracting of its own accord, which shits up any chance I have of using it. Which means that I won't have obtained anything in the line of useful results today, and let me tell you, it was not an easy exit from my bed this morning, dear reader.

(Later)

I'm at home. The treacherous uterus yielded nothing. I decided to call it a day. I'll be back in there on Thursday afternoon to try again. The one catch is that I'll be teamed up with two med students who've never used an organ bath before, and it'll be my job to inculcate into them the joys of using it.

But overall, it's OK. I'm making reasonable progress. Not as fast as some, but that's because I'm very exacting (bordering on obsessive) when it comes to lab work, making sure everything is done correctly and precisely. Project work is a good way for the lazy to pick up marks, as it involves doing things more than thinking or learning about them. Most of the time you're just walking around a lab making up solutions and using pipettes to deliver volumes of them, without having to think too much about it. I'm liking this project, hell I'm in the middle of it, doing it, and I still think it sounds impressive.

Basically, it's about this neurotransmitter called Angiotensin IV. In the last ten years, there has been a lot of work done in certain areas of neuroscience, memory and diseases like depression and Alzheimer's disease, and it has been discovered that if you raise levels of this neurotransmitter in the brain, you get improvements in memory and learning. This is of interest in the area of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers, where deeply embedded memories remain untouched until the latter phases of the disease, but acquisitional memory (the mechanisms involved in making new memories) suffers earlier on. Raising levels of Angiotensin IV in the brain seem to be the obvious way to combat this.

Except you can't raise them directly. Giving someone a tablet with Angiotensin IV in it accomplishes nothing because its chemical properties make it orally inactive, i.e. it won't be absorbed through the wall of the gut into the bloodstream. Injecting it directly doesn't really work either, as it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier that well, if at all. The only solution is to modify the molecule slightly, making it more likely to cross into the brain, but still act on the same targets in the brain in the same way. So I've been handed two different variants of Angiotensin IV, and my job is to run a battery of tests on them, assessing their suitability for the aforementioned scenario, and finally test it on laboratory mice, and see if they display any improvements in memory or cognition. Compared to some of the projects my classmates are working on, it's fairly rigorous stuff, but I don't mind. I like getting my teeth into it, and because it's a joint effort with other students on the course, if the research shows promise, we can publish, and our names will be under that of our supervisor. At the moment, the two variants I'm testing don't look particularly stellar, but as we're all working under the same umbrella, so to speak, so my chances of having my name on something worthwhile aren't much affected by that. There's also the bonus that this project work is heavily weighted in the award of my degree (close to 40% of my overall mark, if I'm not mistaken).

I like that I feel good about it, because there've been times - even before I started this degree course - where I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I'm still not fully reconciled to the idea of having to work 9 to 5 like everyone else, but I had to be pragmatic in the face of my flights of fancy, and as much as I'd like living a more artistically-minded existence, I value financial security just as much. I've always managed to do consistently well in science subjects, so this course seemed like a safe bet. I can say now, though, that I've no regrets. If you have to get out of bed in the morning and work for a living, then you may as well work for yourself, and get paid well for it. With this I have a chance of managing both, and actually liking the job into the bargain. Not bad, all in all.

It feels weird now that I'm nearing the finishing line. No doubt the next four months will be rather shit, but barring some major disaster, I should graduate. I won't cover myself in glory: Old habits die hard, and I still have the odious habit of mastering crucial concepts on the syllabus of a course for the first time mere hours before an exam. This, along with the odd stressful external circumstance, has kept me from breaking any records. There'll be no first class honours for me, not even in my wildest dreams, but with a bit of luck, I should get honours of some sort, and then get on with the business of pulling in the dough after that.

Onward ho...

Hooray!

On Monday January 21st of 2008, June Brooks gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whose name it has decided will be George. 9lbs-odd. You seem to have a knack for producing big bruisers, Brooksy.

A son for Dan and a brother for Luke, Jordan and Jasmin. An opportunity for a piss-up if ever there was one.

Psychopharmacology exam at 2pm!

Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On Earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day, our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now, and at the hour of our death,

Amen.

Glory be to the father,
And to the son,
And to the holy spirit,
As it was,
Now,
And ever shall be.
A world without end,

Amen.

Drat and bother!

With an exam on Tuesday coming, I'm anticipating a lovely weekend ahead of me. Being my final year, one would expect all cavalier tendencies to go flying out the window, to be replaced by a new, previously unheard-of diligence, wouldn't one?

Well, one would, if one was talking about anyone other than me. The screams of despair remain the same. Although I must say that sitting down for a coffee with a few classmates the other day, and finding that they had done nothing either, and cared even less, was comforting. Why floundering isn't so bad when you're not the only one doing it, I'm not so sure, but hey.

In other more important news, Tom's bar, the one I frequented only recently, has closed down. It appears that this particular opportunity is lost to you, Mz. 'Flee, but do please dry your eyes. I'm sure another kamikaze businessman will come out of the woodwork to attempt another similar venture soon. It seems to happen a lot around here.

I'm also starting the organisation of a trip I hope to go on this year: The Great British Bear Bash of 2008 in Manchester, at the start of May. Ah yes, if I exercised this much forward planning with regards to my degree, I'd probably be looking at a first class honours by now.

And with that, back to the study of the psychopharmacology of cannabis I go. From a purely theoretical standpoint, of course.

A Sex Entry

... for those of you with a fragile disposition.

Schwarz, a bar in Brighton I went to a while back that opened my eyes somewhat, came a cropper when Legends hotel was refurbished. The basement was converted into a disco that turned out to be more successful than its dark, sleazy predecessor. It turns out that people prefer to dance to tunes on a trendily designed floor rather than have filthy sweaty sex with random strangers. Who knew?

It wasn't long before the gap in the market was spotted, of course, and a new bar called Tom's sprung up, with the same theme in mind. I was put off going for quite a while. Due to the current legal requirements for running a place like this, private membership is necessary, and at the start they were charging quite a bit for it. However, they recently stopped charging for it altogether, and in recognition of that section of their customer base, the New Year Financially Fucked, entry was free last night and tonight.

I went last night. It was more or less the same thing as Schwarz. You have to watch your step on your way to the bar, otherwise you might trip over the guy on his knees servicing another guy, and in the darkroom, conversation as a prelude to sex is almost discouraged. One of the barmen was wearing a snug-fitting vest and had the body - especially the biceps - to pull it off. I wanted to pull it off. His vest, I mean.

After moving around a bit, getting to know different men (fnar fnar), I hooked up with a rather nice chap, and we headed back to mine. He was a bit nervous about holding hands in public, saying it wasn't worth the hassle, but I told him I knew Kung Fu, and if anyone gave us any shit, I'd collect one of their eyes. Mercifully, my misplaced faith in myself (I failed my most recent Kung Fu exam) wasn't put to the test.

It was about 4am when we got home, and I was exhausted after the long day (the earlier turbulence-ridden return flight I endured that day was not good for my nerves either) so we collapsed. We woke surprisingly early, but rather than get up and be productive, we spent most of the day in bed, getting it on.

The only problem is, now I sit here wide awake with my body clock gone to shit. What's a boy to do?

Go to the Bulldog, maybe?