Con, sonar - crazy Ivan!

Apologies for the recent down-time, it seems Blogger wiped us out for a bit, but a quick republish seems to have resurrected us.

So, Nic Ross and I hit London during the week for a media course at the Royal Society. I'd strongly recommend this course to my fellow science bods - they seem to be run every couple of months. It was nice to be taught by a real pro - Judith Hann (best known for Tomorrow's World) - and also get into discussion with other scientists. Climate change seems to be the zeitgeist, but Nic and I certainly got quizzed heavily about what's going on in astroville.

We had some spare time on Tuesday so headed over to the Royal Observatory to get nostalgic. Sadly Nic and I are crap navigators and, having got lost, arrived 5mins too late to be admitted. Here's an ironic photographic testimony, which you can click for a zoomtastic taste of chronological humour:





All was not lost. Firstly, the observatory affords this awesome view of the Canary Wharf district:





Also, Nic cajoled me into convincing the warden at the observatory that we were close friends of the Astronomer Royal (we didn't mention which one). Amazingly this worked and we were allowed to sneek in for a quick snap across the meridian:





Jesus I need to lose some weight. Anyway, the time not spent in the R.O. was spent, much to Nic's chagrin, at the Cutty Sark whereupon I delivered my best Captain Jack Aubrey lines (much talk of not having a moment to lose, excellent seamanship, best of two weevils etc). Sadly Nic's appreciation of my JA doesn't equal Jim's.





Enough rambling - we also met up with ex-mofo Dr. Rich Whitaker, drank mojitos, and narrowly avoided boogying in Soho's gayest nightclub. On the way home we discovered a mutual love of "The Hunt For Red October" and proceeded to annoy fellow travellers with lines from the film.