SURPRISE!!

A lot of you will know that my dearest darling sister organised surprise leaving drinkies for me this Friday. A lot of you will know because you probably recieved the message that she sent around to almost everybody in my phonebook! Raped and pillaged my mobile she did.

Apparently it was also all over Facebook, how I managed to miss it I have NO idea, clearly I'm not nosy enough!

Friday was excellent, I arrived at the pub under the impression that I was meeting a 6ft 4 policeman and his mates for a pub crawl (care of Wilf Porkie Enterprises) and found two tables full of a completely random assortment of lovely lovely people.

Caroline, Choy, Uma and Viv were there from the zoo, Bruce and Chris from work, my old housemate Steve, Wilfy and Jo who had got me to the pub in the first place, and of course the lovely Nicki were all waiting to surprise me! There were balloons and there was cake and nibbles and lots and lots of booze. There was also an exceptionally excellent white vest being passed around that people were writing messages on. I'm taking it with me and using it as a sleeping top....should be a bit of an ice breaker in the good ole dorm rooms.

After a while, Nicki recieved a phone call from someone who was coming, but neither of us recognised his number. He was described as having an indian accent and for the life of me I could not think of who it might be, until I saw Julio wandering through the pub. That would explain why I couldn't think who it was, he speaks with a very strong Spanish accent! Julio is a painter decorator that we've had in a couple of times to do some jobbies at work. He's absolutely lovely and proceeded to plonk himself at the bar with his mate, from this position he held court with all the ladies and purchased tequilas with wild abandon.

And later on the lovely Kayleigh and Tom turned up, by which point most of us were pleasantly pickled....apart from Steve who was driving...poor Steve.

The whole evening was excellent, Viv was totally on form. She gives the impression of being a very kindly, sweet and benign lady, which she totally is.......and then she gets her hands on the wine. She came out with some absolute gems and took a bit of a shine to our Steve ;), grabby grabby, NORTY Viv!! She certainly helped make the evening, I think I'm a little bit in love.

There were a couple of persistent themes of the evening, the first being spillage of wine! I don't think anyone got away without being splashed by wine at some point in the evening. I was sporting a particularly spectacular purple stain...very chic.

The second theme was JENGA! Perhaps contrary to expectations, as the evening wore on and we became slightly the more worse for wear...we actually got better at Jenga, check this baby out! WIN!


Cake was lovely and booze was lovely and company was excellently lovely lovely. When we got chucked out of the Castle, Kayleigh, Tom, Jo and I moved onto somewhere in Angel for a drinky....but being CONSIDERABLY inebriated by this point, it didn't last too long and soon Jo and I were headed for the nightbus.

We were woken up halfway home by a kindly man who took pity on us and let us know we were being booted off and onto another bus. We must have been a picture of beauty and gorgeousness. Faces squished up against the windows, snoring (probably not gently). I'm impressed he had the guts to approach.

Home for CHIKIN.......and the next thing I know I woke up on the sofa at about 5am.

All the signs of an excellent night I think! Thank you Nicki for organising such a lovely evening, thank you to Jo and Wilf for propelling me in the right direction and thank you to all those who came along to wish me well on my travels. I haz a big love for all of you :o)

Please....take a peek at the photies, these are in order....more evidence for why drinking is bad. There's distinct deterioration!

Nicki fails at Jenga!

Such concentration

Cheers!

Mmm, sexah Jenga pose

The lovely Julio

Tastes good

Hee hee, fab evening guys xxx

Alas.......Poor Yorkie

No, I didn't get it wrong...I'm original. Geddit?

Neither do I, it's ok.

Bruce got a very interesting email today, amongst the usual boring complaints about lack of water pressure, malfunctioning air conditioning and broken door hinges, this gem of an email really stood out.

It was from a guy called Toby explaining how he had this skull.......Apparently it was found in a filing cabinet that came from Central Services, but they believe it originally belonged to us ('us' being a very loose term, I suspect anyone working within the Division of Biosciences constitutes 'us'). It's been gathering dust in the PhD office for a couple of years and he figured it should be returned to its rightful owners.

'Oh...and we think it's real'

As soon as I heard 'real' I wanted it, I wanted a real human skull, I want it for my office. MINE! Bruce seemed equally enamored so we asked where we could pick it up from and I hurried over post-haste.

When I was presented with said skull (which the current owner seemed remarkably reluctant to touch) I was surprised at the relatively small size, but then, I'm used to lugging alligator skulls around at the zoo.

At first I was a little skeptical over whether it was real or not. This may have been because of his fetching additions. There are springs attaching the temples to the mandible in order to allow demonstration of how muscles work the jaws, and lovely little clips on each side of the cranium that hold on the top half of the skull, it's been neatly sliced off to allow inspection of the insides.

Upon closer inspection I've decided that it's likely real, I've seen a few replicas in my time and this has faaar too much detail. If it's a replica then it's a very good one!

The guys I picked it up off of began asking me questions:

'Can you tell us anything about it?'

'Male....female?'

'Age?'

Whereupon I started to feel exceedingly stupid...but consoled myself with the fact that had Bruce come to pick it up he'd have been just as stumped! I confessed that I knew nothing but that I could probably give it to someone who did. Before I left they made me promise to email with anything I found out. Clearly they'd become quite attached over the years....I wonder if they'll lament the loss of their bookend?

So, as promised, when I returned to the office I looked up the guy who ran the MSc in Palaeoanthropology and sent him a little email. One of the things I love about working at UCL is being able to send strange little emails like this, I'd never have sent this working at TESCO:

Hello Andrew,

I hope my email finds you well :o)

My colleague and I received a strange email today asking if we’d like to rehome a skull that’s been gathering dust with them for a while. They found it in a filing cabinet that they got from central stores and must have found us in association with the Div of Biosciences.

When I picked it up they seemed interested to know a bit about it, ie, male, female, age etc. I can’t give them ANY of that detail (for shame…I did the palaeoanthropology module with Charlie in 2004ish). I was wondering if you know anyone I can show it to who might be able to shed some light?

This is where I take it to someone and find out it’s plastic…….I think I’ll prepare a hole to bury myself in, just in case.

Thanks very much for your time, I look forward to hearing from you,

Yours,

Becki

To which he replied:

Hi Becki,

This is one of the emails I will remember!! I have given AC a ring, who is a postdoc in the IoA in human osteology, and she would be happy to have a look at it. Her email is (booger), but I am copying her in, so she will probably get in touch.

Best wishes,

Andrew

(Her email isn't REALLY booger, but that would be cool!)

I tell you what, it's so nice when we have little interesting things like this going on to just distract us from the endless firefighting that we seem to do sometimes.

Alas.....poor Yorkie....we know him not at all!! But soon we shall....Horatio...*ahem*

Do I hear Shakespeare turning in his grave?

All work and no play makes Becki a dull girl

.....or does it?

I'm in the fortunate position of actually enjoying my job. Of course there are apsects of it that I'd rather not have to contend with, but what you have to do is just laugh at them. This morning we tied a load of lab chairs together, threw them onto a few wonky trolleys we have and proceeded to wheel them halfway across campus. After stopping for the hundredth time to pick up the aforementioned chairs when they've collapsed in slow motion before your very eyes....tempers become somewhat frayed. I usually just stop and tell myself that this is what I'm being payed for....and I'm not being paid badly. If they want to pay me to push around some stupid chairs then that's fine, rather that than stuck in front of an endless spreadsheet all day.

For amusement Bruce and I often demand that the person who has asked us to ferry all this stuff over to them comes and gives us a hand.......and the 3 stooges sketch begins.

Here are some pictures of the things Bruce and I get up to on a daily basis:

Bruce in a bin

Oh yes, this is Bruce, he's my manager, and yes, he's prancing around in a paper recycling bin. Funnier pictures would have been him getting in and out, it was all rather ungainly really, but I was laughing too hard to take any pictures. Bruce has decided that if we EVER have to move journals of Physiology, they're only going to one place...the recycling bin. This is one of our epic journies. The bin was full.....we weren't taking those bastard journals back upstairs....so Brucie leaps into action!!!

NEXT!!

Becki in.....er........?

How often does one get to dress up in a full oxygen tank and mask? I ask thee! I'm glad no one walked in whilst we were taking these pictures. We....randomly....have this oxygen equipment in a case in our room. I believe the story goes that a company was moving out and donated a load of equipment to our old department (Physiology) no one knew what to do with this....but thought it was really cool, so Bruce got lumbered with it. We decided to sell it on ebay for beer money (shhhhh) and so I was called upon, as the most glamorous person in a room of 2 (the other person being a 50-something year old guy) to model.

It never got in ebay, so this was essentially just my boss getting all excited about boys toys and dragging me into the drama. If anyone's interested, make an offer!! It'll be great in a chemical attack.

NEXTY!

Brucinda


Brucinda's arrival marked the beginning of a tradition that has carried on throughout the 3 years I've been in the office with Bruce and Linda before she moved out, I shall go into this tradition later.....I bet you're on the edge of your seats. Needless to say she started out life as a plain paperchase easter bunny. Now look at her.....just look. She's glorious. She sits at our window, looking out upon each years new student intake, waving at the contractors, and generally being a red-lightesque slaaaaag. I saw a picture on the UCL website a little while back, in our window you can see a little white smudge. The picture was in a very smart advertising spiel, I just hope that noone zooms in far enough to see Brucinda waving her boobies at the camera.

NEXT

I get to INVENT things!!

This is my bibbler! I run some student practicals at work, and the solutions we use have to be bubbled before use.....but how to bubble them all at the same time?? With Linda and Becki's Magik Bibbler!! That's how!! Look how it bibbles everything so nicely! With Linda and Becki's Magik Bibbler, all your bibbling worries are put to rest. Only $9.95, ($20.00 postage and packing).

NEXTY!!

I get to watch LOCUST PORN!!

Now I'll let you into a little secret about locusts, they can change SEX! Well, I know females can change into males.....but only when there are other males present it seems, they need the hormones. The reason I know this, the second year we got locusts we didn't specify all female, and when we emptied them into their cage we noticed a small colourful individual amongst them. We didn't think anymore of it until we returned the next day to find more small, colourful individuals, all joyously and enthusiatically mounting the females. In some cases there were little locust towers going on, as if females were mounting other females in a desperate attempt to escape the mini lotharios only to have him mount the whole heaving mass, plugging away delightedly as he went.

NEXTY!

Cheap and Nasty Tat!

This is one of my favourite pastimes at work. I could see how much Bruce loved Brucinda....I could see it in his eyes when he looked at her (point of fact.....she's still there). So...the next time I went away, I brought back a wonderful gift for Bruce and Linda, gifts that brought tears of joy (I think) to their eyes. In my picture here you can see that my colleagues have taken up the tradition with gusto! I am proudly displaying my sun magnet and macaw from Fuertaventura, my dodo keyring from Mauritius and my streetsign magnet from er....somewhere in Eastern Europe, all care of Bruce! The clog, pencil and shell are all sadly bought for me, by me. The rest of the crap is mainly stolen stuff!

Today, Bruce told me he was off to Spanish class, his homework had been to talk about a souvenir he brought back from his holidays. 'I didn't bring back a souvenir, all I brought back was a couple of pebbles' he says. I laugh.....until he produces 2 pictures of pebbles.

'Are you serious?'

'Yes!'

'You're going to talk about pebbles?'

'Yes, look! It's very interesting really' *scoots over to me on his chair and shows me his pebble pictures*

'Oh I see, are you going to talk about how this one is brown and this one is grey?'

*withering look*

'Or about how this one is small and this one is big?'

He actually did proceed to tell me an interesting story about the pebbles on the beach and then some cool pictures of a shipwreck! Then I suggested that he should talk about his tacky souvenir collection á la Becki!! Much funnier than the pebbles!

So, we proceeded looking up words like 'Leprechaun', 'kangaroo' and 'sheep' in Spanish, and I took these wonderful pictures of Bruce carefully wrapping up his treasures, for treasures they are indeed.

From left to right we have the following:

Starfish with a sticky-out tongue! I bought this from Cornwall

Clog from Amsterdam, came with a cheap pen of which we've all lost.

Leprechaun glitter globe from Dublin

Boxing light-up kangaroo pen from Australia, brought back by Linda

Fuzzy-top giraffe print pencil bought from Whipsnade animal park by yours truely!

Lamb clippy thing, from New Zealand, from Linda

Clay sheep from Wales, from ME!

And last, but not least, a Leaning Tower of Pisa magnet (complete with top hat) from...Pisa.

Yay for work!!! :D