The dead guy in the cloisters? Yeah, I know him

Jeremy Bentham is his name.

All the wonderful things University College London is known for, being recently ranked 4th in the world according to the Times Higher Education QS rankings (that's above Imperial and Oxford Universities), notoriously secular, only accepting the creme de la creme of studentia (I went here..snigger). All the wonderful things UCL could be, and is, known for, but in the end it all boils down to one thing.....

....we have a dead man living in the cloisters

This is a fact, and his name is/was Jeremy Bentham.

Stay tuned for the fun bit, but a little bit of info about Jezza first, the man deserves some respect!

Jeremy was is considered the 'Godfather' of UCL. Although he didn't have a direct hand in the establishment of the university in 1826, it was his lifes work and his principles that UCL stood on. As well as a number of other social issues (which I'll mention further in a bit), he believed that education should be available to a far greater number of people. UCL was the first university to allow entry to students regardless of race or religion, it also soon caught up with itself and was the first to allow female students through its doors.

Bentham was a revolutionary social reformer, during his lifetime he attempted to tackle, and at least made a lot of noise over the following issues:

The right for individual and economic freedom

Need for separation of the Church and State

Freedom of expression

Equal rights for women

The end of slavery

Abolition of physical punishment

The right to divorce

Free Trade

Decriminalisation of homosexual acts

Abolition of the death penalty

He was way ahead of his time!

Now for the fun bit! In Benthams will he asked that his body be preserved as an auto-icon, and his students and 'disciples' (ironic) honoured his wish. His body was embalmed and placed in a glass and wooden case. Until 1850 this was kept by one of his followers, until it came to UCL in 1850. See a picture below. I was going to take my own picture, I literally went down there just now to take one, and some inconsiderate dudes in suits have set up some kind of table right in front of him.....sigh.

The head is a wax replica of Jezza's likeness, his real head was damaged quite badly during the embalming process. The real head was originally placed on the floor in the case between his feet, but after it had been stolen a few times by students and found being used as a football in the front quad, they decided to keep it in storage. This pic was taken before the real head was removed.

I've heard rumours...and I know for a fact this has happened at least once, that Jezza is wheeled in for meetings of the college council. His head is taken out of cold storage so that he is entirely present. Tradition holds that he is listed as 'present but not voting', unless the vote is 50/50, under which circumstances, Jezza break the vote by voting in favour of whatever motion is being passed.

Tis true, tis all true. Well done UCL :)

Our local pub is named after this fine chap, I've had many too many a beer in the Jeremy Bentham. When I get back to my old faithful laptop at home I shall put up some pictures of the best local in the world.

Sometimes I'm genuinely concerned for my sanity

I just spent half an hour hiding in the loft like some kind of crazy person, a crazy loft-dwelling hermit lady.

Whilst I was up there I was reflecting on the slight insanity of my current predicament and began texting friends, giving them loft-related updates. The most exciting of these being the compressor kicking into life, it makes a hell of a racket and I jumped so hard that I almost fell off my trolley. The trolley was my perch of choice having considered and rejected the possibility of an upturned crate, a chest of drawers and the floor. I figured that the trolley would be good, because if I got bored I could grab a handy plank of wood and push myself around, pretending I was at sea in shark-infested waters.

I should probably explain why I found myself hiding in the loft in the first place, it's not a habit of mine, though it may be like Pringles, once you pop you can't stop.

It's the time of year when we get certain lab equipment serviced, and at the moment the balance servicing man is in. It's the two or three days a year that I absolutely dread. This guy is one of the creepiest blokes you'll ever meet. He starts up uncomfortable conversations about topics you only really broach with your mates, he nags you to have coffee until you finally give in. Last year I was given the pleasure of taking him round to all the labs and letting him in. This year I told Bruce I wasn't doing it! Anyway....this creepy behaviour of his lead to someone making a complaint about him today, and so Brucie had to have a word with him. As soon as I found out he was on his way to the office I was out like a bullet. You've never seen me move so fast! I scuttled up to the loft and sat tight, texting Brucie to let me know when the coast was clear!

Anyway....I enjoyed my time reflecting in the loft, it was almost spiritual. I thought you might like to see my new found Shangri-la, so here we go....

A fine location for meditation

My trolley, mine

My good friend the compressor

Worky work work

People are always telling me this....one day I'll get away with it.

An ex boyfriend of mine once reliably informed me that if you are stuck out in the cold and need to share body heat to get warm then you do...in fact...need to be completely naked for it to work efficiently. This was after he'd taken me to the country park at midnight and stolen my bus pass.....I'm not sure what he was hoping to achieve, we'd only been seeing each other a week.

Minor catch-up in the life of Becki....everything is going simply swimmingly at the moment! Close friends will know that things at work are picking up! I've been in my role of 'Operations Officer/Estates and Laboratory Management Team Member' for about 3 years now. When I asked about the chance of progression at my interview (having reassured Bruce that I wasn't after his job) I was faced with much umming and ahhing and told that there are no definite lines of progression. I didn't really mind this too much at the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do or how long I would stay, so I was just happy to take the job and figure it out from there.

Turns out that UCL sucks you in, it sucks you in and never spits you out. There are people I work with who studied for their BSc's here and never left, they've been a round for nigh on 40 years! I admire that kind of dedication, and if you're enjoying your job then it's fantastic, but after a while you do tend to fall into one of 3 categories:

1) Happy but stagnating

2) Stagnating and institutionalised

3) Flexible and happy

Some people are happy to continue doing the job they're doing forever and that's cool. Some people are resigned to the fact that they have been and will be doing the same job forever, but have been here so long that the thought of getting a job elsewhere is too much effort, or far too scary. And (I know, never start a sentence with an 'and', I'm a rule breaker, get over it), some people have the balance, a place like UCL changes over time, you've gotta move with the times instead of standing stubbornly in the past. UCL is proud of it's past, but as Darwin knew, evolution is inevitable, evolve or die. Some people (the minority and usually the ones who don't take themselves too seriously) can do this. My lovely Lindar is one of them...technician/reasearch assistant.....admin/estates...immunohistochemist, and she's still very happy, will be happier soon, but I'll leave that there for now.

I was in danger of becoming a number 1) *snort*, I think. I very much enjoy my job, the people around me make it for me, I was happy pootling along doing my thang. I like to think that at some point I'd have woken up and thought 'hang on, where did the last ten years go?' but this place sings you a lullaby and it can be 30 years before you know it!

Anyway, recently things have been changing a bit, I've been taken under a wing so to speak, there is exciting training coming up which will adorn me with a qualification that I can take anywhere I like, I'm being mentored and all of a sudden there are 'meetings'. What are they, pray tell?

Climbing the greasy pole is a bit of a mixed blessing I think I'll find, the higher up you get, the less friends you can afford to have. I had a meeting with a gentleman quite high up in Estates recently and he asked me where I want to take my career, and I was quite honest when I said, 'I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 15 and they sat me down to fill in a silly quiz which promised to tell me excatly what I should do when I grew up, and I don't really know now, but at the moment this feels right to me and we'll see where it takes me'. I'm still young, and if I find that this isn't for me then that's fine, there will be plenty of other opportunities.

In case you were wondering, that quiz told me I was best suited to being a Fish Farmer.

The Posse

I'm feeling better now, avid follower :o) Friday evenings do a lot for the chill factor!!

I thought I'd do some little blogs about me, on the offchance that someone stumbles across this and might be interested, you never know, I might become famous!!!

I'll start off with work, much as we try to ignore it, we do spend most of our waking hours at work. I'm lucky in that I enjoy my job and work with some fab people. Apart from the getting up in the morning bit I can't say I have much to complain about! So I work at UCL in the Division of Biosciences as it is now known, estates and buildings stuff, not academia. I've been there for about 3 years now.

Over those 3 years, four of us at work have developed a little 'Posse', I think it was Linda who started calling us that. We're a strange little group, and my facebook mates often wonder who these people are in most of my photos! We're a bit of living proof that you don't have to be similar to be really good mates.

We've got Big Boy as he is affectionately known, or Greg, he's the subject of my digestive updates :o). Big, welsh, opinonated, semi-vegetarian, real ale lover, bit of a perve and pretends to be much grumpier than he really is. He's very funny and can take it as well as dish it out. Oh, and he harbours a hatred for home-baked goods that people bring into work, a nasty, dirty hatred. With Greg every conversation ends up on sex or shit....usually not both.

Now we have Linda, Noise or Marlborough Grey, depending on who you're talking to. She's the physical opposite of our Big Boy, slim but not petite, you simply cannot miss Linda if she's in the room, she's a natterer!! We discovered in Dublin that if you walk her all day, then feed her a big meal and get a couple of drinks down her then she goes all quiet....but how much time, money and energy would that take?? She's recently discovered a passion for unpaid leave and the electric cinema :o), not quite as mad a drinker, but matches Greg with halves.

Both those guys are in their 40's and going 'translucent' as Greg would argue

Then we have the Wiluf, just turned 60 and proud of it, you'd never know. If you've heard of the place Wilf has probably been there, having travelled round the world on various ships in his navy career. He's also a photographer and a foodie, and an eternal batchelor. Brandy is his drink of choice on a pub crawl. Wilfie lives quite a healthy lifestyle (apart from the drinking we thrust upon him...apparently....I got the blame the last time :o)), but then he's had more time to come around. Convo's with Wilf usually come around to food or a funny story about a friend in another country!

Then there's me......I'm not sure if I have a nickname, but I have been informed that Greg has taken to calling me 'slaaaaaaaaaaaag' behind my back........which is nice. 25, I like a bloody good drink and do my best to keep up with Greg, to my detriment! Like my food too much, I'm pretty liberal, love travelling when I have the dough, a beer drinker and talk quite a bit, though not as much as our Linda.

Both Wilf and I have 'drunk hair', the more pissed we get the scruffier our hair gets. Wilf may kill me for that picture...enjoy as I may have to change it!!

So we have much fun and laughs together, various pub crawls, day trips and weekends abroad. We do get some funny looks sometimes....especially when we're wandering along the Thames pissed as farts at about 8pm when everyone else is just going out.....

Out of interest I looked up a little bit of info on the psychology of friendship, and apparently one of the main criteria is the 'breadth and depth of self-disclosure' and the reciprocation of it.

.....So there we go, basically, we all like talking bollocks about ourselves...and listening to each others bollocks too :o). The recipe for a perfect Posse......