IoP conference dinner and eating Kangaroo & locusts

30/03 - Incredibly, despite oversleeping by an hour, Kelly and I both made it to UCL by half 9 this morning - it only took 30 minutes door to door, instead of the hour Kelly claims it usually takes. I think that by going earlier, one catches rush hour, which causes a longer delay than just waiting a bit. This was probably a bit of a waste of effort though, as I dozed off on my desk within about 20 minutes of getting in. After the coffee break I stayed in the 'quiet room', sorting some stuff out on my laptop before going for a walk over to meet Kelly for a cup of tea (ended up being a coconut muffin and a pear juice) on Queen Square.

The afternoon's talks were of marginal relevance and interest, which finished just in time for Matt, Tina and I to squeeze in a pint before the conference dinner, which was held in the rather grand Russell Hotel. As far as I remember (I am writing this over a week later), dinner was pretty good, especially the mini rack of lamb we had for the main course - nice and crisp on the outside, pink in the middle. Tegid Wyn Jones, a slightly crazy emeritus Welshman from UCL, gave the after dinner speech, which was rambling but enjoyable, mainly due to his incredible voice. We had four bottles of wine per table, which we soon polished off, and after dessert I popped over to see how Rich was doing. Rich's table had 8 bottles of wine, as there was an empty table next to them which now had no bottles. A waitress came over later and gave them two more as well, so I hung around for a while. It was looking like the UCL people intended to make a night of it, and I was tempted to join them, but I thought better of it and snuck off to meet Kelly in Soho, where we popped to the Evaristo club for a couple of cheeky rums before bed.

31/03 - I was not in as early as yesterday, and while seeking out a better lunch than the somewhat puny sandwiches on offer (they had got a lot worse since Monday) I bumped into Rich in Subway. He had an enormous hangover and I was knackered, so we spent a while in the 'quiet room' munching through our respective enormous meals. We went along to the afternoon talks and struggled through, before going for Rich's birthday drinks. It was here that I discovered something rather amusing/tragic that happened last night. Mark Lancaster, the head of the UCL high energy physics group and Rich's supervisor/my former supervisor had had a bit of a tumble last night, smashing his head on the pavement and gaining a black eye, some fierce bruising and losing a tooth. He has an emergency dentist's appointment tomorrow to reattach/replace the tooth, but nothing can be done about his eye. I tried not to laugh when he came in, and failed completely when he asked me for "a Guiness and a straw."

Kelly turned up after a while, we stayed until all the others started looking for somewhere to watch the football, then borrowed Rich's iPhone to look up anywhere close we could use Kelly's taste card for half price food. Incredibly, the closest option was Archipelago, a place Kelly had talked about in the past which has a reputation for serving exotic meats, such as zebra and scorpion. When we arrived we found that both of these were off the menu, so we had Sarawaki Seafood followed by pink gin, lychee and mango palate cleansers, then Hot Marsupial (marinated kangaroo), Menelik's Catch (Berber spiced tilapia fish), Love Bug Salad (deep fried crickets & locusts)and Mouse In The House to finish (cheeses). With our discount card all this only came to £52, including two glasses of wine each (admittedly they forgot to charge us for the second one).

Feeling at home & the first day of the IOP

29/03 - I feel I have missed an essential element out of the last few entries. This is to point out just how glad I am to be back in London, actually living in my house rather than just visiting. The best thing about last night was that I knew I wouldn't have to get up early and dash off to the airport. After Kelly left this morning I spent some time making some shelves for our room, washing a load of clothes, doing some washing up and generally doing house stuff, which I really enjoyed, it made the place feel a little more like home.

I left the house at 11 and made it to UCL with plenty of time left for registration for the IOP meeting, which is ostensibly my reason for being here. I saw a few people I wanted to talk to, more who I knew and loads who I recognised. I ended up mostly chatting to Rich over the sandwiches (blue cheese and apple, crayfish, chorizo, and other surprisingly tasty options). The first session today is the STFC town meeting, which is mainly some folk from the research council outlining and defending their funding choices for the next year. In summary: there's not much money and everyone's unhappy about it.

Well, the rest of the day continued in much the same manner. There were many talks, some more interesting than others, and at 6 we had a drinks reception with some awesome canapés, and a large selection of real ales for us. Kelly joined us for a while, we had some slightly awkward chats with some physicists, and then left to go and meet Simon and Clare in the Norfolk Arms, a pub near King's Cross which does pretty good Spanish food. Simon told us stories about his recent trip to New Orleans (he got back yesterday), especially focussing on the food - deep-fried oyster po-boy sandwich anyone? The meal was really good, but a couple of things went wrong - firstly our desserts took nearly 40 minutes to arrive, as the waiter had clearly just forgotten all about them and made some rubbish excuse. When I ordered my second glass of wine, they brought me a large glass when I had specified small - this wouldn't have really mattered, but the difference was at least a couple of quid and I was already quite full enough of booze. For the above reasons we ignored their 12.5% service charge and left about £4 instead (I am never any good at this, saying no when the tip is already on the bill, but to be honest the service was pretty crap).

Westfield, Bowling, FLC, Imperial War Museum, a curry and Tigerland

27/03 - I woke up before 9, feeling a little woozy. I was confused as I thought I hadn't had that much, but then I remembered the glass of wine at the airport, the complimentary bottle on the plane, the cava with dinner and the few pints in the merchant - as they had all occurred in different places with little gaps between them, I had not considered the possibility that they would have a combined effect. They did.

I had a delicious but unusual breakfast of leftover salad, coronation chicken and a cup of tea, and Kelly and I pottered around the house for a while before heading off to Westfield - we had jokingly proposed it last night, but in the cold light of day it seemed much less tempting. My intent was to go and get some shoes and a few items, but in the end I didn't find anything I wanted. Upon walking in I could smell a combination of floor polish, air conditioning and an odd citrus scent which, combined, gave me a headache and reminded me of all the big malls in Singapore and Bangkok. It wasn't a very pleasant place, and although it is on a grand scale architecturally I found it to be pretty oppressive and grim. When the time came to leave, we headed to the exit and found that it was pouring down with rain, so stayed inside, weaving between the throngs, and dashed across the road to the station, accidentally stomping in a number of puddles along the way.

Next on our agenda we went to meet Gordon, the head of Kelly's MBPhD course, in The Lamb. He has helped her enormously during the last year or so, and was a very smart and interesting guy. I wasn't sure what we would talk about, but luckily I had some random knowledge of the pay structure of Somalian pirates which I was able to pull out, as well as knowing some stuff about positrons, which popped up in conversation too. At half six we met Clare, Frau, Ed, Joe & Adam and went for Ed's birthday dinner next door at Ciao Bella (without Gordon), where I had a rather disappointing meal (again - the gnocchi last time was slimy, the penne putanesca was pretty bland. Everyone else's looked delicious, I am going to let other people decide for me next time).

Our next stop was Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, for the main event of the evening - bowling and a Fun Lovin' Criminals gig. This turned out to be fraught with more disappointment. Firstly they had no cocktails, which meant no white russians. Then all the draught beers were off, so we were confined to bottles of everything. Then we found out that our lane had been cancelled, as Fun Lovin' Criminals wanted to film the gig and didn't want any sound feedback from bowling. Our lane was therefore moved from 2130 to midnight, which was a bit unsatisfactory. We were given a round of drinks, which was scant compensation. When the band came on we realised that this was maybe the least appropriate gig venue possible, as it has a low ceiling and is in a basement. It was rammed and boiling, and we couldn't see a thing. Clare decided to leave, as it was too hot and she hadn't heard of the band anyway. Kelly and I snuck round the side, and ended up standing on top of the ball return of one of the lanes, the only place from which one could actually see the band. After a shaky start (of new material) they broke into the songs that everyone know (Scooby Snacks, King Of New York, Fun Lovin' Criminals etc.) which were pretty awesome. The actual bowling was fun, I opened with a strike and a spare and followed it by two frames of gutterballs. We entered into a row with a massive bloke on the next lane about 'ownership' of the 12 lb ball. In the end a security guard stepped in and told us to ask him, and he would get any ball we wanted. We did pretty awfully actually, Frau won with 92, not a particularly impressive score. We left at one, intending to head to the Evaristo for a drink, but as it was closed we ended up having expensive sandwiches from Valentino's and getting the bus home.

28/03 - Kelly and I woke up at 1245, which wasn't unreasonable as we had gone to bed at 0345, but this was still pretty late. Too late for lunch, in fact, as I immediately received texts telling me that Ed, Bob and Joe were going for lunch, had gone for lunch, and were heading back from lunch. They were already back by the time we had sorted ourselves out with showers and tea, so we said goodbye to Joe and went off for our Sunday activity - the Imperial War Museum. On our way there we walked past a hostel of some description outside which there was an unconscious man on the pavement, next to whom someone was having a wee. Outside the museum there were a huge number of drunken, possibly homeless, people sitting and lying about on the grass. Kelly said she thought there was a Polish holiday going on (all the beers I saw were Polish brands, and most people were speaking Polish, but a quick Google has yielded no results).

The museum itself was really good - I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. There was a Terry Deary based exhibition called Terrible Trenches, which was designed for children but during which I improved my rather insufficient knowledge of the first world war. Our next stop was the WWI history section, including 'The Trench Experience'. We didn't have time to go through to WWII (and 'The Blitz Experience'), as the museum closed and we had to leave. We had a pretty good curry for dinner and, after a rather long debate, watched Tigerland, a film about Colin Farrell's character going through training before the Vietnam war, pretty much entirely unwillingly. I really enjoyed it, mainly because the protagonist hated everything about the army and refused to bend to the will of various drill sergeants etc. Bob thought it was rubbish, maybe for exactly the same reason.

A Chinese, a very long trip back to London and Kelly's feast

25/03 - I struggle to recall the events of Thursday. Nothing much happened during the day, I had lunch with Ben and Ricardo during which we discussed what I should do for the note we are working on, then I went back to the office and failed to get some code working for a while. I went to beers with Tina, Lawrence and Dan, sitting just near all the LTA lot who were having a farewell drink with Gemma. I don't know Gemma very well, and consequently felt a little bad about what happened next - I was walking to the bus stop, saw the bus leave and so got a lift with Matilde to Planpalais, where Gemma et al were going for dinner. My plan was to go home, but I was persuaded to go to Fouille de Banane, a Chinese restaurant which has a three course all-duck option on the menu (it didn't take much persuading, to be honest). This turned out to be much pricier than my choice, a chicken in dry chili sauce dish which I would describe as adequate. I tried some of the duck things, and I was particularly impressed by the duck skin pancakes (fried duck skin wrapped in pancakes, not pancakes made of duck skin as I had hoped).

26/03 - Hmm. I write this sitting at Geneva airport, awaiting a delayed flight. I managed to get a reasonable amount of work done this morning, produced a plot I was happy with, and, due to Kelly's worrying, got the 3pm shuttle to the airport. I was through security and waiting at the gate by 1515, for my flight at 1650. I have sat here messing around on the internet since then, and have just been informed that my flight has been delayed by an hour for some reason. Bugger. I could have got the shuttle at 4, or even later, and been fine.

Well, my journey from desk to front door took me 6 1/4 hours, compared to 4 1/2 hours last time. I eventually got back to Clapham at 8, to find that Kelly had taken my suggestion of a chicken salad for dinner and gone a little crazy. We had roasted squash with pecorino and prosciutto, a mango, pepper and rocket salad with orange-marinated chicken, ciabatta with prosciutto and goat's cheese and with a tasty cheese and chilli topping. We also had Joe Hawkins for dinner (as a guest, not a course), as I was a lot later than anticipated. We had planned to go to Kelly's friend Olly's birthday drinks and then on to Dalston for some gypsy balkan music, but after dinner we decided that it would take too long to get there (over an hour each way, according to TFL) and it was a bit late anyway. As we were getting ready Kelly suddenly felt awful, and sent Joe and I off to the pub on our own. We played some table football and drank some pints, and after a few tries I got through to Kelly and found she had fallen asleep, soon after which she came and joined us for a couple of drinks before we were asked to leave at midnight. The bouncer was a bit odd - he advised us that we couldn't take our drinks out, then that we could in bottles, but had to pour them in inside the pub, and Kelly's had to be drunk. Consequently Joe and I made a huge mess decanting our beers back into the bottle, and we reluctantly helped Kelly get rid of her remaining cider.

Summer comes to Geneva

23/03 - Today wasn't very eventful, as it was taken up mostly with reading and going through code to try and figure out how the hell to do what I am meant to have already done. The most interesting thing about the day was the weather - it was a steady 16º with not a cloud in the sky all day, so I made use of this by doing some reading out in the sun after lunch and by taking the long route home. I picked up a Mike Wong curry on my way home, threw open all my windows, poured myself a glass or two of bag in box, listened to Off The Wall pretty loudly and wrote up the last week on here. Quite a nice evening really.

Oh, I nearly forgot, something else happened today - I had a missed call from a Geneva number earlier, rang them back, encountered a language barrier and thought no more about it. When I got home I was trying to input the advanced passenger information for my flight back on Friday, and couldn't find my passport. I then remembered the phone call, and thought I may have heard the word 'Fust' somewhere in amongst all the French. I bought my replacement phone from there on Monday morning, so I ended up going through the Swiss yellow pages and finding the contact number for the store I had gone to, and found it matched my missed call.

24/03 - I went to Fust in the morning, asked around and got my passport back, which was a big relief. I did some more reading today, had a cured ham pizza for lunch, sat in the sun for a while and then went to the b-tagging meeting at 2 o'clock. This meeting was interminably long, and was still going when I eventually gave up and left at 1810. Ridiculous, what's the point of a 4 1/2 hour meeting? I only made it through because I decided to use my lunch break to lie in the sun and call Clare. It was an incredible day, the place is covered in daffodils, daisies, bluebells and a few wasps, all of which definitely weren't here on Friday.

All the supermarkets had closed by the time I got to them, so I decided to make the best I could out of what I had in the house - I should also mention that an email was sent out today to all the LTA students asking if anyone wanted to buy an oven for CHF 45, which I replied to immediately and very enthusiastically - I am now the proud owner of a big silver electric oven, which is sitting in the corner of my room as there is no space in the kitchen. I was going to just knock up some pasta & pesto but Kelly and Clare are throwing a dinner party in our house in London tonight, making a chorizo stew, so while I was on Skype to them all I made a chorizo and bean mix-up. On their advice I then topped it with loads of gruyère and grilled in the new oven. It is delicious, I will probably eat the whole thing (3 servings, according to the internet) in one go. I am halfway through already...

The Chorizo and Haricot Mélange (with pasta as I had already cooked it).

Greasy close-up.

Leaving France, La Salève, Alice & Fondue

20/03 - We crawled out of bed slightly the worse for wear, probably due to the aforementioned 'bit if rough' that I had last night. We had a tiny breakfast of leftovers and were faced with the task of clearing up the house, washing all the bedding and stuff and generally making it nice. This wasn't too arduous, and by lunchtime we were on our way back to Geneva. It was a very long very dull drive back. On more than one occasion the satnav told us something like "in 303 km, bear right." I was impressed Kelly managed to maintain concentration for the required 5 1/2 hours. The most interesting part was when, on the motorway in the middle of nowhere, the fuel light went on and we were informed that we had only 50km of petrol left. We carried on on our way, hoping to encounter a garage before too long, but this didn't work out too well so we had to take a detour to the nearest small town. By the time we arrived, the estimated km remaining was showing "---", so I assume we made it just in time. We ran out of Euros on the way back as well, and ended up trying four different cards at the péage before one worked and we could actually get on the final stretch.

When we arrived back at the rental office we found that someone had parked in their single parking spot, and as there was nothing else about we ended up nuzzling in behind them, with the back metre or so of our Micra sticking out onto the pavement. Kelly asked a passing policeman if this was fine, and I think the response was "Oui, c'est bon. No billet", but I can't be sure as I was off looking for a parking space and Kelly doesn't speak any French. We went for dinner at La Trattoria, as it was nearby and not too pricey, during which we discussed whether or not we would go skiing on Sunday. We started off with me proposing it and Kelly being unsure, and ended up with Kelly insisting she should go, and me questioning whether she would actually enjoy it at all after her horrible time last week. Confusing. We went home and I sewed up the leg of her salopettes, which took much longer than I expected, then we set alarms for 0645 and went to bed.

21/03 - As it turned out we needn't have worried. We woke up at the allotted time, I checked the forecast for all the places we might have gone on the bus, found them all to be rainy and rubbish, and we went back to sleep for another four hours. Definitely the right decision. With our newfound extra time and money we got the bus to La Salève, a massive table of rock that sticks out just over the French border east of Geneva. Cloudy as it was, the views were still pretty impressive.

Geneva from atop La Salève

Mont Blanc & some alps, obscured by cloud

We came back and went to see Alice in Wonderland, during which Kelly went to get popcorn, and found she only had enough for a small. However, she then found the CHF 2 required to get a medium, and the lady behind the counter refused to sell her one, claiming "I have already made this one." What the hell? Since when does one 'make' popcorn by putting it into a box? I'm sure it's fairly easy to move this popcorn into another box and add more. Anyway, after the film Kelly grumbled about the 'snacks bitch' for a while and we decided she should have probably lobbed the popcorn or 2 franc piece at her head. We now know for next time. We went on a bit of a restaurant search and ended up in Café La Demi Lune for two big tapas platters, and a few glasses of wine each, all of which were delicious. Back at the flat we packed, had some of the bag in box wine I got the other day and watched Wonders Of The Solar System on BBC2 Northern Ireland before bed. Perfect.

22/03 - Less perfect was the next morning, when Kelly awoke at 0345, dozed fitfully until getting up at 0445 and actually leaving at at 5. For some reason I chose 5 am as a good time to go and pick up my laundry from downstairs, hang it up and then fall asleep for another three hours. On my way in I bought a new phone to replace the one I dropped in the lake the other day, had lunch with James and read papers (scientific, not news) all afternoon. At 7ish I got a lift with Ricardo and some others to Bains des Pâquis, where we were having a leaving meal for Teresa. Unfortunately she was chairing a meeting which overran massively, so by the time she arrived we had already eaten our share, and left her some - this may seem impatient, but they were closing at 9 so we left ordering as late as we could. we had a drink somewhere up the road afterwards, which Teresa insisted on paying for - we had covered her fondue and wine, but actually the round of drinks came to more than our individual contributions. Simon mildly berated us PhD students, asking how much actual work we had done today. I think I avoided the question quite well.

Narbonne, Pissevaches and Ken & John

19/03 - I had the remains of last night's enormous pizza for breakfast (classy), and we set off on another vineyard mission, this time to Camplong d'Aude, which supposedly is home to a vineyard cooperative with great wines. However, every single place in the town was closed, so after we drove about for a while we gave up and drive on to Narbonne-Plage, near which was another vineyard we wanted to visit. As it was about lunchtime we thought we would explore the town a little and seek out the vineyard later. This turned out to be a mistake, in my view. Narbonne-Plage is one of the most depressing places I have ever been. It is clearly a holiday resort in summer, and in winter it is just a collection of empty identical orange buildings, ugly and desolate. Nothing whatsoever was open, there were no people on the streets, and there were zebra crossings roughly every 20 metres so the elderly people living in the awful houses could toddle over to the promenade/carpark. We didn't stay any longer than we could help, fleeing north immediately. The problem was that Narbonne-Plage became St. Pierre sur la Mer, before petering out and turning into the Etang de Pissevaches, a somewhat grim lake/swamp/marsh which we had our lunch by the side of.

L'Etang de Pissevaches. This translates as Lake of Cow Urine, I believe.

Well, we stayed in the car and I angrily threw an unripe pear into the water as an act of protest. During our meal I managed to get a reasonable amount of cornichon water and roquefort on the seats, but hopefully managed to do a good enough job of clearing it up. On the upside, when I packed the picnic I had included the Limoux and some orange juice, so we were able to make buck's fizz to brighten up our grim surroundings.

Kelly enjoys making some buck's fizz.

I grumpily do the same.

We soon decided we had had enough of Pissevaches, so we drove off in search of the vineyard we had bee told about, but had forgotten to bring any details of. In the end we stopped at the Caveau de Sarrat de Goundy, mainly because there were clearly people going in and out. It was pretty impressive, they had huge vats with what looked like petrol pumps attached, with the variety and price chalked on the side - the cheapest was only €1 a litre, ranging up to €6 for the rosé - we asked to try a few of the bottles, and the lady was very obliging. We tried maybe 3 reds, 2 rosés and 3 whites, a few of which I bought - three of the sweetest white, and one of the middle-priced red. Also I made what I see as a very important and frugal purchase (in the long run) - a gallon 'bag in box' of the cheapest red we tried (but by no means the cheapest in the shop), 5 litres for €10.30, which I definitely view as a bargain. I am drinking some now as I wrote this a few days later, it's pretty damn good. We headed home via Intermarché, where we picked up a few things for dinner. We intended to have a cheap, simple meal, but ended up buying scallops, langoustines, steak, rocket and 6 kinder eggs. This may be my fault as I had not been spitting out any of the wines we had tried, unlike sensible Kelly. Consequently I had probably ingested about 600ml on top of my earlier buck's fizz, so I had probably had the equivalent of about a bottle of wine. And it was four o'clock. Consequently I was rather sleepy in the car on the way home, and had a mild hangover by the time it came to cook dinner, which I combatted by opening one of the whites.

Our 'cheap and simple' dinner.

After our delicious and sumptuous dinner we had to go over to see Ken and John, a couple who live in the village and look after the house in Kelly's aunt's absence. They are an odd couple, who Kelly described as having "rejected Britain because it had rejected them". They are two gentlemen of 60-odd, who live in part of a fantastic house up the road. When we got there they mildly berated us for being late (we were 20 minutes late and had phoned earlier to let them know), gently mocked our choice of wine to bring (to be fair it was the remains of the one we had with dinner, and the one I bought yesterday more out of politeness than choice. We ended up staying for a couple of hours, discussing topics as wide-ranging as the location of prostitutes in London to Ken's PhD in Scottish literature at Stanford and John's brand new tooth (he had one more today than when he had popped over on Wednesday). Eventually we said our goodbyes and went home, drunker than we had expected - 'the boys', as they seem to be known, had provided us with a very nice bottle of white and then kept us topped up with "a bit of rough" from their unmarked bottles - possibly the same stuff we had seen in the vats earlier.

Driving to Ribaute, Carcasonne and quite a lot of wine

17/03 - For some reason I chose to pick up the car at 0800, so we had to call them and inform them that this would very definitely not be the case. After a leisurely breakfast Kelly and I drove to CERN, where I showed her the control room, my office, had a chat with Teresa, and bumped into a few people along the way. While sitting in the cafeteria in building 40 we had an in depth discussion about the nature of electric charge, and what it actually was. Short of repeating the fact that an electron could be thought of as a unit of charge I was unable to explain it, and when Ricardo happened to wander by he did no better, which reassured me.

At about half past one Kelly and I began our drive to Ribaute - the satnav initially reckoned that we would arrive at 2338, but after some fiddling around I managed to set it to not ignore toll roads, and our ETA improved by 5 hours. The route we were taking before we allowed ourselves to use the autoroute was much nicer though, as the drive itself was rather dull. Also we managed to get lost near Lyon and ended up doing a lap of the city, which was pretty unpleasant. In the end we arrived at Kelly's aunt's house around 8pm, which we reasoned was far too late to find any supermarkets to sell us food, so we went to the little shop in the village for tapas-ish (lots of fried things) and a bottle of wine each. By the end of the meal we had been invited to visit a vineyard and maybe go on a tour tomorrow. We took the remainders of our wine back and finished them in front of a roaring log fire. Perfect.

The River Aude from our bedroom window

18/03 - We awoke rather heavy headed after last night, and I struggled up to the shop to buy supplies. We had a breakfast consisting of fruit and the last croissant in the shop on the chilly balcony overlooking the river, before setting off to the local vineyard, Pech-latt. We found it to be closed so we continued to Carcassonne, which was incredibly windy and a bit odd - the second you enter the walled city you are greeted by a huge selection of tacky shops and restaurants, none of which look very tempting. In the end, more out of necessity than choice, we stopped in one and had some traditional French food - a really hot and rather average duck and sausage cassoulet for me, and a sub-par onion soup for Kelly, which tasted like bovril. She did have a glass of Limoux first, which almost made up for it, but pretty disappointing really. We attempted to see the sights for a little longer (I scaled a wall and got a little lost on the castle battlements) before the wind became a little too much and we fled to the shelter of a local Géant hypermarket, where we stocked up on Limoux, cheese, bread and other essentials.

Kelly enjoys Carcassonne

On our way home we stopped off at Chateau Ardolou, where we saw a woman working in a field. I asked her "Le Caveau, c'est ouvert?" to which she replied "Oui, Je suis la", so she went over and opened up. Kelly said she recognised some of the wine from supermarkets back home, but she only had one which we could try. We were a little unsure of the etiquette, and the lady was very friendly - at one point she tried to get her son to come from the house to talk to us, but with no success. Due to our lack of knowledge of protocol I ended up buying two bottles - one 2006, one 2007, for €4.50 each, and she threw in a free bottle of apple juice too,. The wines weren't amazing, but probably a lot better than any I could have found for £4 back home.

Pech-Latt, which was closed. Went to Ardolou instead.

We went to nearby Fabrezan for dinner, where we checked out Le Café du Theatre on the recommendation of a friend of Kelly's aunt. We found it to be pretty unpleasant, just a bar full of men smoking at the bar, not really somewhere I fancied having dinner. We went to Le Grand Café for a drink (somewhere we had been specifically warned against by the same man) and found it to be pretty cool - I mean, there was a dog wandering about the kitchen, along with a baby and a small parakeet who emerged from the coffee pot and flew over and landed on my head for a but, but we were there for a drink not a meal, so it was fine. We went to the pizzeria for a pretty great dinner, then headed back and had some Limoux and a white Rioja I brought from Geneva, curled up in front of a film - the film in question was the cheapest we could find at the Géant, Divine Mais Dangereuse, also known as One Night At McCool's (€3). It was pretty bizarre, but I enjoyed it quite a lot, especially for Michael Douglas's hair.

Kelly is en route...and in Geneva.

16/03 - I cleaned up the residue of last night's bloody marys before heading out to CERN, which was slightly unpleasant. I met Teresa on the tram, and the basic theme of our chat was that she wants me to do more talks and presentations, ideally one every two weeks or so. My mild hangover and I were alarmed at this, as I have successfully dodged the public speaking bullet on all but two occasions so far.

Paul has very kindly lent Kelly and I his GPS for our trip down to Carcassonne, meaning we save quite a lot on maps and also we have something else to blame if we get lost. I have just left a very long ATLAS weekly meeting, in which I typed up the last few days and occasionally paid attention to what was being discussed. Kelly is en route already but her train is delayed, meaning that she now has 6 minutes instead of 12 to make her connection at Zurich, which may be a bit tight...

...well she made it. She missed her connection and got one half an hour later, so I used the extra half an hour to pick up a Chinese from Boky, a place by the station. It does 'Fondue Chinoise a gogo', which either looks delicious or a bit grimy, I can't quite decide. Thank God she's here now, no more horrible Austria - she seems to have had a terrible four days, doing things she doesn't want to do in a grim mountaintop hotel with a load of pricks she doesn't want to be with. No more of that thank you very much.

Skiing, Café de Paris and the Pub Quiz

14/03 - I was up before seven, and I was ready early enough to pop over the road to the Boulangerie to pick up croissants, pain au chocolat, coffee and water for our journey. We managed to get two seats each on the bus to Avoriaz, so we dozed most of the way up, and by the time we actually hired our skis and got the cable car up to Avoriaz it was about 11 o'clock. Avoriaz is a bonkers place, a load of wood-shingled building sitting on the edge of the cliffs, with little pistes running between them instead of roads. We met James, who was on holiday with his family, and the three of us went off to do some blue runs to warm up. Rich was a little haphazard to begin with, nearly falling off the mountain within the first half hour - he was going a bit fast and couldn't stop in time, so he crashed through the danger sign and fell into a ditch off the edge of the piste. A Frenchman was alarmed by this, and proceeded to admonish me for his lack of control, telling me he was a danger to himself as well as others.

He took it a bit easier after that, and we had a great day of skiing, my confidence rose enormously, I was leading little adventures into the woods and even jumping (well, hopping a foot or two in the air) over the edges of the piste. After a hearty steak lunch I started to get concerned about time, knowing that the drivers tend not to hang around if you are late. We did a couple of runs which I wasn't sure we had time for, but we actually got to the bottom with nearly an hour to spare, so Rich and I had a beer in the sun while we waited. The bus ended up taking ages due to the ridiculous traffic on the way down to the autoroute. We managed to have a bit of nap, getting into town pretty late (after 7), after which we had no energy for anything more than a shower and a takeaway pizza (calabrese from La Pignata for only CHF 10!), followed by a beer and Bill Bailey's Part Troll at Dan's flat.

15/03 - I met Ailsa on the way in, and had a chat about Ponyo, anime and our shared hatred of gory films. I arrived at CERN at a reasonable time, doing a bit of work before having a guilty kebab for lunch (I was told off for taking more than two napkins, which was odd). I had meetings from 3-5, which were pretty dull, and then got a worrying text from Kelly, so I called her and she told me about her hike which went wrong, ending with a 5 hour uphill struggle through chest deep snow, which sounded terrifying. I forbade her from hiking ever again (this does not include walks between vineyards, we decided) and left at half five to meet Rich for dinner at Café de Paris. It was awesome, and we both enjoyed it immensely as you can see from the picture below.

Rich anticipates the steak

Unfortunately we couldn't help but compare it to L'Entrecôte. We came up with a few pros and cons for both which, as a geeky physicist, I have tabulated below:

...so you can see that L'Entrecôte wins, just. The staff question is not necessarily a dealbreaker, in fact we discussed whether all-female or all-male staff were best, without much of a conclusion. If you discount that point it becomes a dead heat, and I think we both decided to let L'Entrecôte win as it just seemed preferable in some way - probably due to "The surprise". If you don't know what that is, I recommend you go (there's one in London as well as Geneva and a few other places).

We met Dan and Will for the pub quiz at Lady Godiva Pub, where we achieved a respectable 6th place out of 13. I was in the running for the CHF 130 jackpot, but my question was "which E.M. Forster novel something something?" I don't know any E.M. Forster books at all, so I had to pass - the other 12 teams all passed or got their questions wrong, so the jackpot will roll over to next week, when I will be sure to attend (the answer was Room With A View). We came home and had a bloody mary with the duty free vodka that Rich brought with him, and which we had not yet had a chance to drink. Neither Dan or Will had ever had them before, and left quite a bit in their glasses - they were made using the Tabasco branded mix that Birdie gave me for Christmas, and were delicious, although maybe not the best idea as it was already midnight and Rich had a 0930 flight to catch.

Hangover, getting Rich's stuff and a late start.

13/03 - Eugh. I was warned yesterday that Cardinal lager was notorious for giving you a hangover before you have finished drinking it, and the wine we drank yesterday had a cap like a beer bottle, which is never a good sign. Thank god for the metal blinds in my room, keeping the painful sunlight at bay. Rich and I managed to sleep until 11 or so - apparently if I happened to be awake when he woke up in the night, I would greet him with a sleepy "bonjour" and roll over and go back to sleep. We got up and dashed to CERN to try and get Rich's bag back, aiming to get to the locks and keys office before 1230. We arrived at precisely 1229, found the office to be closed, rang the number on the door and were informed that it would be shut until Monday morning. We decided the best thing to do was to go to the locker and see if we could find a way in - we brought tools with us.

When we got to the lockers, we found them all to be open and empty - the one in which Rich had left his stuff now contained just an empty travelex envelope. Rich panicked and looked terrified - all his money and his passport were in the locker. I rang the CERN fire brigade (they are in charge of all emergency services stuff here), who didn't know that the lockers existed, and told us to come over and file a police report with them. We shuffled out of the door, going past the lockers one last time, which is when I noticed a sign on the wall, in four languages, informing us that the lockers were emptied every night and anything left in there could be claimed by phoning security. This sign was right next to the lockers, and in fact they had made use of it yesterday night to find the French word for locker, but had not thought to read the rest of the sign. I rang security and said "Bonjour, parlez-vous Anglais?"

"Non" came the reply. Rich readopted his look of fear, but I ploughed ahead and managed to have a conversation in French, explaining the situation, describing the bag, finding out where it might be, and informing them that we'd be right over. I realised that it was the first time that speaking French was actually important since my AS level oral exam in 2001. We went to the office at Entrance B, and found the bag (all money still present) on a table, I signed for it and we got the hell out of CERN.

We headed back via Mike Wong's, where we had a well-deserved and delicious hangover meal. We went home and had much-needed showers, eventually starting our day in Geneva at 4pm with a walk through the old town down to Eaux-vives, walking out to the Jet D'Eau and getting the boat over to Pâquis. On our way, I stopped to take a picture of a swan and forgot that I had my phone in my hand, and dropped it off a ledge into the lake. A kind gentleman scooped it out immediately, treading in a huge pile of swan crap for his trouble. It worked for a little while, but after about 10 minutes it just showed a white screen. Bugger. As we were feeling fancy,we headed up to the bar atop the Grand Hotel Kempinski, which ended up costing CHF 12 apiece for a coffee and a corona, which hurt a bit. We had a while before dinner, so we took a little walk through the red light district (sleazy but polite would be a good synopsis of that area of Geneva) on our way to Bains des Pâquis for fondue with Dan and his friend Will, which was delicious, and featured a much nicer Chasselas than last night. We headed back home for a sleep before tomorrow's skiing, with a quick stop at Café des Arts for another glass of wine along the way.

Playground on a train, mugged by Teenage Gypsy Mutes, and the beginning of Rich's saga

12/03 - This morning I had the last of the cosmology lectures, and consequently missed half of my meeting (which I can't say I minded). The discussion was mainly about the note we are planning to write, and which bit of it I should do. That decided, I had an awesome Chinese something-or-other for lunch, and went to the Top Reconstruction meeting with Matilde and Jody. I left after an hour or so to await Rich's arrival - he got a bit lost but eventually managed to hop on a CERN shuttle back here. We went for a brief walk about, during which I realised how little I knew about the place, then popped our stuff in a locker and had some beers with Dan, James, Sarah etc. I had to leave at 7 to go to Lausanne, where I was meeting my cousins, Caitlin and Siân - my train was really expensive (CHF 40!) but amazing. It had two floors, lounge areas, a restaurant with table service, a casual bistro area, and really comfortable seats.

Once in Lausanne, I met the twins and got the Metro one stop to Flon - it was a 30 second journey, but seemed worth it considering the incline. I realised quickly that I had gleaned insufficient information from the internet about where to go, as we seemed to be in a massive shopping precinct, and the only available place to go was called 'King Size Pub'. That said, it was decent enough, and had two chaps playing piano who were pretty good. We talked about their time so far in Switzerland; apparently they have had every moment planned out by Romi, a friend of my aunt's, and they had been instructed to be on the 2245 train at the latest. They are 32 years old and quite capable of looking ater themselves, but they weren't even trusted to have a key to the apartment building.

On the way back I was sitting between some rowdy blokes and a load of Chinese teenagers. One of the former begged a cigarette from one of the latter, which he proceeded to smoke on the train in the seat behind me. He clearly enjoyed it, as he was later heard to shout "Hey! Hey China! This cigarette is delicious!" I moved down the train in search of beer, and instead came upon a playground. A sodding playground, with a slide and a climbing frame, all decorated to look like dinosaurs!

Playground on a train!

I was going down the slide when I was approached by two gypsy-looking girls, who couldn't have been more than 13. They presented a form on a clipboard to me, the jist of which was that they were deaf and mute, and I should give them some money. As I was a little merry by this point, I reached into my wallet, expecting to find a CHF 10 note, but could only find a twenty. I decided to give it to them anyway, but after I did so they shook their heads and pointed at all the other alleged donations on the form, writing "CHF 30 MINIMUM" on the side of the page. I showed them that I hadn't got a ten, whereupon they gave me back the twenty and whipped a fifty out of my wallet! I was not best pleased, and ended up snatching the fifty back, leaving the twenty and getting up to leave. I got downstairs as we pulled into Genève, and couldn't find the button to open the door, so the girls reached up and opened it for me. Embarrassing, to be mildly mugged by teenage gypsy mutes and then need their help to get off the train.

While I was in Lausanne, I had received a few phone calls and messages from Rich and co., telling me that he had forgotten the combination to the locker and was there anything I could suggest. I called them to find that they had not opened the locker, containing all Rich's ski gear, money, clothes and passport, and so had left CERN, had pizza and were heading home. Rich and I had been undecided about whether to ski on Saturday or Sunday, but this made the decision for us. I had bought beer and wine in preparation for Rich's visit, so I invited them round to drown his sorrows. We did this quite effectively - Dan Short, Dan Hayden, James, Rich and I made our way through a couple of litres of Chasselas (one of which had a fizziness to it which is not meant to be there) and some beers, before retiring at about 2, Rich and I sleeping in my bed.

Cosmology, Kel's retreat and 'boy girl sex'

10/03 - Another cosmology lecture this morning. I was about 15 minutes late, by which point I had missed the intro and was greeted by 30 minutes of graphs. I understood a lot of it, and it was still good, but not as good as yesterday. Due to lack of choice (honest) I had steak and chips for lunch - way too many chips, no vegetables, overcooked steak. Yum. I feel I started some good work today, at one point having a Skype chat with Ben while having James on iChat, all talking about work stuff. I got the bus at 6 with Dan, but I skipped the all you can eat pizza in favour of an enormous salad, containing goat's cheese, chorizo, avocado, parmesan, sun dried tomato and rocket. All the good things.

Kelly rang and packed at me, as she is going to Austria on her lab retreat tomorrow - this may be great, but will probably be awful. We discussed plans for next weekend, and realised that we can just hire a car here (hopefully taking advantage of Zack's UN discount), and drive pretty much wherever we want in four days. So, this leaves us with some tough decisions to make - to stay with her stepsister in Slovenia? In her aunt's house near Carcassonne? Just drive to Venice/Bologna/Milan and hang out? I am looking forward to this adventure.

11/03 - Well, seems like I was right. Kelly texted me this morning to let me know a few things; firstly that the skilift leading to her accommodation shuts at 3 pm every day, meaning that she is trapped there from then until it opens at 9 in the morning. Secondly, easyjet lost her luggage, meaning she only has the clothes she wore on the plane, which is not much help as it is currently -1º in Innsbruck, which is 1500m below Kelly's mountaintop hideaway. Which is to say, I bet she's really cold. The lecture this morning was good, somehow he managed to fit the terms "boy girl sex" and "foreplay" into his account of the history of the Hubble constant.

The afternoon was odd - I started a few things and almost immediately dropped them, having massive problems concentrating on anything for any period of time. I drank large amounts of citron tea from the machine in my hall, and tried to learn some stuff about statistical analysis, but ended up reading loads of posts by Brian Cox about this ridiculous story. And informing people of the fact that this is actually fine, has been planned for ages, and amounts to no less physics time than if the accelerator ran on its old schedule, with summer and winter shutdowns.

I managed to get the 1801 bus again, and on my way back I realised it was Thursday, i.e. late opening day in Geneva, so I went along the fancy shopping street looking for stuff. However, it then started to snow quite heavily, so I took refuge in Globus and came out with a nice looking bottle of wine, before getting the tram to Planpalais so I could pick up a Mike Wong takeaway on my way home. After I tried to request a beef noodle soup with no coriander and extra chili in French, and just about succeeded, she then said "eat here or to go?" I felt silly. It was delicious though, I am slurping my way through the last dregs as I write this.

Rich is coming out tomorrow, until Tuesday - I am not 100% sure what to do with him. The main problem is tomorrow night, when I am meeting my cousins in Lausanne for the evening (they have been let off their strict Swiss reins for the night), and I could probably bring him along but no other people (he has met them before after all), but he may wish to stay in Geneva with the other people we know - I think the best way to deal with this may be just to ask him.

Making a start & a horrible meal.

08/03 - After the last post, I succeeded in staying at CERN until about 6, when I fled and moped about at home - the most interesting thing that happened was that I managed to eat three thin steaks for dinner, two sliced up in a bowl of noodles, and one just fried, topped with comté and grilled. Delicious.

09/03 - Yesterday I started off with a lecture on dark matter. This has nothing to do with anything I have ever studied, but Teresa recommended it as being an interesting course, so I went along and she was proved right. The speaker, Michael S. Turner, was really animated and almost managed to make me care about cosmology. After a very short lunch I had a pretty good meeting with Teresa in which we figured out what I don't know (loads) and what I need to know (almost as much). I got in contact with Ben, a senior guy in my group, and I was assigned some work to do for a note he's writing - could even get my name on the author list, which would be good. I left just in time to get to Migros, where I bought bananas, beef & socks, and a few bits and pieces which somehow came to CHF 48 - I honestly have no idea what I bought. I also got some cheap wine and beer from Denner, as I figured it's always good to have in the house.

The beef became part of a disastrous beef satay, as I couldn't be arsed to marinate I just kind of tossed everything in, which resulted in me feeling rather ill. Oddly, even though this is only the second day I haven't gone out or seen anyone, I already feel like I am becoming a recluse.

An abridged account of the weekend

05/03 - This was a bit of a nonsense day. I got in early to prepare some questions in time for my meeting at half 11. at 10 I got a message postponing the meeting to early afternoon, by which point I would already be en route to England. I composed the questions and sent them anyway, hoping to persuade them to talk about me in my absence and maybe even come up with something for me to actually do as part of the group. In light of my early departure I skipped lunch, a decision I cam to regret soon after - I got the Y bus at half one, and as always made it through to my gate very quickly and was waiting in the departure lounge for an hour - I am going to begin cutting these things finer. My lunch ended up being an extortionate & tiny delice de Gruyère followed by an identical one on the plane - it's just a cheese roll.

I arrived at Heathrow and rushed through arrivals, aiming to meet Kelly at Clapham Junction, to find her waiting at the door for me - she surprised me at Gatwick last time and had claimed she was going to the hairdresser today, but came all the way out here instead. Wonderful.

Le Weekend - I am going to simply write a very brief account of the weekend here, as this blog was intended to be an account of time spent away, not time at home. We went to my cousin's leaving do (she is moving to Nepal for a few months) in The Horse at Lambeth North, and had a great time there before Kelly and I went on to someone's (Guy's?) birthday in an ex-embassy near Hyde Park Corner - a bizarre venue for an awesome party. We are not sure what time we left, but I think it was a lot later than we thought (we both forgot that we had taken a taxi home until late the next day).

I had to get up to go to Kent for my Grandmother' 93rd birthday lunch, which was lovely. She liked the (unoriginal) Swiss chocolates I had brought her, and ended up with a huge bag of presents from her daughters and various grandchildren. I came back to London for a dinner party Kelly was throwing at our house, which consisted of amazing smoked salmon with horseradish and vodka cream, perfect beef bourgignon with a delicious salad and then cheese or Vienetta (yes!) for dessert. The last guests left around 2am, whereupon we cleared everything up - we have a dishwasher now, it's incredible - and went to bed. I counted in the morning, and the 10 of us got through a ridiculous amount of wine - at least 10 bottles, not including the 3 1/2 which went into the bourgignon.

Sunday was spent wandering the streets of Clapham South before settling down in a pub called the Draft Room for a 'pint of thirds' - three 1/3 pint glasses, each with a different interesting beer. In the evening we went to my friend Tom's house for a dumpling dinner - all three courses were dumpling based, and incredible dense and filling. I managed 8, Kelly three and a half. Come Monday morning I still felt like I was full of delicious boulders.

08/03 - This morning I was out of the house by half 6, starting a 5 hour journey back to CERN. There were no seats on the tube so I stood and tried not to fall asleep on my way to Bank. Once I got there I got on the DLR, which I still find a bit exciting - on the way out to London City Airport you go past so much interesting stuff, parts of London I would never usually encounter - it was dawn when I left the house, and everything was bathed in a very clear, crisp light which made it look amazing. London City is an odd place, I was told it was small but it seemed more like a train station than an airport. There were no queues, and when I was made to take my hat off before going through the metal detectors, my hair tumbled out and I was taken aside for a search. A brief rummage later, the lady shouted "yep, there is a cake in there!" to her colleague, and I was let through. I bumped into Anna, a girl from UCL who I did physics with, who was going to Zermatt for a conference on cantilevers (?), during which they had from 0930 to 1700 free for skiing. Sounds like a good conference. On the plane I was asleep before takeoff, missing the free food and coffee for which I had paid the extra money to fly Swiss instead of Easyjet. Bugger. I think it was still worth it though, the chairs in our little 100 seat plane were really comfortable, the plane was half empty, and there were no screaming children either.

When I arrived in Geneva I found I had just missed the half hourly direct bus to CERN, so I had to get bus-tram-bus which probably took me half an hour longer than it otherwise would, but it was too cold to wait outside. Never mind, when I got in I went straight to lunch and had a massive seafood risotto - in spite of the subsequent ristretto, I am now on the verge of falling asleep at my desk. I think today will be a long day.

A brief account of Tuesday to Thursday - masterclasses, steak and rice.

02/03 - There are two reasons to keep this brief - firstly not much happened, and secondly I have forgotten most of it anyway. I am unsure what happened during the day on Tuesday, all I wrote down was "work, lunch, false alarm on work", whatever that might mean. In the afternoon I moderated another International Physics Masterclass with a chap called Marco. They were a lot less responsive than the groups we had last week, and I found myself leaving him to do a lot of the talking. There were some excruciating silences, which he didn't seem to mind, and afterwards I met james and Dan for dinner - James had never been to L'Entrecôte, the first place I ever went for dinner in Geneva. We treated ourselves to wine and dessert, and each of us came out CHF 65 poorer but it was delicious, as always. The wine was great even though it was the cheapest, and the cheese platter was amazing. Afterwards we came back to my flat, as I had beer, and watched a couple of episodes of Black Books on youtube before I kicked them out.

03/03 - Oops, today I slept through/turned off and ignored all of my alarms (multiple alarms on each of two phones and my iPod, placed all over the flat) and slept for two hours longer than I had intended. This was not a massive disaster, as I had no meetings and nothing in particular to go in for, so I worked from home. Also I built the other set of IKEA shelves I got the other week, which are standing proud next to me as I type this, in all their low quality plain wood glory. In the evening I received a few emails from Dan and James - some fellow named Lee has returned to CVERN after an absence god-knows-where, and consequently most of the normal takers for Dan's pizza and film combo are out welcoming him back, so instead we cooked dinner (well, they shared, I didn't know what was going on so I made Nasi Goreng) and watched Terminator 2 just the three of us. It was awesome. After watching Terminator last week I was already looking forward to it, and it was even better than I remembered. I mean, the effects have come on such a long way from T1, Robert Patrick is a pretty menacing bad guy, and the soundtrack? There are only three songs in the entire film - bad to the bone, you could be mine (G 'n' R) and guitars, cadillacs. Awesome.

04/03 - I made it in fairly early today, having solved yesterday's problem - if I put one of my phones in the bath, I am far more likely to have a shower and actually get up. Hopefully this will be a key weapon in my battle against my morning self. I had a pretty productive day, mainly because I went for a coffee with Teresa, my designated stand-in supervisor. I mean, it's been a month and I am not too sure what I am meant to be doing, just heading in various directions without a clear goal. I told her this and she was rather surprised, assuming I had been studious and organised all this time, but she was also very sympathetic and said she'd help me to direct my efforts towards something that might one day become a thesis. Phew.

I had another masterclass this evening, with Marco again. It was much better, mainly because the schools connected were much chattier and asked much better questions than last time, especially the American one - for example will we destroy anything (no), are there any ill effects to the surroundings from the LHC (no), what is our average work day (officially 40 hours a week but really just however much time it takes to get the work done - I let Marco answer that one), and what is the proportion of females to males at CERN (15%, and that's being generous).

I ended up staying until half 7 this evening (that's a 9.5 hour day, hopefully that makes up for yesterday a bit) before coming home and cooking a leftover special, which was mainly tomato, garlic, onions, some kind of spicy French sausage (not in the slightest bit spicy) with the rest of yesterday's rice. Also I just listened to the entirety of NOW 13, the finest songs 1988 had to offer. Wonderful. I am going back to England tomorrow, in just 15 hours I will be packing up and sneaking off, and I am looking forward to it immensely.

Sunday with Kelly and a sleepy Monday

28/02 - Kelly and I were up pretty late today, as we had nothing planned whatsoever. We walked down to the old town and went up the cathedral, which gave us some awesome views of the (somewhat overcast) city.

Lac Leman from the top of the cathedral

Our aim for the day was to find some lunch and take a boat across the lake, both of which we achieved - I was quite keen on fondue, Kelly less so - I took us out to Bains Des Pâquis anyway, where I had my best fondue so far, on the pretence that they would have other things and I could have a fondue for one. As it turned out, this was half true - they only serve fondue in the evenings, so we ended up sharing pumpkin soup with some cheeses, some viande sechée with pickles and some delicious terrine, all washed down with some casselas wine. I'm not entirely sure if that's what it was called, but it was a Swiss white, it was the cheapest and it was good. All this set us back €18 (I had forgotten to get any francs earlier) which is a bargain for Geneva. On our walk back there was a crazy rainstorm, so the walk quickly became a bus ride.

Cheap and delicious lunch

In the evening we hung out at the flat and got hold of a couple of films to watch. Kelly had cereal for dinner (her choice) and immediately felt rather ill again, so after I fussed over her a bit we settled down on the sofa and put on her choice, The Road. This was a terrible idea - incredibly bleak, full of death and dark flashbacks - we got as far as the point where they find a basement and are attacked by emaciated naked apocalypse survivors (who were being farmed for meat by cannibals) before Kelly shouted "goldfish princess!" from under the duvet. This slightly odd exclamation referred to my choice of film, the studio Ghibli film Ponyo, an animated film which is vaguely based on The Little Mermaid, but cuter and set in Japan. This film is, as far as I can tell, the opposite of The Road, and went some way to undoing the damage caused by the previous film, although we both had to make a conscious effort not to think about the last image we saw before I turned the latter off.

01/03 - Kelly had to be up at 0445 to make her 7 o'clock flight, so I walked her downstairs in spite of her protests, but then went back to bed for a long time. A little too long in fact, in that I overslept enormously, but somehow I managed to blag my way through my meetings - the first of which I was the only person to connect from CERN, so I had to take notes and that made me feel productive. I left just in time to get the bus to Forumeyrin in order to make the supermarket before it closed at 7. The fruits of this were a steak sandwich (sunflower seed bread, café de paris butter, rare entrecôte, grated comté, another steak layer, another cheese layer, more butter and bread) which was amazing, and finished off my day. I miss Kelly a lot more today than I did last time we parted, probably because now she's been in the flat it feels empty without her.