Evening shifts - mainly boredom and sandwiches. Oh, and a cuckoo clock!

25/05 - I awoke at about 10 and somehow didn't manage to leave the house until noon. I did all my jobs - went shopping, did laundry, went on a secret mission and made it to CERN at 1450, just in time for my shift. It is as hot today as it was yesterday (33º, according to the Forumeyrin pharmacy), so once again I am not relishing the prospect of 8 hours indoors. There were a couple of ticket inspectors on the bus this morning, larking about and putting ice down each others backs. I don't think I have ever seen such cheery inspectors, making jokes with the passengers and putting us all at ease (although I doubt I would feel the same had I not had a ticket).

My shift was uneventful, I failed to get some stuff working and went a bit mad - I felt really twitchy and unhappy for most of it. This was solved a little when I decided to have my dinner a bit early, as the bagels (coronation chicken and smoked salmon & Philadelphia) made me drowsy and content. I think I am beginning to worry about the service work and my 2nd year report, which I have to finish (and indeed start) in the next 10 days/2½ weeks respectively.

26/05 - I ended up staying up for a few hours by accident, despite being exhausted at midnight. I was mostly reading comics, and before I knew it it was 3am. I got up at 11, made gnocchi for breakfast and more bagels (same fillings) for my dinner. I booked trains to Paris to see Pat & Reshmi in a few weeks (which had gone up €23 in the past week) and I had plans to hoover and go and lie in the sun, but before I knew it it was nearly 2pm and I had to dash in for my shift - I seem incapable of arriving anything but in the nick of time.

Nothing happened on shift at all, as far as I remember. I sat, read articles and attempted some work, and ate my bagels. That is it.

27/05 - Today I finally managed to buy Clare's birthday present, a cuckoo clock which you can see below. I chose it, with Kelly's help, from a plethora of variations on the theme - there are loads of shops in town which sell exactly the same clocks for different prices - I saw variations of about CHF 40 for this particular one.

Clare's birthday present (prices clumsily blurred out)

Today was a better planned day than usual, and I even managed a nice lunch (although I forget what) and made it to shift with plenty of time spare. Shift was, yet again, pretty dull. I don't really have too much to say about it. I had a pretty awesome dinner, which mainly consisted of a home-made caprese salad with some fresh baked bread, and also to supplement this I nipped off to R1 and got some takeaway beef fagotini. I was seen by a few people (Dan, Elisa, Matilde) en route, all of whom shouted "You're on shift! What are you doing away from your desk!" or words to that effect. I managed to make the earlier bus and was in my flat by about 2345, but I inevitably ended up staying up for a couple of hours, in spite of my tiredness.

Worrying too much and a (relatively) crazy Geneva weekend

18/05 - Eugh. I hardly slept last night, and had to be out of the house by 0600 to get a train to Gatwick. I felt exhausted and a bit ill all day - probably not aided by my ridiculously spicy 0730 duck and hoi sin gyoza soup. I was in the office by 1200, meaning that it took me exactly 5 hours door to door. Had I left a little later (I had to wait ages for a train anyway) and had the CERN shuttle left on time I think I could have made it in 0415. I had lunch in the sun and managed to stay at work until about 6 o'clock, when I headed back home and made a massive bowl of pasta, intending to take some with me for the night shift tomorrow. This backfired, as I ate half and immediately passed out for two hours on my bed. I have a talk to give tomorrow in the Top UK meeting which I am pretty worried about, so much so that I went over to James' flat for a quick tutorial on histograms at about half past 10.

19/05 - I then stayed up making plots until about 0330, fell asleep for 4 hours or so and then got up to finish the talk. I decided that, as I would only be videoconferencing from CERN anyway, I could just as well do it from home. I finished my talk at about 1530, and gave it at 1550 - cutting it a bit fine. It went OK, I nearly froze a couple of times but sort of blagged my way through it. I don't know why I get so worried about talking in public, it really cripples me with fear. I stayed connected until the meeting finished at 6, then fell asleep for another three hours before rousing myself and going, via Mike Wong's, to CERN for my night shift. Yet again there is no physics scheduled for tonight, so I have spent the last two hours or so writing all this up. Phew.

20/05 - So I got home and slept for a long time, then received the following email:

As the LHC has gone in access mode & there will not be beams for 24h,

We cancel the DAQ/HLT shifts for today.

Yes! Apparently I still get the credit for this too, as it is not my fault they are cancelled. I milled about in my house for a bit until it was time to go off to French class. This passed without anything of note happening, apart from the fact that it was a great day outside and only about 6/20 people turned up. I grabbed a kebab on my way home, which was a surprise as it was about 11pm, and nothing is usually open. It was salary and adequate, I suppose.

21/05 - I was on course for getting into CERN just after 9, which would be a new record, but I accidentally knocked a whole pint of Ribena all over my bedside table, so instead of being early I arrived late, with slightly sticky flip flops. I had a long talk about my service work today, and essentially figured out what it is I am meant be actually doing. I hung around until about 7, when I went and got Kelly from the airport.

We headed straight to a restaurant called Takumi, a Japanese place which Zack and Masa recommended to us a week or two ago. It was pretty flash, nice inside and it had a few set menu options ranging from CHF 60-115. These were a little steep for us, so we went for a selection of awesome nigiri and maki, along with some scallops and fish skin chips, followed by red bean mochi. It was awesome and probably set us back about CHF 60 - I have definitely had much worse meals for that much money. We had some great wine with it, and we stopped off at Café Rond Point round the corner for another glass of wine, which tasted oddly milky.

22/05 - So today was the Caves Ouvertes in canton Vaud, where all the vineyards in the canton open up for a day of free tasting. Kelly and I got a train to Morges, where we wandered around the town a little and just missed the first bus. We got to our first vineyard at about 1330, and so we settled down at Domaine de Valmont for a few wines. We tried all the Chardonnays, a Chasselas and some rosés, had some awesome free snacks and I ended up buying a bottle of rosé and a Chasselas.

Kelly trying the wines

We got the bus up to the next place, Vufflens-le-Château, checked out one of the caves and were a bit disappointed - partly because it was indoors and it was an incredibly beautiful day. We walked up the hill to the next place, which had a selection of wines from the region, and also sold Malakoffs, which are kind of deep-fried cheese balls, made somehow with white wine, crispy on the outside and gooey and delicious on the inside. Amazing (on further research, I have learnt that they were incorrectly labelled, and were in fact Beignets de Vinzel).

Malakoff/Beignet de Vinzel (I did not take this picture)

Me, at the last vineyard we stopped at

The wines here were great too, we tried a few and I came away with three bottles (a rosé, a Garanoir and a Pinot Noir, I think). We bumped into Chris and Jim, two guys who work on ATLAS who I vaguely knew of. They had two crates each, and were returning next week to the first (and allegedly best) place to pick up a few more. We got the penultimate bus back down to Morges, found some seats on the train (the first ones we found had a used nappy stuffed in the litter bin) and Kelly promptly fell asleep on my lap.

On our return to Geneva, we went straight to Sushi Train, a place in Molard which has a happy hour from 7-10pm every day, so we had loads of food (10 plates for me, 5 for Kelly) for about £30 total, which soaked up the wine nicely. We went home afterwards, intending to hang out until Matt Fraser called us to let us know when to go to a party he had told us about yesterday - instead of this we fell asleep for about three hours, waking up at half past 11 in a bit of a panic - I rang Matt to see if we had missed our opportunity, but it turned out that he had only just got home and so we went over to meet him and Sara, and walked to La Boisserette - this is a squat on a leafy sidestreet which backs onto a huge fancy house. We were walking through this wooded area when we heard the music, coming from a house with a scruffy garden. We walked around the back, past some alternative looking types and down into the basement. It was incredibly hot down there, they had a bar in a sweaty little bomb shelter and a much cooler room with Mario Cart on an N64. It was packed, and they had a 'pay freely or die' policy, which means you dropped CHF 10 in the jar and then you can have all the drinks you like.

We were there for ages, dancing about, chatting, exploring and generally marvelling at the fact that there is a part of Geneva which has girls with half their heads shaved, guys in vest tops with make-up on, skinheads and punks (who turned up about 3) all coexisting and living rent free in an awesome house in the woods. We stayed until about 5am, when we walked Sara halfway home and got in at about 0530. I texted Matt to see where he had got to and he replied with "I just woke up slightly hypothermic in the garden", but he seemed chipper. We put the blinds down to keep put the encroaching dawn, and went to sleep.

23/05 - Today was a hangover day, that's for sure. We woke up at around half 10, meaning we probably had about 4 hours of sleep. The main reason we got up is that I was starving hungry and in need of pizza - however, I became confused and found that the place I was hoping to go to was closed on Sunday. Today was one of those mornings where a croissant simply would not suffice, so we ended up walking quite a long way - we had intended to have breakfast in Parc Alfred Bertrand, at the end of my road, but instead we walked all the way down to the Arve and ate it sitting on a bench by the river. After this we climbed down a ladder to the actual river, where before too long we came across a beach, where I paddled in the incredibly cold water and skimmed some stones. It was nice, but there was quite a bit of dog poo along the path, and Kelly was convinced that some of it was human. Adventure completed, we headed along the river and through Planpalais up to Parc des Bastions, where we lay in the sun for a while listening to Ukelele players, which was pretty nice.

Searching for stones to skip on L'Arve

After a while I got a message from Zack, asking if I could come over and 'satisfy her Britannic majesty', which meant signing some forms so that his son Finn (currently about a month old) could get a passport. We hung out for a while, looking out over Geneva from their 6th floor balcony, basking in the sun - it really was a beautiful day. We headed home via the food market on Planpalais, where we assembled an amazing picnic from roast chicken, tomatoes, mozzarella, avocados, fresh bread, strawberries and a bottle of wine (Zack advised us to have a 'sharpener' to deal with our hangovers). We ate this in the park we had originally intended to have breakfast in - only about 5 hours and about 5 miles late.

As the sun began to set we headed home and watched The Time Travelers Wife, which I had not expected to like but found myself really drawn into it - there was a moment where we were concerned that they were about to whack in a load of sciencey nonsense to give a medical explanation for time travel, but they refrained. Just before we went to bed I thought I would double check the times for the morning, in case they had randomly changed the bus routes (as the Swiss seem to do often), and I discovered that tomorrow morning is a public holiday so the first bus was a full half hour later than usual. I rang the taxi company (there seems to be only one in Geneva) to find out how much a taxi would be at 0520 in the morning, and how long it would take - the lady on the other end was incredibly unhelpful, she took a booking but refused to speculate on either price or duration. I said (in French) "how much will it roughly be? You have no idea? 10 francs or 50 francs, no idea at all? And will it take 5 minutes or half an hour?" To all of which she replied that she did not know, as if it was not her job. That is precisely her job, to take bookings and maybe know a little about the actual service she is brokering. I did not have the French to explain this, so instead I resolved to look elsewhere and just turn my phone off in the morning if we decided not to use them. What a twat. I ended up finding out how far it was on Google Maps, finding the mandated taxi rates and working it out for myself - under 10 minutes, under CHF 20. That wasn't so hard was it? I would not have bothered, but I did not have much Swiss cash (Kelly had none left either) and I needed to know if we could cover it or whether a late night trip to the cash point was required.

24/05 - It was really warm last night, and coupled with the fact that Kelly had to be up at 5 I don't think we slept too well. After I sent Kelly off in the cab I fell asleep for 6 more hours, waking up just in time to get the bus into CERN before the end of the lunch. Or so I thought. Even though I already knew that all transport was doing a Sunday service, I still waited at the bus stop for 20 minutes before I remembered that it was a public holiday. Consequently I got to Vaudagne (where I change buses for CERN) at about 2 o'clock, so I had missed the chance to get a meal. I went to the big shopping centre down the road, intending to grab lunch and dinner, forgetting that everything would be closed because it was still a public holiday. Idiot. I ended up buying a kebab sandwich and some takeaway pasta for later, and made it into CERN with enough time to have a bit of a sunbathe (I went to the top of the fire escape on the side of the ATLAS building, where noone can see you except from directly below).

My shift was uneventful, as always - there were about 6 trigger experts sitting next to me making loads of noise for the first hour or two, then they left me in peace for the next 6. The pasta was pretty minting, and on my way home I just missed a bus and a tram and a bus so the journey took me absolutely ages. I had a good chat with Dad about what we'll do when he comes out here though, which was good - hopefully he'll get round to actually booking flights soon.

When I arrived home I had a chat with Clare, who reminded me that I should watch the remaining episodes of Lost ASAP so as to avoid any spoilers of the ending - I watched episodes 13 and 14 (of 18) and came out of it elated and heartbroken. Phew. I will try and fit in the next two tomorrow and the final two on Wednesday (if not before).

ATP, curated by Pavement

14/05 - Now, the reason I am back in the UK - ages ago I bought tickets for Kelly, Simon, Frau and myself to go to All Tomorrow's Parties at Butlins in Minehead. It is a funny sort of a festival, where all the bands are chosen by a guest curator - in this case, Pavement. I don't know much Pavement, and I mainly bought the tickets after Sam Joynes persuaded me it would be awesome. I met Simon at Clapham Junction on our way to Andover, where Frau picked us up and we headed to Tesco to buy a silly amount of alcohol and food. We got to the festival at around half past five and checked into our chalet, which was a bit odd - two bedrooms and a nice little kitchen/living room. We opened some beers and went for an adventure, to see what Butlins had to offer. We watched some bands in the main pavilion, namely the end of Calexico and a bit of Broken Social Scene before Kelly arrived - my Mum and sister had very kindly offered her a lift from Taunton station, a good 40 minute drive, so I offered to show them around the chalet but they balked a little at the walk, so I bid them farewell and Kelly and I went off to see some bands.

Well, for the next couple of hours we just minced about with Si and Frau, before going to see Marble Valley (bonkers and good, the singer is the drummer from Pavement), then popped over to see Wooden Shjips, who were pretty incredible - I am not sure of I necessarily liked them that much, but they made a powerful noise and had amazing beards. I think we then proceeded to wander about and booze a bit, but I am not too sure… there may have been tequila drunk out of empty single-serving milk things. I know we got to bed around 4.

15/05 - I am not too sure what we did today - we had a leisurely breakfast and then went to Splash Waterworld, where I bumped into Joseph Lilley (a guy I know from CERN) who insisted on giving me a big wet semi-naked hug. We went on one ride, the Space bowl, which involves going down a flume and landing in a big bowl which you spin around a few times before dropping into a deep pool - like those things for putting 2p pieces in. Awesome. Kelly and I then left and went for a walk along the beach, got a sandwich and got back to Butlins in time to catch some of Mark Eitzel - a desperate seeming fellow, singing sad and beautiful songs in a scruffy suit. I liked him a lot. We then went over to see Camera Obscura who, apart from the two songs I recognised, we rather a disappointment. Luckily we had smuggled in a bottle of tinto so we didn't mind too much. Next were, supposedly, the main attraction of the weekend - Pavement. They were OK, I think the Pavilion stage is not really a very good venue. I liked some of their stuff, but I think I am just going to have to come out and admit it: I don't like Pavement very much. Or their choice of bands.

Kelly and Simon, enthusiastic

Looking back at the lineup I am having trouble figuring out how we filled so much of the time - although I do know that we went back to the chalet and played two or three drinking games at once and drank a load of tequila. The next thing we saw was Omar Souleyman, who wasn't on until 0045. He was mental too - really fun though. He is a Syrian singer with a band of two, playing insanely fast Syrian folk-pop stuff. Good for a bonkers dance about - Kelly is convinced that he is a gimmick, me not so much. Kelly and I got chatting to the drummer(s) from Pavement in there as well, as one of them is from Hull. I bought the main guy a drink, saying "this is for Marble Valley, not Pavement", which may have been a little rude, in retrospect. We caught some of Still Flyin' as well, and tried to join Sam in Crazy Horse for some disco, but the queue was far too big.

Omar Souleyman

16/05 - I awoke at some ungodly hour to see Kelly sitting bolt upright in bed, clutching a saucepan of vomit. Apparently my reaction was to exclaim "oh God!", leap out of bed, take the saucepan and run to the bathroom to dispose of the contents and return with a washing up bowl (a far more practical receptacle) and some tissues.

We got up pretty late today, partly because of yesterday's Tequila, and headed straight to see Tim Chad & Sherry, a kind of lounge band from the southern US, with a singing drummer who looked entirely incongruous - definitely not a lounge singer. Their last song had an incredible chorus, which went as follows:

When you put your arms around me,

and put me to the test,

you know you've found your hero,

'cause my love is the best!

Stirring stuff. It was pissing down today, which was a bummer as we had planned to do some Adventure Golf, which I think may have been the main reason Simon wanted to come this weekend. Instead we sat about drinking tea/beer and watching Countryfile - a novel thing to be doing at a music festival. We tried to go bowling and were informed that the earliest we could do so was at 5pm. Unfortunately Kelly had to get the 1650 bus to Taunton, as she had something she had to attend at 0800 in the morning, so I bid her farewell and went bowling. Sam and his mate Alex joined us, and we gave a pretty poor showing - I think the highest score was 99. We then went to see Boris performing Feedbacker - a 44 minute single song which blew me away. We then went home to think about what we had seen. Also, as Frau is driving us home tomorrow morning, Simon decided that we had to 'burn bright and early', and he poured the remainder of the tequila into three wine glasses which we had to down. There was probably only about 75 ml left, but it was no easy task.

Mmm, tasty. Note the Burger King salt sachets.

A beautiful sunset over the Skyline Pavilion

We grabbed some beers and made a bottle of tinto, which we drank en route. We were a little slower than we had anticipated at this, and as it was getting cold we ended up drinking it behind a wall by the football pitches. Bob from Pavement stumbled by and kicked a football to far, and then we caught a bit of The Fall and went to watch the Raincoats, who were terrible. I really didn't enjoy a second of their show, in fact we left and sat around in Bar Rosso for a bit instead. The last band of the weekend was Endless Boogie - another one-song band, they played some pretty awesome stuff for 45 minutes, then Steven Malkmus from Pavement came and joined them for the last song. Frau very sensibly went to bed while Simon and I met up with Sam in search of a chalet party. We walked around for ages, found nothing, and Sam ended up hosting one himself, much to his friend Alex's annoyance. It was an odd festival, I felt there weren't really enough bands (only about 41 bands over three days), meaning that on a few occasions there was only one option, and if that sucked, there was nothing else to see. I would go again, but only if the curator was someone who (a) I liked, and (b) whose music taste I trusted. I did really enjoy a few of the unexpected bands (Marble Valley, Boris, Omar Souleyman and Endless Boogie), but four bands out of forty is a pretty poor ratio.

17/05 - Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Monday morning was precisely no fun. We were up before 9, checked out and on the road by 10, and parked at the back of Tropiquaria animal park so that Simon could be sick in the bushes by 1015. The journey was OK, but none of us were in the best state - Simon was gently moaning for a lot of the trip, while I fell asleep in the back until Reading, where I was able to get the full English that I had been craving all weekend. Frau dropped me off at home about 1430, and I promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours on the sofa. Kelly rang and I went and met her at the supermarket, we made fajitas and watched Sean Of The Dead with Ed and Bob. This would have been a prefect evening, had it not been for the fact that Kelly hates films with things jumping out on people. Zombie films probably not a good idea then.

Working much harder than usual, and going back to the UK

10/05 - A lot of work went down today, and the following few days too. Consequently not much fun happened. I did a fair amount of internet shopping after hours - some headphones, memory stick, a book (Cory Doctorow's new one, For The Win). On my way home, I got a call from Kelly telling me that she had just talked to Gordon (head of her course) and he had said that the prospects of her getting onto the mental health PhD she wanted were not good. I tried to reassure her, but with not much success. I panicked a bit, went to the Asian supermarket on Rue De Servette and bought a load of stuff to try and calm me down, then bought a pizza from Pizza Brasil (this only cost CHF 10, and came with a free litre of ice tea!). By the time I made it to Coutance to catch the bus, Kelly had rung me back and told me that she had received an email from Patrick Maxwell, who is the chap who ultimately decides if she gets the new PhD or not, and he said it was all fine. That was a draining few minutes, I arrived home having been both terrified and elated in quick succession. I added some extra anchovies and cheddar to my pizza and grilled it for a bit - it became so greasy that by the time I had eaten half of it it had started to soak through the box. It was still delicious, but made me feel a little guilty.

11/05 - Today I missed a bus by a few seconds, popped into the shop to buy batteries and missed the next one by about two seconds as well. I started the day somewhat grumpily, worked until about 1415 when I remembered to go and have lunch. R1 stops serving at 1400, so I was left with a terrible chicken curry sandwich (not enough filling, as always), a tiny salami bun thing and a massive doughnut with about half a jar of jam in it. Worst lunch so far. I worked until about 1915, went to my French class intending to find dinner along the way, and spent 20 minutes wandering though the extensive car park before I finally found my way in, only to find most of the routes barricaded off - I ended up inhaling two cheeseburgers and grumpily arriving 20 minutes late for French. Ironically, when I arrived they were doing 'excuses', and I was entirely unable to think of one.

12/05 - Today was just another day of work - I have been rather busy, and my memories of day to day occurrences are fading fast. My main memories are that I ate quite a few pistachio macarons, had a chicken kebab for lunch (it was not very delicious), met James on the bus and we tore into the PhD system (particle physics especially) and all its inefficiencies. I think all I had to eat was noodles - my diet has gone to absolute shit this week, mostly pizza & burgers - certainly nothing one might call a vegetable.

13/05 - Today is Ascension Day, a holiday in Switzerland. I spent the first half of it sitting on the floor of my flat, doing some work in my dressing gown. The second half I spent coming home. I was starving by the time I got to the airport, got a Big King XXL from the Burger King in a bit of the airport I had never seen before. The lady behind the till was incredibly slow - she would take an order then saunter about making it herself, waiting for it all to be ready before giving it to the customer. Usually another employee does the fetching - this meant that every order took a couple of minutes, so I spent 20 minutes queuing for my food, so I ended up arriving at the gate as my flight was already boarding. On the upside, the burger was great.

When I got to Gatwick I headed straight to Farringdon to meet Kelly, as she had a surprise for me - this was an exhibition in the Barbican, featuring a load of zebra finches in a room with a load of guitars and cymbals - as they flew about, landing on the instruments, they created a sort of soundscape. It would have been great, if it weren't for two things: There were not enough finches, so the sounds were sporadic and incohesive, and also we had to queue for about an hour to get in. After this we tried to go for dinner, which proved to be a frustrating task. Firstly we missed our first reservation, then couldn't get into anywhere we wanted, and ended up settling on an Italian restaurant that lured us in with a glass of Prosecco - the staff were pretty short with us, the food was or a pretty low standard, and its only saving grace was that it was only about a tenner each. Add to this the fact that I was exhausted and probably a little grumpy, and one can see that it was not the ideal dining experience.

Mum, Clare and Hannah visit Geneva

I shall attempt to be brief here as I am writing up two weeks worth of stuff in one go. Brevity is not, however, my strong point…

06/05 - Tonight I did some work and watched endless election coverage, that's about it really. Crap rainy day, again. And a hung parliament, woo! I mean, I think such a situation might be a good shakeup for the UK system, but we'll see how it pans out.

07/05 - I got to bed at 8 this morning, slept for a few hours then got up at one. I filled the afternoon somehow then went over to James and Dan's for a thai curry, cooked by James, which was really good. I then went and got Mum, Clare and Hannah from the airport, I missed the bus so I was late, but so were they. On the way back I made them run for a train, which Hannah did but the others did not, which set the theme for the weekend a bit (I hadn't really realised how much I rely on being able to sprint for stuff, or how I am always just a few seconds late for everything, which is what necessitates the sprinting).

The Eastwest Hôtel, where I had booked a room for Mum and Hannah, was pretty nice, all purple and flash inside. We buggered around with the coffee machine for a bit and Hannah opted for whichever option (staying at the hotel or staying with me) gave her the most sleep. Mum, Clare and I went down to the bar for a (ridiculously expensive) drink, then Clare and I left about half 12 maybe. I forgot that there are no (or relatively few) buses at this time of night, so we had to walk it - we missed a couple of buses en route, meaning that we had a rather inefficient journey, getting home and actually going to sleep by about 0230.

08/05 - Mum rang at 0911, we scrambled about a bit and managed to meet them at about 1030. We had a rubbish breakfast - the croques monsieurs were nice, but we had them in a café with loads of birds around it (and their associated debris on the chairs) on a junction near the bus station. We went for a stroll round the Old Town, to the cathedral etc. then stopped at the créperie that Kelly and I tried to eat in the other day. I had Spinach, roquefort and ham (I did not want the ham and they charged me 4 CHF for it anyway), they forgot Hannah's meal entirely and the salad was awful. Not a good day so far, food wise. We then went to CERN where I showed them about a bit - essentially I showed them the same stuff as I showed Ed and Kelly. We then headed back to town and hung out by the water (started to rain a bit) until dinner time - Fondue at Bains des Pâquis. I went and got it, having told Mum you pay at the end so that I could buy it for us. It turned out that Hannah wasn't a big fan of Fondue, so she got the meat and paté, which she also didn't like. Poor Hannah. We then went home and, after some discussion, watched The Sting, which was excellent - Hannah was fast asleep well before the end. I went over and stayed at James', as there isn't quite room for four people in the flat.

The Rose children atop a Henry Moore, Geneva

Drinking Fountain, Rue des Granges

Chapel of The Maccabees, Cathédral Saint-Pierre

09/05 - Clare and I went to Pain Quotidien to get some croques for breakfast, and ended up with massive toasties (never enough filling in Switzerland) with no cheese sauce on them, for 14 CHF each! That is ridiculous. We came home and racletted them to make them a bit better. We headed up La Salève on the cloudiest day possible, I forgot Mum was scared of heights - oops. It was fine once we were up there, we got about 10 minutes of views then the clouds settled in. We went for a walk, Hannah was not too keen but we persuaded her, then promptly got lost. My fault, I think. We got too hot in spite of the cold, so we grabbed an ice cream and then Clare sent Hannah off in a strop by pretending to put a Calippo down her back - she said it was my idea (true) so I was also on the receiving end. By the end of the ice cream she had calmed down, so we went back home, got their stuff and went to Café De Paris for a late lunch - definitely the most successful meal of the weekend. Everyone loved it, I had trois decis of Gamay to wash it down, then we went to the airport and I said farewell. Clare was really hoping that their flight was cancelled so she didn't have to go to work on Monday, but that was not the case. Easyjet cancelled all theirs, but not so BA. I went home, don't remember dinner, and I assume I fell asleep pretty quickly - going straight from night shift to a packed tourist itinerary has not really allowed me much time for sleep.

Pizza & ice cream, night shift & the election.

05/05 - I managed to stay in bed until 1500 exactly today, which I reckon is about right for this odd lifestyle that has been forced on me by night shifts. The first email I received invited me to go for Pizza a-gogo with Dan and a few others, and I got it just after I had eaten the rest of my mammoth chicken sandwich from yesterday. Oops. I chatted to Kelly for about two hours, on and off, consulting with her about her grand plans for a Come Dine With Me style dinner she is putting on for her Dad. The plans are very impressive and thoughtful, although when we talked about it I had only just woken up, and so was a bit confused and not as enthusiastic as I maybe should have been.

Dinner was quite a disappointment, Love Me Dos has changed owners recently, and the previously cheery owner has been replaced by a pinch-faced man who is far too stingy for my liking. We used to arrive any time before 1930 and get unlimited pizza served cheerily to us. Instead the surly man seemed to be begrudging us our fair share - he cooked the pizzas from scratch, which was good, but then only gave us about half a pizza each, which was less good. At one point the bloke who wasn't the owner came up and asked us how much more we wanted, to which we replied 'same again' as we were barely getting into our stride. Nothing happened for a while, the owner went outside and had a glass of wine and a fag, and eventually we asked him about our other pizzas. He told us it was now outside happy hour and that he might be able to rustle up two more platters for us, but that that would be it. This is not pizza a-gogo, even I was not yet full and I had an enormous sandwich before I left the house. After our ice cream we left a little disappointed - I doubt that 10 of us will be going along again.

I managed to catch the first 45 minutes of Ghostbusters before I had to run off to my shift. What do I see when I get to my desk? "No physics this night" - bugger.

06/05 - Tonight's shift has passed a lot quicker than last night. I have only just got to the point where I start writing here and it's 0549, only an hour or so to go. I have had a sandwich (philadelphia, merguez sausages, cherry tomatoes, rocket, mustard and probably some mayonnaise too), a coffee and about half a pack of sour glowworms and have just about enough sugar in me to make it to the end of shift. The weather is still awful by the way, 6º and cloudy outside with a maximum temperature of 8º today. A good day to stay in bed.

I ran a couple of errands on my way home - first I went to the hotel where my Mum and sister will be staying to make sure they get twin beds, then I pretty much walked home (Geneva is very busy at 0730 in the morning), stopping off at Zoe's flat to pick up an airbed. I had that horrible feeling while I was walking home that you get when walking home from a club after dawn - the walk of shame. I managed to sleep until about 5 o'clock, waking up feeling lousy and a bit down. This feeling has not really subsided, so I was rather grumpy when I went for dinner (Mike Wong's pad thai, a little too big for one portion, which left me stuffed and sleepy) and then off to my French class. I arrived very early for my shift and decided that I could either sit about and wait for 2300 or I could start my shift half an hour early, relieving the previous shifter - I did the latter, knowing that I would be grateful if someone did the same for me.

07/05 - Well, the screens said we would have some beams and some physics by 0230. This was then changed to 0330, then 0430, then the beam was got rid of by 0500, meaning that, yet again, nothing happened tonight. I have been actually doing some work during this shift, as well as keeping the live coverage of the election running in the corner. As of 0607, the seats stand as follows:

Conservative 230 seats

Labour 175 seats

Liberal Democrats 36 seats

I just did some quick sums though - the current vote split is 37%, 28% & 23% respectively and based on these proportions, under proportional representation 10 of the remaining seats would be Conservative, 7 Labour and 113 would be Lib Dem, according to their vote share. However, this leaves 80 more seats, and the BNP appears to be getting about 1,000 votes in each seat which is a bit of a worry. That's about 3% of the vote, or 20 MPs if proportional representation were introduced - maybe it's not such a great idea after all.

I only have to make it through one more hour of night shifts, then no more for a couple of weeks. Phew. I just hope I cheer up before Mum. Clare and Hannah get here.

Kelly leaves, Clare's Birthday and another night shift.

04/05 - We didn't sleep too well, as is always the case when Kelly has to fly back in the morning - when one has to be up at 0445 it is all too easy to panic that you have missed an alarm, so we were both wide awake by the time she actually had to get up. I accompanied her down to get the 0514 bus, resplendent in the pre-dawn darkness in my dressing gown and bright red trousers. I sent Clare a birthday message and went back to bed for as long as I could manage, as I am on night shift tonight and so I must attempt to reverse my diurnal rhythm. I managed to remain in bed until about 1300 before I got up, pottered about a bit and went shopping for nighttime supplies. I made a large selection of sandwiches, as my main memory of previous night shifts has been one of hunger. I headed off to French class, which was mostly taken up with the correcting of last week's homework, and headed off to my shift feeling oddly anxious - I don't really know why, and I have been unable to shift the feeling. Maybe it's because I am missing Clare's birthday and my Mum and sister are both staying at my house in London tonight. My mood was not improved when I saw the below message on the LHC status screen:

LHC Status: Bugger All

So, I guess this means that the first four hours or so of my shift will be pretty pointless. Tanya is also on night shift, although her desk is miles away (well, metres, but far enough that we can't really chat) so this doesn't really make too much of a difference. I have already had half of my first sandwich, pictured below. There will probably be a lot of pictures of sandwiches tonight, as that is the most interesting thing going on.

Sandwich 1: Half a rotisserie chicken stuffed inside some Turkish bread, slathered with curry mayonnaise and loads of rocket.

05/05 - Not much going on now either. I have succeeded in doing a bit of work - well, if you count changing stuff until the program no longer functions as a success. I have had to eat another sandwich, and I am halfway through my first litre of ice tea.

Sandwich 2: Saint-Agur, merguez sausages & fried chorizo, cherry tomatoes, rocket and mayonnaise between two slices of toast.

The latest news is that CMS have done something bad which means there will be no beam for a while. It still says, rather poignantly, "no physics tonight".

Well, it is now 0618, and nothing is happening. What a sodding waste of time. To be honest though, my workload is pretty much the same whether there are collisions or not - I have to look at about 8 extra graphs, that's all that's different. The bloke on the Run Control desk has been asleep for about an hour - I think I'll follow his lead tomorrow if it's as busy as tonight. Also, I have just checked the weather for this week, and it is going to be a maximum of 8º tomorrow, which is a 19º drop from this time last week. What the hell? It also seems like this weather pattern (rainy and generally a bit crap) will continue for a week or so - the one redeeming feature of night shifts is that I thought I might be able to spend some time in the sun during the day, but that plan is now scuppered.

Oh, on another rubbish note, that sodding volcano appears to be belching out more guff, closing some airports in the north of the UK. Also James is thinking of having a little election party on Thursday night, but I will be right here at this desk. At the end of my shift I ended up waiting around for a while as my replacement shifter had not turned up, but the guy on the desk next to me said he would cover for me, so I fled and got the 0721 bus. I made it back home by 0802 (a new record), and was fast asleep within minutes. Only two more night shifts to go...

Some grey days filled with good food and wine

30/04 - So I remained in the office until 2020, a record for me - in spite of this, and in spite of it also being Friday night, I was not the last to leave - Rudi left about 10 minutes before me, and Clive asked to borrow my key as he was planning to stay longer. His girlfriend had come by at about 6pm to borrow his housekeys before she went shopping, rang him a couple of times to see how long he would be, and in spite of this he remained at his desk. What could he possibly be doing which is that important?

I picked Kelly up from the airport and we headed back for some dinner. This was salmon with a horseradish crust, which was incredibly simple and incredibly delicious - I may make it for my Mum and sisters when they come out next weekend, if there is any time in between sumptuous cheese-based meals. Yesterday I bought a selection of local white wines for us to sample over the weekend, and we started with one from Morges - we will be going there for the annual Caves Ouvertes in three weeks time - a day of wine tasting, with a free bus which goes between about 15 vineyards. I doubt we'll make it to all of them.

01/05 - Today turned out to be another grey and rainy day, so after some discussion we decided to have brunch instead of breakfast - the distinction being that it is fine to have wine with brunch. We then headed down to see Zack, Masa and their new son Finn - he is a shade under three weeks old, cannot yet focus his eyes or do very much at all, but still captivated Kelly for the duration of our stay. Zack's dad (Bing) and Masa's mum (umm, Mrs. Kovacevic) were both staying as well, so I had a bit of a chat with Bing about the upcoming election over some strong Croation wine, blagged some knowledge about subjects I know little about, and then we all walked to Parc des Bastions to catch some of the May Day parade. I had been intrigued to see what Swiss anarchy looks like, and it turned out to be a bit of a socialist rally, with a load of Latin American food stalls. Kelly and I had brought some wine and plastic cups along (a nice sweet Muscadet we bought in the south of France), I had some sardines, Bing bought some more awful wine from a stall, and then all of a sudden Finn woke up and they all had to leave.

We opted to remain in the park for a little, until we remembered that I lived really close and my flat was warm and dry. We decided to round a few people up and go for dinner at a tapas bar which Zack had told us about, so we went home and awaited the arrival of the two Dans, James and his girlfriend Claire (they said they would be over after Dr. Who). While we were waiting we opened another bottle of wine, then another etc. and needless to say we didn't go for dinner in the end. Instead we stayed up until 2 or so debating many important points - these ranged from the topic of expenses, more election chat and whether or not the current controversy surrounding Zahia Dehar has helped her career, such as it is (she has been all over the news here since it emerged that a few French football players had paid her for sex when she was under 18 - I have since found out that she was paid €50,000 for a photoshoot in Paris Match, so I can only assume yes).

02/05 - We started today with no plans at all. We dedicated much of the day to exploring, first some hotels for Mum and Hannah/Clare to stay in when they come out next weekend, then we got a boat across to Eaux-Vives and up to Geneve-Plage. We found a lot of beautiful places, it's just a pity that it was such a grey day. isn'tThe purpose (if there was one) of this wander was to investigate Le Buffet de la Gare D'Eaux-Vives, a Michelin starred restaurant at the station - it was closed and had no menu outside. We headed back into the old town for a drink in Café Demi-Lune, then absolutely failed to find anywhere suitable for dinner. After much tramping around, including going all the way down to Planpalais to a restaurant Zack recommended (which was closed), we ended up in Chez Ma Cousine, a cheap place that sells chicken and provençale potatoes for CHF 15. It was pretty good actually, we got a pot of wine to wash it down and then went home and watched Hot Fuzz on the sofa. Lovely.

03/05 - The first thing I had to do today was have a meeting with Ricardo at 3pm. Kelly is still here as it is bank holiday Monday back in the UK, so I left her doing some work while I went in to CERN. I made the mistake of having a massive lunch (steak, ravioli and chips) which made me incredibly sleepy for my meeting - it was just Ricardo and I, going over a load of stuff for two hours, after which I made my excuses and dashed off to meet Kelly in Manor (she had gone to the WHO but, being Geneva it was closed). We looked around the store for a bit, helped ourselves to an unmanned wine-tasting counter and then went to what I call the Shutter Bar - it is a small bar on Rue Lissignol which has a mostly gay clientèle, and also has the cheapest drinks I have yet found in Geneva.

Next stop was L'Entrecôte Couronnée, a restaurant in Pâquis which we have been meaning to go to for a while. Kelly and I shared the menu degustation and the selection of fish (main course). It was pretty awesome, there was an unexpected aperitif and amuse-bouche (something cheesy), followed by a selection of starters including some great gazpacho and asparagus. Next course was some reasonable sea-bass, followed by an incredible tower of two small steaks atop a sauce soaked rosti - the morilles sauce was one of the best things I have tasted, I have not had this particular type of odd little mushroom before, but I definitely will again. Kelly's selection of fish was very well cooked, but not very exciting. Both mains had some boring boiled vegetables added as an afterthought which detracted from the meal as a whole. Dessert was a tasty lemon tart with some strawberries and balsamic something or other. We accompanied this with a bottle of Swiss Sauvignon, and followed it with a quick drink in the Café Arts next door while we waited for the bus. When we got home Kelly packed and promptly passed out, complaining of too much wine. I swiftly followed, although by my reckoning we only had about 3 (Swiss) glasses each and half a bottle - I suppose this adds up to nearly a whole bottle of wine each over the course of 5 hours, which is plenty for a Monday night.