Thank you to everyone who made it to our engagement party this weekend. Special thanks for all the lovely gifts, cards, food and drink that you brought along. If this was how busy I am with 60 people and a only a BBQ to run, I wonder what the wedding will feel like!
A trip home to see our various families led to a great chance to try out the new lens with some garden birds. I quite like the results, this lens is definitely sharper than my zoom lens. The focussing is fast enough to catch the birds as they fly around, and it brings them up really close.
Straight after the holiday it was time to head to Bristol to watch Sonya’s little brother graduate, and to pop to the zoo, as one does at these occasions.
We’ve been home a while now, it’s defninitely time for some photos. I can thoroughly recommend Barbados as a holiday destination, it was just the right balance of beach, sunshine, places to visit and incredibly alcoholic cocktails.
A quick wander through college on the way back from lunch has provided my entries for this year’s college photo competition, entitled ”Downing from a new perspective”
Having received no bribes not to publish, nor any superinjunctions, it’s time to talk about the second half of the MA day.
So reuniting 120 people after 3 years and then giving them near-limitless college own-label wine was never going to end prettily. I’m not saying it ended badly though, as we were whisked back 6 1/2 years to the times when work was forgotten, taxes were things that paid us, dessert was eaten without spoons (thanks Ollie) and wine went down in one gulp (and my word, did this stuff need downing).
Next step – making use of my free termly dinner 🙂
Last Saturday my hard-earned BA disappeared into a puff of latin, to be replaced by that strangest of things, MA (Cantab). It was nice to meet up with people again, especially as our graduation had been fragmented by the 3-year / 4-year course length discrepancies. This was the first time since Matriculation that we’d had the chance to be photographed together, and how some people have changed (or not, surprisingly). Luckily I’ve managed to retain my ability to pull a ridiculous face when trying to smile, ably caught on camera this time round by Dad who was given a crash course in the DSLR and did a sterling job. Hence I present to you the first half of the photos, before the drinking started…
Making the most of the sunshine, I popped into the University Botanical Gardens.
Last week I popped over to the Pyrenees to collect some samples. Although the photographs might suggest otherwise, I worked hard – drilling about 35 kg of mountainside into 100 little plastic bags. Northern Spain at this time of year is also unfortunately photogenic, which was a real shame. As was the hot weather and unbroken sunshine, which luckily has replicated itself ten degrees further north this week. We started in the pretty town of Ainsa, headed east to the more industrial Tremp, before heading back to Zaragoza at the end of the week. Our little hire car covered the 1000+ km admirably, even when the road became a track, and the the track became a pile of gravel laid up a hill. That little detour (of many) might not have been the quickest way between sample locations, but it was certainly the more scenic.
The biggest problem turned out to be mealtimes. Good luck finding a restaurant before 10.15pm in Zaragoza. Or after 10.30 – the tables filled very quickly. The food was good though, if a little vegetable-free. If you order the sausages for main course, that’s pretty much what you get. Despite plenty of vegetables available in the towns, restaurants erred towards the meat-fest end of gastronomy. For the first time I was happy when my tactic of “choose something that you can’t translate” turned into a plate of beans. Although, being Spain, there was a generous helping of bacon thrown over the top of them just in case I was missing out on my meat intake.
This is probably my last fieldwork for my PhD, but not a bad way to finish. Now I have 9 months to do all the work and write up…………..
