Firstly, a quick update on the publishing situation:
My results were sent to our collaborators at the University of Lyon (oui oui)
yesterday and they seem to correlate to a similar study they’ve done on
bacteria, which is hugely reassuring. The team there is compiling the
information as we speak and are going to submit to both the journal of Organic
and Biomolecular Chemistry and the journal of Chemical Communications, which
have huge followings. Fingers crossed!
For the past month, I’ve been sharing the
house with Jess and her boyfriend Pete, which has been pretty chilled but fun.
I think they feel a bit sorry for me being a third wheel and are always cooking
me dinner; I even came home to brownies from the posh bakery yesterday! Pete is
due to return to Cornwall in a few weeks, but decided to take a last minute
trip over to Brisbane before he leaves Australia to stay with uni friends and
go surfing. He flew out on Monday, leaving Jess and I to have a girlie week;
so, being the girlie girls we are, the first thing we decided to do was go rock
climbing after work on Wednesday.
I was really looking forward to going
climbing, as I haven’t done it for years and I used to be absolutely obsessed.
From when we were about 12 or 13, two of my best friends and I went to a big
barn in Bude to go bouldering (climbing with no ropes) every Thursday night. It
was such good exercise and we got pretty good; I had biceps and abs and
everything! We also did a load of trips with a climbing club to all the big
spots, like Cheddar Gorge. Other things ended up taking over and I stopped
going, which was a bit of a shame, so I was interested to see whether I could
still do it minus the muscle mass!
I met Jess close to campus after finishing
work early and we drove over to Rockface in Northbridge, just north of the city
centre. The building was on an industrial street was very plain and unassuming
from the outside, but inside it was gigantic; two-storeys high and lined with
loads of good routes. After paying our $30, filling out a medical form and
being fitted with the usual kit (a harness that makes it look like you have a
package and chinese-torture shoes – definitely haven’t missed wearing those),
we made our way over to the beginners’ wall to have our memories refreshed on
how to belay each other. With this rather important knowledge covered, we were
basically set free to do whatever we wanted. As it was a weekday afternoon, we
pretty much had the place to ourselves, apart from a brief visit from a class
of school kids, and we certainly got our money’s worth by trying every route
possible. It’s amazing how quickly a skill you’ve not done for such a long time
comes back to you! I definitely wouldn’t call us experts, but we both managed
most of the easier routes with no problems, despite a few clammy-handed moments
near the top. Possibly even more fun than the climbing was pretending to be
secret agents and descending as quickly as possible on the ropes!
After two and a half hours, we were
absolutely shattered and ready to go home. As we were leaving, the nice man “made
us a deal” because we seemed like “a lot of fun” – five return sessions and
hire for $49, which is such good value! We took him up on his offer as we had
such a laugh; it’s also a great way to work out if you fancy something
different. We’re hoping to be nicely toned after a few weekly visits and it's such a nice way to spend the afternoon after having our brains frazzled at work and uni.
We left Rockface with aching muscles and the beginnings of some nasty blisters, which
were to be expected, and memberships, which definitely wasn’t. Another
unexpected surprise was the parking ticking slapped on Jess’ windscreen; we
were so excited about our climbing adventure that we forgot to buy one, so what we saved on return trips, we spent on a parking fine. Oh well; you
win some, you lose some!
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