Lumo

Before coming out here I had to complete an exhaustive fieldwork risk
assessment detailing every activity I planned to undertake and how to
minimise the risks that it entailed. When it comes to transport I am
supposed to travel only in well maintained MRC cars driven by a
reputable driver. Travelling by mule cart would not, I expect, have
been an alternative acceptable to Rothamsted's health and safety
adviser.

Shivonne and I had Sunday off and decided to visit the local lumo or
Sunday market. As this is held in a field some distance out of town,
and as our drivers also had Sunday off we went the local way, on a
two-wheeled metal frame to which a few wooden slats had been attached
which doesn't really deserve to be dignified with the name "cart". We
tried to pick one pulled by the healthiest looking mule we could find
- most of the horses, donkeys and mules here are in shocking
condition, emaciated and with open sores on their sides. It seems a
bit silly to care about the condition of the animals here when the
people are living in poverty, but the people look happy and the draft
animals certainly don't.

We hopped up onto the cart and set off, picking up more passengers on
the way. I tried to take a photo of the driver but as I did so he
whipped his mule. The poor beast put on a sudden burst of speed and
the cart lurched, almost making me drop the camera. I decided to
concentrate on holding tight from that point on. After a
bone-rattling ride we reached the lumo and clambered unsteadily down.
I went forward to pay the driver and the cart promptly ran over my
foot. Thank you Roxana, Imogen, David et al., without those army
boots I'm sure I would have broken it but as it was I just felt a bit
sore and like a total tit. Note to parents: I will not do this again.

The lumo seemed packed and chaotic, and it was often hard to tell who
was the customer and who was the vendor. Sacking and tarpaulins were
strung overhead for shade, often a few inches below headheight, so I
spent much of the time stooping.We quickly discovered that there was
an underlying order though, clothes here, homeware there, car parts at
the back, vegetables at the front and next to them the dried fish
section which we steered well clear of because of the smell. I
bought a cooking pot (there was only one in the kitchen), some
homemade local soap which looked nice but turned out to be incredibly
harsh, some veg and a pretty headscarf (I could really get used to
this fake Muslim thing) before finding another cart to rattle us home.
This time we didn't have such a choice of horses and the poor beast
we picked was in very bad shape and farted all the way back, not great
for the passengers downwind.

At least I assume it was the horse, I suppose it could have been the driver.

Baggy Trousers

I've just stumbled back from some penultimate minute shopping (the last minute shopping will take place at the airport in a blind panic) and am now the proud owner of two pairs of antibacterial trousers, a phrase I never expected to find myself typing. They are also UV proof and quick drying, and quite frankly for the price I paid for them I'd hope they could stop a small dirty bomb and bullets at twenty yards.

Up to this point I'd managed to be quite frugal in my preparations; I managed to pick up a second hand rucksack, bought a lot of long sleeved men's shirts from Oxfam and got four desert scarves off eBay for £4 from a bloke who realised that the only people who should wear desert scarves are emo kids or people venturing too far from civilisation to be mocked for it, and presumably also realised that he didn't fall into either of these categories. I also picked up a pair of jungle boots for a very reasonable price from a surprisingly urbane survivalist in an army surplus shop at Waterloo, and in any case the lovely people at Kew paid for them. But sometimes you do have to pay for quality and these trousers didn't just blow the budget, they performed a variety of sexual acts, some illegal, with it.

I wouldn't have minded so much if I could have envisaged myself wearing them at any other time but The Gambia is a Muslim country and quite conservative up river, so they can't be too close fitting. I did try on a pair that was two sizes too large, but as these fell straight off when I did them up I didn't think they were fit for purpose. The ones I bought were a mere one size too large, and the crotch is half way to my knees which isn't a good look on anyone. I felt like a member of All Saints. After I'd spent the best part of £40 a pair on some extremely unflattering trousers, the part of my brain that complains at wanton profligacy promptly overloaded and shorted out and in a daze I then bought a couple of karabiners, an LED lamp and a new water bottle. I then staggered out of Blacks to have a bit of a sit down, came to the depressing realisation that the amount I'd save on travel cards whilst in The Gambia would be more than outweighed by the amount I'd spent on kit and vowed to economise over the coming month by using email instead of text messages and eating Jeff.

At least I will now not have to wander around The Gambia in just my pants, which up to this point had been a source of some concern to me, particularly in dreams. Unfortunately the rest of my shopping trip was less successful. For the record, I think that this is the only intelligent thing I've seen in the media about swine flu – yes there is a lot of hype in the media, no that doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about, using alcohol gel after taking public transport is probably a good idea anyway because an extremely unscientific survey I once carried out in a public toilet convinced me that one woman in three doesn't wash her hands and sorry to be sexist but the figure is almost certainly higher among men. If however you do not already possess alcohol gel then tough, you can't get any for love nor money on the high street because in the panic at the impending aporkalypse the shelves have been picked bare. This is quite annoying if, say, you are going to a country with minimal hygiene infrastructure (at least upriver) and want to avoid picking up something a darn sight more common than the hamdemic. I have so far resisted the temptation to buy "travel wash", which is three times the price and comes in an attractive green bottle but is otherwise the same stuff (shhhh, don't tell everyone).

There will now follow a short paragraph featuring my ladybits. I can only offer my apologies to any of my male readers who may be unsettled by this, but really chaps, you should have accepted that we have them by this stage. Not to beat around the bush (sorry), in a hot, humid climate I'm fairly likely to develop either thrush or cystitis, either of which have more potential to make my trip miserable than a herd of rampaging hippopotami. The best preventative measure is loose-fitting, pure cotton underwear, but being either a saucy little minx or too cheap to buy many pairs of pants I don't seem to have much of this. I did however recall that my Gran used to have some knickers that would have been ideal; large enough to propel a reasonably sized schooner and if memory serves made out of something resembling flannel. That sort of thing would have been ideal, so I headed to Marks and Spencers and was shocked to discover that they no longer stocked anything of the kind. Maybe Myleene Klass refused to wear them or something. I left disappointed, and rather curious as to where today's respectable women of mature years purchased their sensible unmentionables.

Even knickerless, I am now rather more prepared than I was, although I don't know if I'll ever feel prepared enough. Here's hoping that parmageddon doesn't ground all the flights and leave me sitting at home with my two pairs of antimicrobial trousers. Still, I suppose if that does happen I could cut them up and flog them off as facemasks.

Bitter Oranges

This has nothing to do with my PhD, but I'm posting it here because it gets the highest readership of any of my blogs*. On my way home on Monday I noticed a group of people outside the Orange Tree Pub, waving banners and shouting. I do like a bit of shouting so I went to see what was going on. It turned out that the British Nazi National Party were having their Christmas party in there. I grabbed a placard and am proud to have played some small part in forcing some of them to spend their Christmas celebrations standing outside the pub in the freezing drizzle, attempting to intimidate us whilst icy water dripped on their shaven heads.

The BNP is, sadly, a legal political party so there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to hold their Christmas party in a pub. However, I doubt that I'm alone in not wanting to drink in the same pub as a bunch of racist wankers, who think that rape is no worse than force-feeding someone chocolate cake and that mixed race people should...actually, I don't have the strength to go on. I shall be writing to the manager of the Orange Tree to explain that I feel this way, and also to Youngs, the chain that owns the pub, and would encourage as many people as possible to do the same. A word of warning though, the manager of the Orange Tree is clearly a BNP sympathiser as they've met there before, so if you do write to the pub it'd be safer not to put a return address – just because we know their addresses doesn't mean they need to know ours.

If you have a receipt to show that you have drunk in a Youngs pub recently, include it with your letter to add weight to your assertion that you won't be drinking there in future. This shouldn't be too difficult for anyone who, like me, is a habitual drunkard** with a confetti of old receipts in her bag, but probably wouldn't be possible for someone like Imogen who I think alphabetises her handbag contents.

The addresses are as follows. There's also a Facebook group.

The Orange Tree:

Roger & Tracey Stearn
Orange Tree
45 Kew Road
Richmond
Surrey
TW9 2NQ

http://www.orangetreerichmond.co.uk

Young's brewery:

Young & Co.’s Brewery, P.L.C.
Riverside House
26 Osiers Road
Wandsworth
London SW18 1NH

http://www.youngs.co.uk

Normal service will resume next week peeps. I know you're missing those flies.

*Six, and my Mum who my Dad prints it out for.

**You can delete this bit before printing Dad.

Not likely to launch my career as a footwear model

Thought you might like to see the jungle boots I bought (and just for Imogen, my awful eighties tights to make up for being unable to find my awful eighties jumper):


The boots cost £39.95, and I got four pairs of army tropical socks (padded underneath, thin with lots of ventilation on top) for £6.95 eack, leaving £13.25 to put towards desert boots later. Thank you again for your kindness, everyone.

Right, I'm off to steal a tank and invade EuroDisney.

I'd like to thank my analyst, my hairdresser...

I'd just like to thank everyone for giving me such wonderful sendoff(s) - after all the Botanist food, tea, cake, cider, more tea and single malt I won't care if I get noting to eat but millet porridge in The Gambia. Thank you also for your very generous contributions to my footwear fund, which I hope to deploy at Camden's army surplus store next weekend.

I can honestly say that it's been great fun working with every single one of you. I could come up with a funny story or a time you've helped me out for everyone, but you'll forgive me if I limit myself to thanking four people by name; Roxana for making the day fun and for the very amusing plaque that I probably won't be allowed to put on my office door (although I certainly intend to try), Imogen, always a pleasure to work with and for a couple of blog posts that made me feel all warm and fuzzy and extremely embarrassed, Dave for giving me the job in the first place, rescuing me from that hellhole of a property developer and allowing me to claim that I'd been headhunted and to Charlotte for stunning me in the pub by asking whether animal eyes acted as a reservoir, a question I had never thought to ask. Which just goes to show, even if undertaking some slightly unsavoury research you should broadcast it about as widely as possible because you never know where insights might come from (although in the context of my PhD, "broadcast it about as widely as possible" might have some rather unpleasant connotations...)

Thanks all. (Dries eyes and rides off into the sunset singing Edith Piaf songs)

Goodbye Giftaid!

The fact that I will shortly be starting a PhD has finally begun to seem real to me (the prospect ofbeing given a list of jabs as long as my arm, probably with a needle that is also as long as my arm, does appear to do that). And so, after four years, three departments, half a million angry Friends, enough cups of tea to fill Boston Harbour and the opportunity to say "I'm sorry ma'am, Kew doesn't have a position on baboons eating flamigoes" I have finally handed in my notice and will be leaving Kew on the 20th of September.

While I'm looking forward to having weekends again (I can distantly recall those regularly spaced periods when all your friends are off work too), and I do anticipate the company of filth-flies being rather more pleasant than that of the great British public, I will miss the Gardens themselves a great deal but more importantly all the lovely, crazy, creative people trapped behind tills or in offices that I've had the priviledge of working with all these years.

I've managed to either time my departure rather well or rather badly, depending on your perspective, and will have to have two sets of leaving drinks, one on Friday the 19th for the people I work with during the week, which I have arbitrarily decided will be in The Botanist, and one on the 20th after my last gate shift, which'll be in the Kew Inn. Whichever department you've worked with me in though you're welcome to come to either or both (or neither if you'll be glad to see the back of me after having been impaled by a flailing knitting needle in the ticket box once too often).