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I isolate the individual odours attractive to my flies from a complicated blend using a process called chromatography. Although this is done at Rothamsted with a fancy piece of equipment the basic principle is very simple: you have two different substances or "phases" which have different affinities for the different components of the blend you're trying to separate. The mobile phase, a gas or liquid, is passed over the stationary phase which could be a polymer or wax. Things with a greater affinity for the mobile phase will spend a greater proportion of the time in it, so will come out of the system faster than things with a greater affinity for the stationary phase. Use a long enough system and different constituents of a mixture will reliably come out separately, one after another.

The random chemistry lesson comes courtesy of a brilliant demonstration of the principles of chromatography that I saw at Gatwick airport on the way home. A mixed crowd of Gambians and British people got off the plane and started walking through the terminal building. We all walked together until we reached the first moving walkway, which interestingly the British people got on but the Gambians didn't. Three walkways later, the airport-sized chromatography system had acheived perfect of a mixed group of human beings on the basis of nationality with the Brits emerging 50 metres ahead of the Gambians.

So now I'm home, with my bloke and my family and my knitting and my tea and my 24 hour amenities and I'd be lying if I said it was anything other than a huge relief. Apologies to everyone I haven't been in touch with yet, I've needed a little time to recover but I plan to get in touch with all of you very soon. And everyone I have managed to speak to, even if it's just on facebook, thanks for the lovely welcome.

I think Hounslow Borough Council also wanted to welcome me back, I got home to find this poster on the bus stop on our street!

Did you miss me?

I've just got back from my second stint in The Gambia. No internet this time, and as Twitter decided not to cooperate with my Gambian mobile I actually had to do some work instead. Fortunately this paid off with excellent fly catches, a small colony of extremely confused Musca sorbens who snuggled down into their pupariae in Farafenni and woke up in Harpenden and possibly an entirely new species of entomopathogenic nematode. Unfortunately in the excitement of smuggling all of the above through customs I managed to leave my handbag on the plane, where it appears to have been swiftly appropriated by cleaners or my fellow passengers. I lost among other things Jeff's camera, my Oyster card, my housekeys and all the receipts I was going to use to claim back my field expenses. This means that all my plans for extravagent celebrations to mark my return have had to be scaled back to treating myself to some new housekeys and a tub of werewolf-strength leg wax, but it could be worse, I could be discovering the sound of one hand clapping.

Anyway until enough of my brain starts functioning to write something vaguely coherent* here are some photos I took in The Gambia and transferred to my laptop before losing the camera.

*July 2011

Pestival!

Pestival is an exhibition of insects in science and art, held at the Royal Festival Hall from the 3rd to the 6th of September. I'll be there on the Saturday and Sunday, helping to explain work some people in my department have done on why some people get eaten alive by mosquitoes and others don't, if anyone fancies coming along to laugh at me in a natty mosquito-emblazoned t-shirt. And if for some reason mosquito olfaction doesn't float your boat, there's a lot of other cool stuff going on including maggot painting, a giant termite mound and book-eating insects.

The best laid plans

Things rarely work out the way you expect do they? I’d hoped to have a few days off after I came back from The Gambia to relax, catch up with Jeff and with friends, organise my life, maybe make a leisurely start on my writeup, then head back to Rothamsted refreshed and raring to go.Instead I caught piggy flu and spent the best part of two weeks getting reacquainted with my bed and necking paracetamol and Menthol Strepsils like there was no tomorrow, or rather like there was a tomorrow and it was going to be full of pain and mucus.I was even more annoyed that after having the opportunity to catch all sorts of exciting exotic things that would have entitled me to sympathy and possibly handsome young doctors poking my liver, I ended up laid low by something that prompts people to hand you a mug of Lemsip and tell you to get on with it. Still, such is life.

I have a very large number of photographs to organise, half of which are already up on Facebook, and six more blog posts to type up from the final month when I didn’t have access to a computer, if anyone’s still interested now you know how it ends. I think blogging will be put on hold for the immediate future though as I have rather a lot of non-blog related writing to do. If you’re stuck for an excuse not to work in the meantime might I recommend the following blogs, which really have nothing in common except for the fact that I wouldn’t mind sharing a drink with the author (indeed I’ve often shared rather too many drinks with one of the authors):

• Alice in Blogland
• Bad Science
• Bristling Badger
• Bug Girl's Blog
• Endangered Ugly Things
  
• The Enemies of Reason
• Feminazery
• Imogen's Creative Fire
• The Lay Scientist
• No Sleep Till Brooklands
  
• Penny Red