The obligatory navel-gazing post about where this blog is going

I haven't posted here for a while for a variety of reasons both academic (I had my upgrading which, for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, means that I'm now registered for a full PhD rather than for an MPhil, not that I now have night vision and laser tits) and personal (a move, illness, some family stuff). A rather more cheerful reason for my extended absence from the interwebz is that I've actually started to get some results, and the problem for bloggers hoping to publish is that as soon as you have something interesting to say you can't say it. Now that things are starting to look up I do hope to start blogging again on a semi-regular basis, but I think the posts will be more focussed on Africa, development, cool insects, vectors and life, the universe and everything in general, rather than on my own research. I may even dip a tentative toe into the skeptosphere, because the internet obviously needs another ranty post about homeopathy just as much as it needs another amusingly captioned picture of a cat.

I'll be going back to The Gambia on the 2^nd of July for a month and will be getting a mobile dongle (and will probably single-handedly double The Gambia's GDP by paying the price I'm paying for it) so providing that my laptop doesn't blow up again and the phone mast doesn't blow down again I should have rather better internet access this time. I'll try and write a few blog posts while I'm out there when I'm not too busy wrangling manure-filled traps or getting climbed on by small children, because Mary asked me to and she could probably break me in half if she wanted to. Or at least cover me in very sticky plant material.

I don't have a picture of my navel to post so instead here is a picture of my friend's navel. Mine is similar but with fewer geckos. And possibly more fluff.

Way not to encourage an interest in entomology

I spent much of today helping out a Rothamsted's schools open day, talking about work being done on mosquito repellents. Some of the kids were gratifyingly engaged, some were more interested in shrieking, taking photos of each other and playing sardines in the "Max capacity 2 persons" elevator until it broke between floors, which I hope taught them a valuable lesson. But I was rather expecting that from them. What I was not expecting was the reaction of one of the teachers.

She brought her class over, took a look at the tank of live mosquitoes I was standing next to and announced "Eeeew, that's disgusting!" I was a little taken aback but launched into my spiel anyway: "Well maybe they are a bit disgusting, but they're also fascinating, did you know that...." only to be interrupted by her saying "No, they're horrid". So I told her the word she was looking for was "horrible" and poured bed bugs in her hand bag*.

I found her reaction utterly bizarre - surely as the class teacher she would have had some idea of what a visit to an institute doing a lot of insect research would entail, and to have organsised the trip she must have seen some value in it for her class? Once she'd wandered off to be revolted by someone else's display her pupils actually seemed pretty interested in what we were doing. I just hope they don't pay too much attention to her over the next few years.

Today I have learnt:

a) It is extremely difficult to appear fascinated the fourhundred and sixty fifth time someone tells you that they/their Mum/their partner often get bitten by mosquitoes on holiday/in the garden.

b) It is even harder not to appear puzzled when someone says they often get bitten at barbecues, and then asks whether there are mosquitoes in Britain.

c)Asking a class of teenagers if they can think of any diseases spread by mosquitoes, and getting a confident answer of "AIDS", just shows how desperately we need to sort out comprehensive sex education in this country.

*unfortunately I only did this in my head.

Lovesong for a lonely maggot

A poem that I really like by my friend Lorrie Hartshorn:

Oh lonely maggot,
Don’t fret
Come rest your weary,
wigglesome body
Come and claim
Your steak

My giddy ant
They are cruel,
Dearest maggot
But wiggle this way,
With your beetling brows
There is room at the bin for you.

May be that the other maggots are rotters,
Living together in pears
While you’re in
The dump.

But,
lonely maggot,
Wiggle this way
And I shall cherish you
Until the day
You fly.

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

Lolbachia

This picture made me laugh out loud, which probably means someone should shoot me and put me out of my misery now. Seriously though this picture was lifted from a very interesting post on everyone's favourite radical feminist bacterium.

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