Lewis no more, Skye no more

A couple of things have put me in mind of my last month or so living in Aberdeen today. The first is the fantastic story of a chemistry undergraduate who tried to set up a crystal meth lab in his flat in the Hillhead Halls of Residence. I don't remember that being part of the curriculum when I was a postgrad up. there. The danger of explosions from such makeshift labs is massive but I have to say any explosion damage would probably only make minimal differences to the Halls there. I only had to endure them for the last month of my time there but that was plenty experience for me.

I came to stay there because the intended plan of moving in with my girlfriend while I wrote up my thesis and looked for a job was somewhat upended by our breaking up and me needing a short term place to live. I needed to move out of the place I had been in but was only hanging around another month or so to finish the experimental work of my PhD so I really only needed somewhere to put my head at night but it was still a terribly bleak place to spend any time. I would move back home to do the write up and then think about employment. I wasn't sad to leave Aberdeen, which surprised me. I realised the only reason I had planned to stay there was because Katherine hadn't yet finished her studies but as soon as we had split there was not a single thing that I could think of that would make me wish to stay. It's not a friendly place, a fact which had really been brought to the forefront of my mind by the few months earlier that year that I had spent in Belfast. The difference in those two cities has to be seen to be believed. One of the first new friends I made in Belfast was actually from Aberdeen and his having stayed there for a decade already just confirmed what I felt about the relative merits of the two cities.

The second thing that reminds me of that time is a program about the Western Isles of Scotland. My very last week living in Aberdeen I actually spent mostly away from it doing a tour of the Western Isles with my supervisor Rich going round all the schools on the islands doing a chemistry show called the flashes & bangs show. It's sponsored by all sorts but is essentially run by the Royal Society of Chemistry and as Rich and I were both involved heavily with the committee for the North of Scotland branch we got ourselves nominated as the people to go and do it. It was exactly the sort of pick me up I was in need of thanks to the aforementioned break up.

We started off down in Castlebay on Barra and slowly snaked our way up the islands doing a dozen or so shows for kids of all ages and occupying ourselves of an evening in local restaurants and hostelries. I've rarely eaten so well as I accustomed myself with the abundance of seafood that we in Scotland usually send off to our much more appreciative European cousins. It was a real tonic to the soul and left me in brilliant form as I prepared myself to leave the granite city.

I learned a lot that week away. I confirmed that I was actually happiest when I was teaching, something I had learned to some extent through demonstrating in undergraduate labs and helping out as a tutor in the summer school access courses. It would take me another wee while before I would actually act on that knowledge right enough but it was really brewing.

I kept a journal that week and I gave it to the lecturer who usually did the shows on my return. He told me it was a brilliant piece of writing that told him my real talent lay in doing that over science research. Should I ever find myself without anything to say in this here portal I'll hunt it out and put it on here.