It’s still Friday. Somewhere.<\/p>\n
\n‘It’s hot like hell. And you smell of death!’ Lieselotte said to Neil one morning, not long before I left that particular lab. This is the girl who uses the English language rather like a cluster bomb: inexpertly, and people get hit by shrapnel. <\/p>\n
\n‘My barbecue cooks like hell!’<\/p>\n
\nBack in Fenland we had a circular dichroism measuring-type instrument. If you don’t know what one of those is it doesn’t really matter, except to say that this particular one appeared to be carved out of solid granite, sat in a scary room in the basement and ate undergraduates for elevenses. <\/p>\n
\nDespite that it was quite fragile, consisting of various antediluvian optics and a mercury lamp that absolutely was not, without exception, under any circumstances to be struck in the presence of oxygen. Not ever.<\/p>\n
\nTo help even the most suicidal student with this seemingly simple yet somehow elusive directive, the CD machine was connected to two dirty great nitrogen cylinders with an automatic switching device connecting them: the idea being that one would turn on the tap and flush the machine with nitrogen well in advance of wanting to use it (often overnight)\u2014and if one cylinder were to run empty in the night then the other would without a flicker of a metaphorical eyelid take up the burden. And if one cylinder was empty when one came to use the CD machine one would trog off to Stores to replace it. You could tell that the cylinder was empty because there was a useful little dial on it with a red line and the letters ‘E’, ‘M’, ‘P’, ‘T’ and ‘Y’.<\/p>\n
\nAnd there were instructions and warning signs all over the room to this effect.<\/p>\n
\n‘BC9 expresses like hell!’ Lieselotte said the next morning. ‘Beta octylglucoside is like hell!’<\/p>\n
\nUh huh. <\/p>\n
\nTime passed. <\/p>\n
\n‘My CD spectra are like hell!’.<\/p>\n
\nOops.<\/p>\n
\nTurns out that Lieselotte had stormed into the basement room the previous night, in that inimitable way of hers, switched on all the taps and gone home for the night. In the morning, she’d stormed (like hell? probably) back in, struck the mercury lamp\u2014and yes, you’re a country mile ahead of me\u2014and stormed out again to get her samples.<\/p>\n
\nNot noticing, natch, that the needles on both the nitrogen dials were firmly against the letters ‘E’, ‘M’, ‘P’, ‘T’ and ‘Y’, and probably had been for most of the night.<\/p>\n
\nWas she popular?<\/p>\n
\nLike hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s still Friday. Somewhere. ‘It’s hot like hell. And you smell of death!’ Lieselotte said to Neil one morning, not long before I left that particular lab. This is the girl who uses the English language rather like a cluster … Continue reading