The last 6 months in the life of Fi

Wow. Right, well, it seems I have been a bit slack even by my own standards. A hell of a lot has happened since summer when I last blogged... so to fill you in briefly and with help of some visual aids (blatently just so I don't have to type as much)...

OK, first off, Sherryll and I split up. Bless her. Actually, don't bless her cos we split up because she dumped me.. HOWEVER, I will certainly miss being able to refer to *this* as my "better" half:





Tee hee! But we've managed to stay friends, and are currently (wait for it wait for it) still sharing a flat together(!!) Which we also share with Sherryll's new girlfriend, Sarah *ahem* Its not THAT weird. OK!?! Anyway, Sarah's Oirish and therefore pronounce's words in a comical fashion, and is awful drunk a lot of the time, so we like her lots.





..and you thought the plot lines in the L Word were twisted!!

So aside from all those fun and games... My mum finally came to visit at the back end of summer. She seemed to think that I was deliberately NOT catching her a pine marten, on purpose, JUST because I had caught a marten on the FIRST DAY my dad came to visit. But we got one for her eventually, and saw a male capercaillie a few minutes later, thats not bad going bagging sightings of two of Scotland's most elusive animals before breakfast.




This was taken on Dornoch Beach, providing photographic evidence of the fact do we not only have stunning beaches up here, but sunshine as well! While mum was here, we had a wee MacKenzie Clan reunion over in Poolewe, as copious amounts of our family live over on the west coast, and yet we very rarely get to see them. But they are litterally EVERYWHERE over there. You can't sit down for MacKenzies. And apparently, when a MacKenzie marries another MacKenzie, it infact produces a "pedigree", and not in fact an "inbreed", as it may commonly be confused with.


Ummm... I had a tattoo done at long long last (its only taken me the best part of 10 years to decide what to have and more importantly WHERE to have it). I wanted something that actually meant something and says something about who I am, and what I'm about ...so, with that in mind, (and after seeing a bumper sticker on the back of my brother's car) I had this done:

Its an evolve fish. It is NOT a bleedin' Christian fish(!!!) but rather a parody of one (note the LEGS!). Anyway, I like it, even if I may have to get "No, I am NOT a bloody Christian" tattooed underneath it seeing as only 1% of the population appear to be un-ignorant enough to GET it.

Work has been going well. As you can see, I have been collecting a sh*t load of poo. Always a pleasure.

But, I don't want to post too many pictures of the other aspects of my work, or talk about it too much, as there are those who may disagree with what we do, and don't get that its for the benefit of conserving this species. Sooo I will talk about my field assistants instead!

I decided that we needed a much bigger team if we were going to get these martens tracked. Radio tracking is an enormously labourious task, and the amount data produced by weeks of work is sickeningly small. So I went on a recruitment drive, and rounded up some more troops: enter Ali, Ellie, Eric and Jonathan. Dan (one of my originials) is still very much here, as it seems he has put down roots, and is now part of the furniture, which I am more than happy to say.





This is Ali and Dan on the secluded beach on the Black Isle where Dan has been building his "yurt" for the past few months. Not long after this photo was taken, Dan and Ali got together as a couple, and now the size of gap between them through which daylight can be seen is only measurable with the sorts of devices only particle physists have access to. Its very cute. Albeit rather stomach-churning at times, what with my new found cynical singleton-ness, but they are an adorable couple together. And very well matched. One day they will live together in Dan's yurt, and have smelly little hairy children together. And Dan will carve his rocks, and Ali will make cider, and they will live happily ever after in a truly harmonious, sustainable fashion. Bauk.






This is Ellie. She gets a little over-excited by beaches. Ellie was my little partner in crime *sigh* but alas she has already served her time and moved on to a Grown Up Job down in Bristol. Boo Ellie! BOO!





We all miss her and her random sound effects and generally manic ways.





This is Team Zissou on top of Stac Pollaidh, in the rain, after a rather large amount of whisky was consumed in Ullapool the night before. In the forground is Eric, our resident Viking. He kindly gave up raping and piliging and sailed his ships all the way from Finland just to come and work with us. He is yet another obsessive mountain biker. It seems I have recruited most of my field assistants on the basis of whether they're fanatical about bikes. But it strikes me as as good a criteria as any.


So then autumn came, and with it, magic and faeries...




And we harvested much of the forest's bounty (including chanterelles, blaeberries, cherries and raspberries), which we were particularly smug about considering people back in England will pay premium prices for things we were helping ourselves to off the forest floor. Dan got a slight fungi megalomania thing going on for a while there though, and decided he would make his millions by collecting and drying ceps for wholesale down in high class restaurants and hotels. For weeks he collected hundreds of the things, which he carpetted every surface of his room with (which then stunk like fungus for the best part of a month), carefully attending each one, turing them, cooing over them like some deranged mother hen. And for all his efforts, he got a poxy £60. So back to the drawing board, and pebble carving, with that one. Still, it meant we had lots of nice food to eat for free.




And then, Christmas went and sneaked up on us, bringing with it a bundle of trouble in the form of Bramble! My mum's new pup. Because that's what Christmas is all about - Puppies!

And then before you knew it, it was 2007 already! Which was spent with Team Zissou in Edinburgh, and was an absolutely fabulous end to a mind-bogglingly frenetic year. Is it really gone already!?

And so this is me now, getting back to work after holiday frollics. I am still very much single, but am quite happy with that fact. No really. Its all good. I'm taking time out to focus on my friends, my work, and most importantly - ME! And have found that I have really needed this break and alone time. As for the next 12 months, well, I have agreed to submit my PhD thesis by December 2007, and so have less than 11 months left in which to wrap up field work, work out what the hell I can write about, and write it.

In the meantime though I have far more pressing things to worry about such as: the HORROR that is getting my hair cut - EEEK!