As it continues to pour with rain here in the New Forest – thoughts go back to the hot, dry days at the Starmus Festival in Tenerife June this year

As summer definitely starts retreating and autumn approaches a bit too rapidly – thoughts go back to a warmer time at the Starmus Festival on Tenerife – June 2011.  This is the sumptuous Abama Hotel where most of the Festival was held – it really was like something out of Star Wars springing out in the middle of a desert landscape like a fairy-tale oasis – a totally remarkable place.

No photos of this event from me I’m afraid as some self-appointed bunch of knob-heads who were helpfully blocking the way in for Patrick’s guests made it clear that “the organisers” wanted no photographs to be taken (and no autographs to be asked for either)!  Who “these organisers” were I have no idea (and frankly I couldn’t care less) but I’m pretty sure that if Sir Patrick knew that his party had been hijacked in this way he would not have been too happy.

Other than that, great to see Sir Patrick again and looking forward to seeing the 700th edition of the Sky at Night this evening.

I left school at 19 (one year late as I spent 2 years in New Zealand which effectively cost me a year’s education) and joined the U.K.A.E.A. Harwell – yes the radiation place – as an Assistant Scientific Officer.  Now the first six months were spent taking the world-famous Harwell training course which I must admit held me in good stead for the whole of my working life, but that is by the by.  So for six months I worked at Harwell before going to the Culham Laboratory for Fusion Research to work on CO2 lasers.  In my first few weeks I noticed something VERY VERY scary, there were LOTS of people working there with duff legs!  Lots of the workers were hobbling about with some leg (or foot) problem.  Well I wasn’t stupid – I had 3 A-levels – this could only be one thing – RADIATION POISONING!!  So, panic stricken at the sudden realisation at what was going on (I’ve always been a bit of a hypochondriac as well as a Conspiracy Theorist) I ran to the Training Officer during the lunch break – he could see I was pretty upset about something, and the conversation went something like this.

Training Officer – “O.K. Greg, so what is the problem?”

Newbie A.S.O. – When I look around this place, I see there’s tons of people walking around with duff legs and the like.  What’s going on here?  Has there been a radiation leak?  Am I in any danger here?

Training Officer – tears of laughter rolling down his face (I didn’t think it was particularly funny at the time) – “No Greg, there has not been any radiation leak, and you are not in any danger from radiation.  What you have noticed is that as part of the Scientific Civil Service we are actually doing what other large organisations like ours are meant to do, and don’t - we are taking on our full compliment of disabled people.”

Newbie A.S.O. – “Ahh”.  Goes back to lunch.

So the moral of the story is this, sometimes, even when the answer seems completely obvious to you - it may not be what you think it is