Last time I'd reached the various people that were in my PhD lab during 1981-1984. I'd forgotten one other guy: Wole Shode, another African postdoc. He was a serious and conscientious chap and didn't hold with all our cavorting and pissing around!
One of the things we used to do was play five-a-side football against the other research labs. Our team was okay and I played in goal.
These are the two incidents I remember best:
1. A shot came through a sea of legs, took a slight deflection to my right then, when I was wrong-footed, a big one to the left. I just got down in time to push it round the post.
2. The ball was bounding towards our goal pursued by an enemy striker. All I could do was advance to the edge of the circle to cut down the angle, and I saved the shot too. Pity it was point blank with my genitalia. We were winning 1-0 at that point, but ended up losing 3-1 because I couldn't move.
Then there was the Dick of the Day Award.
This was the basically the top of the head and the ears of a Space Hopper (remember them?) with a cocktail stick in the top bearing a flag made from a sticky label that said Dick of the Day. Dick was underlined. It was specially awarded to any chemical cock-up committed in the lab and was a trophy to be worn with pride on your bench until the next incident, which was hopefully by someone else. It reminded us that a man who never made a mistake never made anything. At least that was our excuse.
Next time: recipient events of the Dick of the Day award - and other gross errors and unbelieveable events.
Jack Orchison
June 1, 2014
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