Fear and trepidation day. Today is the day we have a Collection class with Dr. Fairbanks. We enter his office to find him smiling a wry smile. This, of course, nothing new. He hands out the papers (Ed: '79%, excellent'; me: '22%, very poor' - could have been a lot worse).   Apropos of nothing, we discuss this year's college Chemists' Dinner with him. Mark and Ed are organising it this year and we are going to Michel's, a small French brasserie on Monday of 5th week. Dr. Fairbanks realised that he has booked himself on a course on Tuesday of 5th week - the course he missed last year since he was too 'ill' after Chemists' Dinner the night before. Oh dear. This knowledge kept us going through the class that followed.   After the class, Vicki and I went to do another practical, on the basis of making hay while the sun shines. We did the excitingly named 'Bomb Calorimetry' practical. This does not, usually, involve the destruction of the lab in a flash of light and a maelstrom of collapsing concrete and steel. Usually. The instructions included the useful line 'Do not drop the bomb'. We did not.   The bomb is actually a big metal canister that you can do high pressure reactions in. We had to make a pellet of a chemical and then burn it in a lot of oxygen inside the bomb, measuring the energy released by means of a thermometer in a water bath surrounding the bomb. To trigger the reaction, you press the excitingly titled 'Fire' button. The result is disappointingly silent, and the temperature of the water bath rises by a degree or so. All in all a thrilling practical. We had to do this four times. We got one to work, and then had three bombs that refused to fire. We would have continued, had Vicki not chosen to drop a thermometer through a hole in the top of the heating jacket of the calorimeter. The very inaccessible heating jacket. The lab technician had to spend the rest of the afternoon dismantling the calorimeter to retrieve the thermometer. We will have to finish the job tomorrow. I will not be letting Vicki anywhere near the machine with a thermometer.
			The characters and situations in this diary are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happenings. Any resemblance to such things is coincidental, or just for humourous effect. All names have been chosen to implicate the innocent.