Today I had the Practical From Hell. There are some practicals which are straightforward, work easily and give good results in a short space of time. And then there are those that don't. There are practicals where you start off with a fairly large volume of liquid which contains your product, and then you remove the solvent on a rotary evaporator to be left with a very small puddle of oily fluid in the bottom of a flask (the product of a good few hours' work), which is supposed to crystallise. After some time, you give up on the crystallisation. Since the next step is recrystallisation, you just go through the motions. At five o'clock, as the lab is closing, you stagger, high on a potent mix of acetone and dichloromethane clutching a random selection of spectra that tell you that something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong....   Today Chris had a Waltercut. It really is very impressive - you go into Walter's and say exactly how you'd like your hair to be cut, and yet you still get the same haircut as everyone else and yet people still come back again. Chris asked for the back and side to be cut with scissors rather than clippers, to which the response was a cheery 'Certainly sir', as the clippers were applied with gusto.   Today was also the day when Christine (Claire and Dave's errant flatmate) joined the legions of the aged with Chris. Dave and Claire invited the physicists (plus Flat Five) over for a small party. I joined them after doing kendo, just in time for Richard Winslade to cut loose with a can of 'Silly String'. Excellent timing on my part.
			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.