Wednesday
Half day off visiting Durham

Easy day today. Lab sessions all morning followed by lunch and free time. Carolynn and I walked into Durham after lunch to see the sights. Lovely place.

Back again by 3:30pm for more tutorials. I had chosen hand specimens followed by Phase diagrams.

Phase diagrams was in a small lecture hall. It got progressively warmer and warmer and I began to have difficulty focusing on Iain Gilmore who was presenting it. Every time I blinked, one eye would open at a different speed to the other. It wasn't that the lecture was boring. I was trying my hardest to concentrate. I think that I was just so tired after the first three days that the heat was sending me to sleep. I started shifting my position, leaning back and then forward onto my hands. I noticed others doing the same. About 15 mintues before the end, Iain asked if there were any questions. Silence.

"You must have some questions" he said, "otherwise you wouldn't have come".

Someone came up with a question. Afterwards, I asked around and it looks like we were all having the same trouble. I cannot imagine what it must have looked like to Iain. Like a load of blinking, nodding dogs, I guess. I wonder if the tutors get together over a drink and swap stories of dozy students towards the end of the Summer School week. In their position, I think I might.

After dinner there was the guest lecture in the main lecure theature. Although quite late, I think everyone enjoyed it. It was all about fuel resources and how we are gaily assuming that they will last quite a long time. He started the lecture with some pertinent questions about who had driven up alone in their car. I felt a rather guilty but there were quite a few of us. Clearly, something has to change in the way people think.

The evening's social event was a Karaoke at another college which I decided not to attend. I can imagine few things worse than people singing along to their favourite songs with a microphone.