Debz, or Lou, or me!

The road from Chelmsford, where I was born in 1981, to Nottingham, where I am today, was far longer and more winding than a drive through Cambridgeshire and up the A1! It took about 15 years, and involved detours to Scotland, South Africa, and various stopoffs in Eastern Canada. The adventures along the way have ranged from encounters with baboons and wine tasting at a very early age to encounters with Newfoundland folk musicians and Tim Hortons coffee addictions at a slightly greater age...

And so I find myself back in England studying Chemistry of Materials at the University of Nottingham. Why? Well, I'm really bad at making decisions, so I usually just kind of fall into doing whatever seems interesting at the time. This can lead to deep feelings of regret, but after three years I haven't yet come up with something better, so I'll be sticking with this one for another year, at which point it will be decision time again, and if I'm lucky I can go and become a rustic furniture craftsman in the Lake District, or something equally unrelated to my degree! Please send any suggestions to emytdlc@nottingham.ac.uk:)

Apart from the lectures and labs which keep me relatively busy at the moment, I spend my time planning my great escapes from Nottingham. These usually come in the form of trips to Bristol or Aberdeen, when I have the time, or shorter journeys to Matlock (a great place to be chased by cows!), Lincoln (when I feel the need for second hand books.) or Sheffield (To stand in the shadow of The Crucible, and wish it was the right time of year for the Embassy World Snooker Championships!). I think the need to escape comes from the fact that I've never lived anywhere for more than about three and half years, so I can't cope with staying in one place for too long!

My other great obsession is Formula One. This involves some late nights, or early mornings, to cheer Eddie on in the qualifying and race live from Australia or Malaysia...and more recently a trip to France for the GP at Magny Cours to see Schumacher win the world championship earlier than ever. Sigh, but just when it was getting predictable Eddie goes and gets a podium at Monza:) Woohoo!

My attention span has got the better of me for the moment, and it's time to get back to my lovely foil-wrapped silver-doped titania films (No it's not more interesting than it sounds!) so I'll get back to this another time...

This is me in my Dad's sea kayak which I wish was my own!