And that was the week that was!

Busy one at that. It culminated today when I had to present to our company's global Chief Medical and Scientific Officer. He was the head of all research at GSK and then took over the Bill and Miranda Gates foundation before joining us. He was, is, a great guy though and was genuinely excited by what I (we) had to present to him today on his first visit to Cambridge. This week has also been about the footy as well though. England drew with France 1-1 at the Euro Championships on Monday and tonight beat Sweden 3-2, as I ate strawberries and drank cider, as you do :-) On Tuesday I, we, spent 7 hours in a cubicle at Addenbrooks with a little person awaiting an endoscopy, which did n't turn out well :-( On the plus, I side managed to ride to work this week on two consecutive days, first time since moving out here to the sticks! First day was very hard coming home as I was low on food. The second was surprising much easier, probably thanks to the pub lunch, and I managed the 19 miles back in 59 minutes. Pleased :-) And tomorrow ....... the seaside!!! Lowestoft, fresh salty air and a Mr Whippy, with luck. Hopefully, next week will be quieter. I'm telling myself that I've managed to talk my bosses out of me going to Japan in July. Am I kidding myself? Time will tell.

The Others by James Herbert

Herbert is one of my favourite authors. When I used to read a lot as a teenager I read stuff like "The Rats", "Fluke" and "The Magic Cottage" ... and enjoyed them all. Returning to novels last year I read another Herbert which was very good, one of my favourites of the year. I'm not one of those people who can read the same author consecutively, I like to have some diversity. So, after a few other authors I returned to Herbert and read "The Others" and it was ................ ok. Yep, it was quite good, nothing special, but pretty good. The story of an errant 1940's film star cast into hell. He is given the opportunity to redeem himself in a new life. All this happens in the first chapter and seems forgotten as the real plot, of a deformed private investigator takes shape. He is enlisted by a greiving widow to find her son, who was born terribly deformed and, apparently, dies a few minutes after birth. After some chasing it turns out that a doctor is taking malformed newly born children (and "monsters") and keeping them under his old peoples home. He carries out experiments on them and .... get this ...... produce bizarre porn to earn his funding!!!!! Our hero eventually rescues them all, apart form those who perished in the fire, but boy, did the finale get dragged out some!!! I've procrastinated loads about it but I've finally decided upon a change and will revert to another teenage love of mine ..... fantasy. I've downloaded Groege R R Martin's "The Game of Thrones". I'm not sure it will be my thing. Sounds like it is a bit like the bbc series "Merlin" and it's 864 pages. Watch this space!!!!