Hello World

So here’s my Hello World post.

It all starts with a snake in a toilet.

A snake in a toilet in a shed with mud and hay on the floor.

And crickets and locusts and horseflies the size of a one-pence piece.

(Can you tell I read a lot of children’s stories?)

An adult locust

This shed got me to where I am today. It was in this shed that I was introduced to scientific experiments in the real world, the diligence of data entry, recording temperature and humidity data of cricket bins at multiple timepoints - multiple timepoints at the same time every day. I was introduced to scientific experiments and a Bearded Dragon named Henry.

A couple of months ago, I began a new journey with a snake. I received a text message from my son while he stood at our local train station waiting to join me on the train from Newcastle.

‘I know this might sound a bit weird but can I have a snake for my birthday. I will care for it. Myself. It is £50.’ (It wasn’t.)

‘Pls’

‘Pls’

To which I replied, ‘YES’.

‘Wait realllllllllly’.

‘YOU’VE MADE ME A VERY PROUD MOTHER’. It was like I’d been waiting for this moment for twenty years.

That was how we began spending Saturday mornings in the exotic pet shop. And I reminiscing about working on the insect farm, tubbing silent brown crickets into small rectangle boxes, the exact same cricket tubs that I now see every Saturday morning at the exotic pet shop. It had been my first full-time job after leaving art school. A minimum wage job, but I was later told that I was THE MOST EXCITED person they had ever interviewed for the role.

Working at the bug farm set me on the road from art to science; years later, in 2011, as I was finishing up my PhD, I began writing a blog, which I called, ‘Painting, Drawing and Molecular Biology’, and which helped me to understand how art and science are actually quite alike. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be digging out and revising some of those old posts, as well as posting lots of new content.

I hope you join me for the ride.