Progress of a kind...

5 September 2000
The monoliths of Carnac turn into a system of canals, which extend across the front of the Medical School as the main service pipes are relayed. The canals are promptly filled by the inclement rain, and the consequent water pumping operations create pleasing tableaux of fountains, waterfalls and calm, lapping pools. We could envisage leaving the site landscaped in this agreeable way, were it not for the caramel yoghurt coloration of the waters.

11 September 2000
A disadvantage of needing a new building is that we will have to sit on our hands for two years while it goes up – unless, of course, we can snaffle some temporary space in which to unpack some of the new gear. Estates set out with alacrity to address this for us, and find some suitable fallow. Their elegant scheme, however, is temporarily torpedoed in favour of a couple of portakabins, which I will have to pay for, until that scheme in turn is sunk – surprisingly not by any sense of irony or shame on the part of the U-boat commander but by the need for planning permission.

20 October 2000
Having resolved the sitting-on-the-hands problem, some shiny new equipment is starting to appear, and one of the heresies I developed in the JIF proposal can now be explored experimentally. I give the experimental designs to a pair of likely-looking postdocs, as I turn my attention to more important matters, such as who has fire-extinguisher training on the third floor, and paperwork for the government’s Transparency Review.

3 November 2000
Pay dirt! My beloved associates, with whom I am now well pleased, have been very busy. I watch with mounting incredulity as each graph shows the data toe-ing my heretical line, and not at all where 50 years of visual neurophysiology would suggest. This isn’t supposed to happen: theories in neuroscience can’t ever actually be correct, can they? But it’s a peak moment, and all that now remains is for unruly further data, infidel peer reviewers, and the tough-minded sub-editors at Caprice to take the shine off it completely.

5 November 2000
Late booking yields a lengthy multi-stop journey to the annual neuroscience meeting in the land of opportunity. I am so shot away on eventual arrival that I’m convinced I’ve lost my wallet, and am about to give myself up to the authorities as a vagrant, when it appears miraculously from the one pocket I forgot to look in. Panic over – only to be replaced by one a great deal worse, as it becomes apparent that at least a dozen groups worldwide are barely a whisker away from finding their own circuitous way to our heresy. All hands on deck when we get back.

12 December 2000
The JIF building is now a building-shaped swimming pool, with a deep end where the magnet will sit. All hands are indeed on deck, but to accord with the season of goodwill to all men (and women), I may have to permit the crew a couple of days’ shore leave over the festive season. Merry Christmas!

See also

• Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 1
• Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 2

External links

• University of Newcastle: Research interests of the Department of Psychology