The space age

19 May 2000
A post-JIF wave of interdisciplinary collaboration is developing. Now that we don’t need to be, we seem desirable as partners for a startling variety of aspirational proposals. Interesting, though, that more-or-less any two disciplines can find common ground, if one of them is desperate enough.

24 May 2000
We’re currently tinged with sadness at the imminent departure of our present master, but nonetheless most interested to hear of the identity of our new VC – no less a person than a Governor of the Wellcome Trust. Must be all right, then. However, some question the wisdom of exploring differences of opinion with a VC who is also a Governor. Perhaps I should seek advice from Dale Carnegie.

3 June 2000
A public lecture on neuroecology. Anything about the brain attracts dwellers in a higher orbit rather as an MRI suite attracts screwdrivers, so I’m a bit wary. At the end, a long-retired accountant suggests at length a relation between topology and complex dynamics, the type of suggestion often associated with a fairly ostentatious disorder. But this seems highly insightful: it makes doing the talk doubly worthwhile. Maybe I’m losing it. On the down side, the presentation bottle turns out to be an overly dry Domaine.

18 July 2000
Procurement trips us up. It is assumed on one side, not unreasonably, that competitive tendering for an expensive piece of equipment should yield a cost saving. However, the builders of the only machine of its type have calculated, also not unreasonably, that the science will probably draw us to them even if we have to pay through the nose. Hence, we are a mile short of having the money to acquire what we need. It is not at all obvious today that the university will now accept the JIF grant. There is a flurry of contacts above my head. Meanwhile, I am in close touch by phone with JIF’s Girl on a Motorcycle and with a very senior decision-maker in the frozen north. They have two things in common: leather creaks softly in the background in both cases, and both believe themselves to have been "firm but fair". The latter commonality is ominous, and my fingertips momentarily brush the Deutsch Direkt tapes, en passant.

24 July 2000
Someone blinks, and we’re back in business.

28 July 2000
It’s now some time since any self-respecting grants panel turned us down. Also, many desirable colleagues from around the world are descending upon us, propelled by their own money. My despair mounts with each new arrival: we are now twice the size we were in April 1999, and the JIF building is simply not going to be big enough. Unhappily, we are due to be cemented to the front of the Medical School, an edifice that already struggles to contain the hauteur of the clinician. I am thus forced to contemplate a future as Cecil Rhodes, compelled by a manifest destiny to annexe an unwilling continent.

4 August 2000
My JIF colleagues have evidently noticed our impending accommodation crunch. I am visited by a secretive succession of them, each sporting a carefully conceived plan that only slightly advantages their own labs. There’s nothing for it but to confess the extent of this problem to the high-ups.

9 August 2000
My initial gambit is to attempt complete sincerity and honesty. But this is an unfamiliar tack in higher education and so is rebuffed. Golf is the recommended approach. The Dean resists manfully, but eventually falls prey to my tearful remonstrations in a bunker on the 17th. Looks like we get the common room and the exams hall.

28 August 2000
Building work has started in earnest. A large number of massive wooden posts have appeared, which, while resembling the monoliths at Carnac, bear no very obvious relation to our pavilion. We watch disconnectedly from the perimeter, as JCBs manoeuvre where once stood the flash motors of the clinical professors. Disappointingly, no Boxster, S-Type Jag or Audi TT appears to have required removal by the clampers. There really is no justice.

See also

• Young, gifted and very well equipped: Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 1

External links

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