First night

11.59pm. The coach left at 5pm sharp, and I quickly realised that I had forgotten to pack a rucksack into the suitcase when I left England. I also quickly had the feeling that the advice to dress warmly had been something of an overstatement. After a few minutes, I began to see that my black cardigan was a mistake!

Kirsten was on good form, and we had a few nice chit-chats on the way to the observatory, nothing fascinating, just this and that. She asked after Alan, which was kind, and I filled her in on a few bits and pieces of what we'd been up to lately.

The lad to my left was very quiet. His name is Laurie, he's in his early twenties, and he stands out already as not being one of the crowd. He works as a mechanic for a large bus company, has a shaven head and his arms are covered in tattoos. When I first started to chat to him I honestly thought that he was stoned, but it seems he was just extremely tired. He said that he'd driven from Truro to Gatwick, then flown from Gatwick to Mallorca, a journey which had required him to set off at 4am. No wonder he was spaced out, I think I would be the same.


We arrived at the observatory, which was just as I imagined it to look (but then I have looked at an awful lot of photos of it). We had a very long introductory session, which took place inside the planetarium (picture above). Simon Green, the course leader or whatever he is, seemed very nice when he started talking, but after a while I just wanted to bang his head on a desk until he stopped talking. He clearly loves the sound of his own voice.

He talked at length about the order of project work, about how the sessions would be divided up, and to be honest most of us glazed over after a while. I think it'll make more sense tomorrow but tonight it's a heck of a lot to take in.

Once this was over, we were subjected to a sugary-sweet video on the invention of the telescope, which was shockingly over the top. I know a number of people actually nodded off during the video. I was one of them, but the overly loud American soapy woman doing the voice-over woke me up again. This really is the presentation for the tourists, but I know that we could easily have done without it.

Afterwards at 8pm we went up to the cafeteria for our evening meal, which was very good, although it was hard to describe what it actually was. I'm not sure the meal had a central idea, it just seemed to be lots of bits of different things. There was pork, veal, kalamari, vegetable lasagne, pasta salad, tuna salad, tomato mozarella and olive salad, you name it. But it was very nice. Avon, one of the activity tutors was on our table, and we talked about his speciality, which was something to do with the Andromeda Galaxy. I popped outside after a while to see if I could get a mobile signal. The signal was very patchy, so I decided against trying to ring home.

At 9pm we traipsed back to the planetarium. As it is completely overcast tonight, there was no chance that we could go outside to do some observing, so Roger O'Brien (one of this week's tutors - he also does e-tutorials for S282) talked at length about navigating around the night sky. He sounds like like Phil Daniels, and I had to restrain myself from shouting, "Park Life!"


Some of the stuff he was doing was known to me (Ursa Major points up to Polaris, left to Regulus, down to Leo, etc etc), some of it was new. That was fine, but I was especially annoyed with a silly old fart two seats to my right, who kept on using a torch with a white beam, and it kept spoiling my night vision. Every time he did it, I shone my torch into his eyes and set it to 'flash mode', but he didn't get the hint. How he has the wit to be here I've no idea, he's still wearing a name badge with no name written on it.

Once this session ended, we were taken to to be shown the computer lab inside the large white building at the OAM. It's tiny but servicable. After that we had a whistle-stop tour of the telescope domes. Most of it did not sink in to be honest, we were all too tired, but the equipment is pretty amazing.

11pm came, and we were herded onto the coach. Tony fell asleep almost immediately. Laurie stayed awake, somehow, Kirsten and I were both yawning a lot. The journey back seemed a lot longer. An hour's drive each way is a lot of driving. I wish we could have been put up somewhere closer, even if it meant being put up in a converted farmhouse, with a hired domestic help.

Just got in, and I'm feeling very tired. It's too late to phone home. Most of the rest of my colleagues seem similarly tired, although I can hear a lot of voices in neighbouring rooms.