On the Beach


On the beach is a title from one of my favourite albums by Chris Rea. This was where most of Saturday was spent, it was warm and sunny, however the planned bicycle trip over the East Downs on Sunday was postponed because of the torrential downpours. I was joined by Bakery in the MSc course this week; he arrived late and is from the Gambia where he is in charge of the countries first seed bank, hence I can see a trip to the Gambia one summer. He had not been into town; he stays at the university, so this was my chance to act as tour guide.





Brighton has one main pier nowadays and that’s where most of the photographs were taken from, as you can see it is quite a distance out and reminds me of Coney Island since it is all cheap food and cheap amusements.



From the current pier you can see the remnants of the old pier that was abandoned and then recently caught fire. They plan on building a tall viewing ‘Thing’ on this site and it is quite controversial since it will clash with the regency architecture that fronts that part of the beach. Frank Gehry has a project planned for the ocean front as well; it looks like a building undergoing convulsions, typical Gehry style. I will try to get an image to share with you at some point.





















On Brighton pier of course is where the crippled Jonathan Livingston Seagull hangs out after failing at his high flying acrobatics. It is amazing how smart he is ( how do you determine the sex of a seagull?), there he stands on one leg at feeding height in the midst of all, looking for handouts, all he needed was a cup and sign.





















On the way back from the pier we passed the Quaker Meeting House, actually we went in since they were having a sale of local produce. I put this in for my friend Tina who is a Quaker and once took me to the Quaker meeting house in Coldstream. Tina, they all have the same feeling, this one however sits on prime real estate close to the ocean in the old part of town.















The final shot is the last hill I go down everyday that I ride the bike to the university, and of course it is one of the first four I must go up on my return journey home. This was taken half way before I entered Stamnar Woods for the rest of the climb.

The Week That Was





At the top of the hill about five minutes walk from the house is an ancient Roman fort. It is the highest point of land for miles around with views to the ocean and the Sussex Downs. On a clear day you can see both the city of Brighton and Hove and the village of Falmer and the University of Sussex as seen in this photo.






In the city of Brighton is the Royal Pavilion. The pavilion was built in 1802 by the then George, Prince of Wales later to become king George IV. The gardens around the pavilion were designed by John Nash and laid out in the regency style. This style of gardening and plant display is somewhat eclectic in nature with large informal beds of mixed trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs and annual plantings. The gardens look unkempt since the mown grass is 'loosely mown' emulating how it would have been scythed in the 1800's. In my opinion, after viewing many gardens of an earlier or similar period where they are mown it is just an excuse to save money and time. Nonetheless it is an interesting landscape with uninteresting plants. The graduation ceremony for the postgraduates is held here in January.


http://www.royalpavilion.org.uk/


On Sunday it was once again a tour around the countryside, this time over a portion of the downs. The Sussex Downs is an area of open grassland and low deep valleys which are usually treed. Once in the open on the downs it is very windy, hence the lack of trees. If you look at the first image and imagine you were in that image inthe top right hand corner looking back you could be standing at this gate at the edge of the woods. This was the most spectacular trip so far, 6 hours of ever changing but dramatic scenery. There are few hills now that will stop me since some of them are several miles in length I am getting a tremendous workout since we figured it was over thirty miles of fairly technical terrain. We finished our trip some six hours later back at the house, however not before stopping at the little cafe on the beach for a cup of tea.


http://www.vic.org.uk/




The beach in Brighton stretches for miles and is mainly pebbles, however along the entire stretch is the promenade where you can walk or cycle. This is in front of the cafe where we stopped for tea at about 6:30pm on Sunday.








Of course I have to put some serious stuff in as well. To prove to my students that school is not all fun and play. Here I am working in the lab (plant stress unit) performing micropropagation (tissue cultures) of a rare endangered British orchid called Dactylorhiza and cultures of a carnivorous plant called Drosera carpensis as well as a few common plants to test for seed coat cleanliness. Over the next few weeks we should see if I was successful with the cultures. This is the only place in the the world where Dactylorhiza is propagated via tissue culture.

It is called the plant stress unit since we cut up plants and do all sorts of nasty things to them inflicting stress. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will intentionally infect the resurrection plant (Craterostigma plantagineum) with cultures of Agrobacterium and study the response. More plant stress, stay tuned!

http://www.biols.susx.ac.uk/resgroups/biology/psu/1_introduction.htm

The First Week

The first week at the University of Sussex has been filled with the back to school culture that one quickly forgets as a teacher. Moving into new digs, getting a phone, and in this case for me a bike, finding the local shops and pubs and then going through the process of registration have all taken on a new vision as a student. I have to say however that the whole process went quite well, there was lot of advance work done by both myself and the university reducing the aggravation substantially.

The scenery in this part of England is spectacular, on my way to the University I cycle through Stamnar Woods and out into Stamnar Village, in a few moments one is out of the city into the country, unfortunately Stamnar Village does not have a pub.



Then there is the age thing, you seem very conscious of the fact that most of the students on campus could be your children, however they seem not to notice you or has happened several times mistook me for a teacher and requested guidance. One fellow even stopped me this week and asked if knew where the barber was on campus; as if I would have a need for such.

I have seen an amazing amount of the countryside in a very short time mainly due to Geoffrey, a musician who lives in the flat above. He is an avid cyclist and a great local resource and has spent quite a bit of time showing me around. I have purchased a new mountain bike (should have brought mine with me from Canada) and last Sunday did close to thirty miles through the villages of Stanmner, Lewes, Newhaven and back under the white cliffs to Brighton. It was an exhausting experience especially with headwinds and torrential downpours and there was grave doubt whether I would be able to walk in the morning; I did, but took the train to the University instead.

Postgrad students are really treated quite differently by the staff here at Sussex than undegraduates, since I am the only one in the MSc (Plant Conservation-Seed Banking) I have one on one lectures or discussions in the professor’s office and work alongside him in lab. This has allowed me to structure the program to my own interests which is quite exciting. I have contact with a few students from last year who are now doing there PhD in some aspect of plant science and this has been extremely beneficial.

The topics are going to be very challenging, next week it is tissue culture, followed by poikilohydry in plants and then onwards covering Ethnobotany, CITES and such. My lab work is quite complicated and essentially we are isolating the DNA of plants so that we can compare and contrast the different populations. I have also been invited to attend other lectures as they run and am in the middle of a series on carnivorous plants; fascinating.