Dear fellow scientist,
It is with heavy heart that I feel compelled to start this blog. For several months now my colleague, Dr Dudman (a lapsed scientist- although at one time quite distinguished in the field in the art of building rigs for studying the sensitivity of surface acoustic wave gas sensors and also in the manufacture of molecules of indeterminate floppiness containing both heterocyclic rings and ferrocene), has been urging me to do so.
‘You have so much to offer, Drusilla,’ she told me – and of course I agreed. I am an expert in two fields – etymology and sexual dynamics – which gives me a singular insight into several areas of human endeavour. Furthermore I am a lead researcher at the distinguished university of Uurm, an institution of burgeoning importance in both areas.
More importantly, I am gorgeous. More – much more – on this topic later, perhaps. But for now I should just mention at the outset that
I am six feet tall with a slim, well-proportioned figure (a little apple, a little pear) with the sort of hair that could easily grace a l’Oreal Herbalist advertisement: thick, luxuriant and black with exotic bluish overtones.
Ah, but I am here for my mind rather than for my body I remind myself, and this too is extraordinary and beautiful. It has embraced so much, but mainly it embraces science. It has loved science with a passion usually reserved for bedroom scenes in a bad movie. Which leads me back to why, this morning, I felt compelled to start this blog.
You see, I found my colleague, Dr Dudman, slumped miserably across her desk grasping the editorial from Friday’s Daily Telegraph in her hand.
‘Look,’ she said, ’that’s what they think – even now. You need to do something.’
So I took it gently from her grasp and carefully smoothed out the slightly soggy paper. She had highlighted the offending words with her favourite green highlighter.
‘…Mr Blumenthal is famous for cooking up ideas in a test-tube. But cookery, like music or love, is not hatched in a laboratory. Frankenstein’s monster or chemical war are confected there. By contrast, eating is a humane activity, like playing a game or singing for joy….’
That’s what made me snap, dear reader, and this is what finally drove me here.
This is from the editorial comment from the UK’s largest selling quality newspaper, and he believes that a laboratory is not the place for ‘humane activity’ ‘playing a game’ or ‘singing for joy’.
Dr Grump, however, intends to differ…
…but that will have to come later. Just now I have to sort out next week’s subject rota.
So, until next time, I would like to wish you a successful interlude with much singing and playing.
And may all your monsters be kindly ones.
Your humble and obedient servant,
Drusilla E Grump.
Last updated:
Sunday, 30 Nov
2008 - 12:48 UTC
Welcome, Dr Grump. In case anyone is unfamiliar with your colleague, she blogs here
PS I think you ought to get someone to change the heading of this blog. It says you are a fictional persona. Clearly you can’t be, or you couldn’t write a blog. You must be a real, but reclusive person I feel.
Dr Grump says tell that Brian Clegg that he is clearly not a a fiction writer – if he were he would understand the term ‘fictional persona’.
She is not called Dr Grump for nuthin.
The heading stays.
How do we know Clare Dudman isn’t a fictional persona, just pretending to be a real person?
Well Bob, I just asked Dr Grump that one (rather nervously because I know she is particularly tetchy when she is in the middle of her rotas) but she said nothing, just smiled mysteriously.
When I asked her if she’d heard me she just replied ‘Go figure.’
Whatever that means.
Ah. It’s never good to talk to imaginary people.
Welcome, Dr G. I look forward to more of your acerbic comments: I am sure there is a lot of suitable material out there – fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint.
I don’t think I’ll be visiting Mr Blumenthal’s Little Chef restaurant in the near future: I gather that he has done away with their trademark Maple Syrup Waffles (not real Maple Syrup, you understand, but Maple Syrup-Substitute).
Excuse me, Madam, but does this bus go to the station?
Furthermore, Maxine, he is not intending to serve his snail porridge – I mean, what is the point of a Little Chef without snail porridge?
And Henry, Dr Grump says ‘Are you talking to me?’
Welcome Dr. Grump, I’m looking forward to more blog posts from you. And please tell your colleague Dr. Dudman that I received her book 98 Reasons for Being in the mail today. Even though every German child knows Struwwelpeter, it is rather difficult to obtain a copy here in Germany.
Dr Grump says that is very kind of you to buy Dr Dudman’s book, Martin, and says that the best bits, in her opinion, are the pictures. She prefers Jilly Cooper.
I did read that as eNtymology, Dr. Grump.
May I recommend you join the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ if you are not already a long-standing member?
Humbly yours.
Welcome to NN Dr Grump – happy to join you in battle against tendentious anti-science nonsense, wherever it may appear!
Thank you Heather, Dr Grump has indeed found much inspiration from the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, and indeed there was a time when it used to be her exclusive source of dates.
However, time moves on – and she now favours a less hirsute companion. In fact she now suspects many a masculine pony tail of being merely a compensatory gesture: as the hair recedes at the front so the hair at the back grows longer, almost as if the scalp is slipping backwards with age. She has already applied for a grant from the Uurm Foundation to make a further study of the phenomenon.
Aha, an ally! I am honoured to make your acquaintance, sir! I shall add you to the Grump network forthwith.
Ditto!
Yes. I think so. Unless you’re that eight-foot rabbit called Harvey. It’s hard to tell from this angle.
Welcome Dr. Grump! Will you change your profile picture, or keep using that of our companion Clare Dudman (as a cover)?
Wrt ‘male pattern hair loss’: they say that those that loose hair in the front are great thinkers and those that lose it in the back are great lovers. Those that loose it in both places think they are great lovers..
Thank you Steffi – two excellent points. The second, in particular, is priceless, and Dr Grump has added it to her little black and marked it with a star – an almost unheard-of honour.
When I asked her about a photo, however, she was slightly less effusive. She is thinking about it, but suspect that, like the new Madame Sarkozy, her rates will be too high.
Henry – did you have to mention Harvey? That topic is still out of bounds with Dr Grump. I think you know why.
I remain unrepentant. Just wait until Dr Grump hears what I’ve done with her ten-foot blue badger, Osbert.
I loved/was terrified by Struwwelpeter as a child. Of course I could not give or read it to my own children as long since banned (along with Helen Bannerman). Maybe just as well, especially that finger story. I still shudder! The film Edward Scissorhands was based on it, apparently.
Dr Grump has now left the building. She has been having a bad day. At one stage I found her under her desk muttering about the her past catching up with her and asking me if I thought it was possible for ten feet tall rabbits to grow armour on their front, and did I think the ancestors of turtles had teeth sharp enough to remove the fingers of small boys. Frankly, when this happens, it is better to leave her well alone.
_I loved/was terrified by Struwwelpeter _
I was just terrified. Didn’t know it had been banned, though.
Struwwelpeter: I just remember a certain horrified curiosity. The stories were just so out there.
So Struwwelpeter is banned, and parents in my son’s daycare in Colorado let their 4 and 5-year olds watch Spiderman 3 and Star Wars Episode 3 – you know: Spiderman turns evil, Anakin kills a bunch of children and then crawls up on shore completely burned and only half alive…
(I should add that this was a daycare with children of almost exclusively well-educated, successful people).
Hang on – where is it banned? I found it on amazon.de, co.uk, and com?..
I’m serial this morning: just found this aged, but very timely post by Dr. Grump’s colleague.
You are right, Steffi – Struwwelpeter has not been banned in general – just in certain UK libraries, and, I suspect, for racial reasons rather than because it is considered to be too disturbing. It is not the tailor with the scissors who has won the librarian’s ire, but the scribe: when three boys laugh at the Moorish boy he reprimands them by telling them that the Moorish boy can’t help being black. When you think about it, this has a potentially stunning and devastating implication for any non-white child reader.
This is ironic because Hoffmann himself fought against racial discrimination and was quite a campaigner for the only substantial racial minority that he did come across – the people of Judengasse.
Personally, I think children love and in some way need to be unsettled when they read – hence the popularity of books like Roald Dahl’s. They need to know there are wicked things in the world. It gives them a chance to encounter them from a safe distance – the other side of the page – before becoming adults and meeting them face to face.
Yes, but it was the sad fate of Little Suck-A-Thumb that scared me shitless. They’d never allow it in Haringey. At least, not if they could help it.
Yes, it’s the detail, really, isn’t it – the little pools of blood on the floor beneath the thumbless hands? As Maxine says – it delights and terrifies at the same time.