On your Mark…

So, a good friend of mine, lets call him Runsdeep is flying to the other side of the world tomorrow, not too far from another good friend of mine, who writes a very good blog, if you don’t read it already. So, I said to Runsdeep as we pryed a wire coat hanger down the inside of his car door window, “I’ll write you something on my website”. So here it is…

The first time I met my friend he was working in the lab at which I began my PhD. Actually, I had been in the same room as him and probably stood around chatting to similar people at annual get-togethers for the scholarship that linked the two of us- his for his PhD degree, mine for my undergraduate. But the first time I was introduced to him and met him properly was while working in the lab. Initially he appeared much older and above me and I wasn’t quite sure how to take him. I later discovered, no, he wasn’t 35 or anywhere even near 30 and that he was actually quite fun.

Runsdeep is an intellectual at heart and a true geek. Sorry, that’s not meant to be offensive, all the best people are geeks underneath anyways. I would always forward him stories I read on the BBC website that had anything to do with religious fundamentalism or anti-evolution-or-global-warming, just to hear him mutter and shake his head and we could both vent our frustrations together. Any geeky jokes, and I knew where to take them.

As well as sharing rants, Runsdeep has also helped me. Alot. I mean like showing me how to make buffers or how to draw a circle in illustrator, he was always there to help. And when my house got flooded and I had no electricity, he let me stay at his.

One of my favourite memories of Runsdeep is eating really, really great fish and chips from a shop near his house, watching him and his house mates play Call of Duty and eating a bowl of melted Dairy Milk, smarties, raisins and cornflakes with a spoon, under a quilt his Canadian housemate’s grandmother had made. A really homely, friendly evening at a time I needed it.

Other memories I have of Runsdeep is him wearing a gypsy-style scarf a friend had lent me on his way home from a posh dinner as he was quite cold and quite quite drunk. Another is of us being determined to get a gang of us into his undergraduate college and drink loads of cheap alcohol. In the end it was just me, him, and another friend, and we ended up buying lots of JD as we got free merchandise… tins of playing cards that would have been utterly pointless in the sober light of day but coupled with cheap JDs and cokes, Bonza!

There are many stories I could embarass him with… mainly involving Runsdeep being a polite kinda guy and a variety of desperate unsuitable females being drawn towards him. Poor Runsdeep.

When in Oz visiting Mr C, we managed to meet up with Runsdeep and his girlfriend, a resident, and go out for dinner at a really nice Vietnamese restaurant. It’s kinda strange going half way round the world and meeting up with a friend you saw a week ago in the UK.

So I wish Runsdeep good luck in his venture to the unknown land of the south and I’ll leave you with some very flattering photos.