Bearing witness

About 40 years ago, I was invited to upskill myself in the white-coat, real-science lab across the corridor from my office. I had been hired to teach population genetics because that _had_ been an important and edge-cutting area of genetics. Pop.Gen. was quite the doldrums in the early 80s, but someone had to teach it, and I was that person. The technology to look quite directly at variation in DNA was coming on-stream and they were about to inject steroids into Pop.Gen. So it was a smart move to learn which end of an Eppendorf to open [hint; not the sharp end]. I spent half a year getting to stage where a) I could generate useful, repeatable results b) I knew it would always be hard work. I recognised b) because I was working back-to-back with someone who really understood what she was doing.

I had a long weekend in England recently because my molecular mentor MolMent was having a knees-up to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary. My parents celebrated their 50th in 2000AD and my father dropped dead [of "medical misadventure"] 6 months later. It seemed better to bear witness at the anniversary, than at a funeral, so I booked a bed-in-a-shed with The Boy in Bath, which is a 2 hour train-ride from Weymouth [as L Donald McGill, kiss-me-quick, candyfloss & sandy sandwiches] where my friends had retired early about 10 years ago. 

They were able to do that because MolMent left real science shortly after teaching me everything I know about it and put herself through Law School. She parlayed that qual to London working as a Patent Lawyer specializing in molecular biology for MegaPharm. Developing and marketing new biologics generates billion$ for shareholders, with million$ crumbs available for the Effectives. Obvs she was an asset - knowing both the law and real science to exacting standards gave her powerful negotiating power round board-room tables.

At these things (weddings, funerals, celebrations) I've learned late in life to follow my mother's lead and wade in despite being the emotional basket-case that I am. At one point I strolled to the end of the garden where a 50ft cliff fell away to the tide-line. Standing at the top (and not falling away under the influence of fizz) there was a fine view out over the bay to Portland Bill and Chesil Beach. The view point was already occupied by a husband and wife - who were not made of the same wade-in social steel as I was affecting. I told them the story [not for the first time, not for the first time that afternoon] of me and MolMent and how I'd never met anyone with such a deep "feeling for the organism" understanding of sub-microscopic molecules and processes. "Molecules schmolecules" replied the bloke, "that woman really understood Intellectual Property"; and proceeded to tell me a £15million board-room war-story.

Errrm, quite so. Some people, by genetics or upbringing or both, are destined to be lucky make their own luck by hard work, long hours, good memory and finely tuned crap-detector. It doesn't matter which college, or no-college, such folk go to, they do well anywhere anytime anyhow. That's another reason not to agonize about which college or course to choose.

Their was-delapidated, now painstakingly refurbed by Himself, Edwardian mansion with sea views is about 300m from the flat where my newly-wed parents lived in 1950 . . . and scavenged coal from the train-tracks to Portland.