@mcrmonkey @slowe Hah!

Back in the Old Days, the observer would go up there for the observing shift and spend eight hours in a rather precarious metal garden shed hanging below the original surface of the Mk. 1.

(I can only assume there was some sort of porta-potty in a corner.)

@khleedril @slowe Lovell was the nicest genius I’ve ever met. When I was (briefly) at Jodrell in ‘94, he’d retired a few years prior, his wife had died the year before, and so he’d come into Jodrell most days and sit in the common room, chat with his former students (now running the lab), drink tea, and listen to Test Match Special.

I still have a newspaper article he cut out and kept for me because he thought I’d like it.

@mcrmonkey @slowe Really? That’s a shame - I think it got used as an initiation ritual for first-timers on inspections!

Back in July ‘94…

‘$first_timer, go and check the inside!’

Me: *steps on the metal platform of the lab*

*entire platform swivels ten degrees* - it’s on a gimbal and the brake wasn’t on.

Me: *swears, holds onto safety fence, looks at the concrete many metres below*

Light dawns.

I turn and look at the old hands, who are watching the new boy and grinning.

@LaChasseuse They got an even worse hiding from the Thebans at Leuctra in 371.

With Thermopylae, the Spartans and their allies were badly outnumbered.

At Leuctra, the Thebans built their tactics around the Spartans being unimaginative ‘no retreat!’ meatheads, invented the echelon formation and beat the Spartans so hard that the myth of their invincibility was shattered forever.