So, last Friday evening, and I’ve just deposited a drop of pre-warmed medium onto a sterile glass plate, and I go to collect the tiny piece of tissue on the end of my pipette tip and insert it into the drop of medium, before pulling it apart with sterile needles, releasing copious cells cosily into the medium for plating. However, when I look down the microscope… it’s not there! Huh!? Look again; nope – no tissue. Where the feck is it? Sometimes they’re sticky and don’t readily come off the pipette. But, I was sure… well, if it didn’t, then it’s in the Virkon pot… which I lift up, and sure enough, there it is: bloated in the pink.

Sort of thing that might suggest I need a holiday. Prescient of me, then, in that, some weeks ago, I booked a flight for departure tomorrow. Not so foresighted, however, in the envisagement that the intervening period would be sufficient to get the draft done, dusted and dispatched beforehand. But it just ain’t so. Regardless, after a period of such busyness that I’ve barely made time to lurk, let alone comment in these parts, I’m heading back to Brazil, and the versatile and venerable Pogues, with that borrowed copy of Ulysses in my bag. So, there’ll be little in the way of communication from me over the next three weeks, as I refresh / recharge / reinvigorate, save a possible stream of consciousness E-postcard.

There’s more to vivo than vitro. ‘Mmh, yes.’