Jamie Shiers

As was traditional after a PhD viva in those days - successful or not I imagine - the candidate invited all fellow students for a few jars. I chose the Bay Horse - up the road from the Physics department in the outskirts of Toxteth.

Quite a few pints of Thwaites later - and an amazing winning streak of pool - it was off to Casa Italia for a meal.

The next morning I hoped in my car - crammed to the brim (so much so that I had to leave my collection of beer mats and winerack behind) - it was off to the ferry and over to The Continent.

When I arrived in Munich (of which more anon) I discovered that the previous tenant of the appartment had taken literally everything - including the lightbulbs.

Never mind I was prepared and unpacked my camp-bed and got in it.

I turned over and then it collapsed.

Great.

But here we are, back again in the Pool. Not much seems to have changed - same people in the same seats in the coffee lounge. Everything looking abit worse for wear (aren't we all?).

The Bay Horse has closed down. Even the Oxford seems to have done the impossible. (And gone downhill). City centre boarded up - more so than in my day.

Still trying to figure out if the internal examiner was the same one that I had.

Wasn't entirely clear who was being examined, as it covered very much my life 'from the Web to the Grid'. Databases of various varieties. The birth of HTML. Unix and Linux computing. And "I survived EDG".

Off for a quick bite at the staff restaurant. Food reminds me of what I didn't eat at school. Chicken pie with a pool of water in the middle. A bowl full of carefully selected frozen peas. A delicious casserole full of brown scum. Or is that gravy?
I chose what looked like the least of all evils, namely Chilli. Perfectly harmless, apart from the lumps of dog food in it.

Of course it was called Speke airport in those days. Now its John Lennon - "above us only sky". And the Web's favourite airline back to its birthplace...

OK, its old hat, but I didn't want to blow the punchline - not there is much of one - in the title.

You can always tell when its ski holidays (assuming you're on the piste that is) by the groups of people who stop either immediately after getting of the top of the ski lift or else in the most inconvenient places - just over the brow of a hill, in the only bit of snow left on a patchy piste etc.

I tried to think of the appriopriate collective name for them and eventually decided that a "clot of skiers" summarised all aspects.

Wonder if it'll catch on -- or if they'll ever get the message...

Back to the Pool after almost exactly a quarter of a century. Leaving not just the city but also the country the day after my PhD viva. Now its my turn to examine someone else.

And where will the next quarter century lead?

Luckily, I cannot tell...