I have no idea why I didn't link to it in my non-existent review? Oh yeah, because the SFF book club thought I was bonkers.

It's loony, but none of it's Barking. (See, "barking" is an English term for "mad", but it's also a bit of East London. Whereas most of WOTW takes place in West London. I love jokes that require an explanantion.)

Applause, Wales.

BTW, Cindy, have you met Wales? He's the solar physicist I've mentioned a few times. Wales, Cindy is also some sort of physicist space geek whatever thing.

How's that Bryson going for you? I enjoyed it. Really does cover a fair number of the things I would have known had I not been stoned all the way through high school.

Hello fellow physicist space geek whatever thing (Cindy).

I'm enjoying A Short History. Like the scientific pedant I am, I've spotted the odd minor error. But on the whole it's an interesting (heavily human-orientated) take on things. I'd certainly recommend it to others.

Yay!, I'll have to put my new title on my business cards. It's shockingly accurate.

Dude, why is Alex calling you Wales? And you live in England? I'm confused, so I'm going to call you... Plasma Man.

Short History is fun. :) Isn't Bill Bryson the Chancellor of Durham University right now? There was quite a hub-bub about it when I was there for a graduation 6-7 years ago.

At any rate, Howdy, Plasma Man!

Alex calls me Wales because he couldn't be arsed to learn my name. Bless. "Plasma Man" is far better. Are you more of an Astro type then, what with the Durham connection?

Ah, isn't he a charmer?

It wasn't my graduation, but my husband's. He did his graduate work there, but never bothered to do the graduation. And wacky English universities let you come back to walk whenever. So it was 5 years after he finished that we went for his graduation? And, yup, he's an Astro-type too. Theoretical cosmology.

That said, yup, I'm an astro type, I guess. We're chock-a-block in this house. I used to design and make sub-millimetre detectors for cosmology experiments - CMB stuff, galaxy clusters and the like. I've left that for the time being, and I'm now doing contract work for aerospace companies.

So, um, I used to live in Cardiff, and people in the US would send me mail that read "Cardiff, Wales, England." I'm surprised Postman Pat Penwyn didn't piss all over them.

So, what's new in Solar Physics? Where do you work/study?

Ah, and here's where you met Wales. Wales, I was hanging out with Cindy and her husband this past weekend and mentioning that next time they're in England they should look you bastards up and talk about space bullshit. Except by that time you'll be parents, which will make you boring and lame. -er. But still.

They should look me up.

Also, while I will certainly be lame(r), so long as they hold off for 6 months or so, Owens Jnr will probably have a better grasp of space bullshit than you and therefore prove better conversation than you.

He could hardly be worse.

Unless he masters differential calculus before his second birthday, I'm painting him brown and selling him to Madonna.

Haha!! Alex couldn't shut up about you, Mathew. I spent hours trying to get him to change the fucking subject. Which is odd considering he doesn't know your name. #badstalker

Bless. He clearly can't remember my name because he gets too flustered in my presence.

It's because secretly I think of you as "Daddy" and I'm always afraid of letting it slip.