Friday July Receive an email from an Isotope specialist at BGS who has slotted in a one off sample of Lighthouse Duplex slickensides from the Moine Thrust zone. Three dates obtained none of which are Scandian, the presumed age of the MTZ. So we have Jurassic, Jurassic/Triassic boundary and Triassic. So that is Pangea break up, and formation of the West Orkney Basin tied in. So Laser Ablation ICP Mass Spectroscopy did find something. More high tech applied to an old thrust zone. Can’t really explain my excitement even to my undergrad geologist daughter, although she at least understands the dating technique. A little more progress, a little more unique content. If only I could get a Scandian age from somewhere. Chasing up Plymouth connections for supervisors again, there is hope? Followed up a suggestion from my BGS contact about joining in with another new lab being set up to carry out LA ICP MS. This is under Dr Eddie Dempsey. A quiet plea concerning not being registered, and looks like I may have generated some interest. Now University of Hull are talking about continuing there and also joining the soon to be formed NW Highlands research group. Is this the administrative breakthrough I need? Hope the fees are still going to be available from work for this. Planning to check on locating further carbonates samples for LA-ICP-MS. May take another run up to Durness. A few ramps and laterally aligned shear zones could reflect movement over irregular footwall topography. June 2018 A week off from geology part time to get more qualified for the day job (ie the one that pays). Three day course in Bedfordshire Wyboston Lakes to become a certified CISO. 150 questions in 2 1/2 hours. Did it in about 1 1/4, online instant result, passed. Two days back in the office, then off to sunny Sorrento with wife and kids. Vesuvius, Pompeii and Capri are on the to do list. End June Too hot for me as ever. I just don’t enjoy sitting or laying around in the hot sun. Vesuvius and Pompeii good, Capri, bit of a let down. Reminds me of Port Merrion in Wales (as seen in The Prisoner in late 1960s). Bit of a tourist trap. Now Prof Bob Holdsworth involved, surprised probably to hear someone has found PST, and looking for similar in his and XXXX old field samples and sections, and magically they find some. So now a paper is proposed, but lots more sections required! January 2018, Plymouth. Attending TSG for the second time this decade (I am concerned, is it habit forming?) And finally meet up with Lucy Campbell who has been helping out on the PST front. Lucy agrees to get some photomicrographs for me. Beats my low tech equipment very easily. Lucy also helping out on the obtaining a Supervisor front, although cannot approach her post Doc supervisor as he is running TSG this year. Attending TSG for the first time in decades, to close to miss. Based at University College London and Birkbeck. Jumped in on a Pre conference pair of training sessions, using computer based balanced section drafting software, and understanding microstructures from Prof Pass hire. Do those thin sections of pseudotachylyte look like one of my sections? One of the TSG prizes is awarded to Lucy Campbell for her work on PST in the Outer Hebrides. Maybe a contact to ask about my specimen? A postgrad will remember the insecurity and uncertainty! Decide I must have more thin sections to work on. The family doorstop picked up during an International Conference field trip to NW Highlands is going to be sectioned. A beautiful desk specimen of a probable pseudotachylyte. Return to the rig, just in time to be re-drilling into the critical lithology again, but this time with a desk toy sized drill bit. Everyone wants a worn out one of those on their desk. So largest known kick in the Southern North Sea sector, possibly whole North Sea sector. rig evacuated except about 10 of us and we are going to try and kill it. Experts on their way out from shore. (also think assigning blame to. A contractor company if at all possible we suspect) Rig overflown by two Harriers investigating the intense activity of the evacuation. Stiff upper lip chaps! I am wandering around the logging shack in a survival suit (think big orange plastic baby grow). I am reading out pipe pressures every 5 minutes, like some sidekick in a doomsday movie. My wife, a nurse on permanent relief nights at the London Hospital informed by Exlog that my rig has been evacuated, but I am still on it. Bet that went down well at the time. I will no doubt find out later. Another quick check on the insurance position, I am still worth more dead than alive, but even thatis nothing fantastic. Still mortgage will be paid off – yippee that will do me a lot of good. So back to the NW Highlands this time with the new Year 3 BSc Geology class. I am along for the ride, enabling me to do some reconnaissance work. Then stay on at the newly purchased Robinson’s Research International station, or old RAF Hut in the Balnakeil Craft Village. On the leg examining East Loch Eriboll north of the A838 and Hope the inappropriateness of some of my field gear becomes blatantly apparent. Getting close to exposure as the waterproof is wetter on the inside than the outside. Gortex is a luxury, or maybe there is a cheaper alternative. Get picked up by Geoff Manby and driven back to the Hut, then off to the Cape Wrath Hotel for food. Thanks Geoff and Ken. The third years have gone, having witnessed the April 1st jokes played on the academic staff (students shorted out the sparkplug with foil from a cigarette packet, and Ken McClay teaches how to make a field microscope by polishing a bit of quartzite or something!), And now on my own. Weather has deteriorated, massive waves coming in off the Atlantic. Working on the Moine at Faraid Head, to get some very detailed baseline idea of what standard Morar Division or Western Moine looks like. Post bus to get to on time. Durness via Rhiconic to Lairg. Wait about 45 minutes before the bus pick up from the Lairg town and drops off at Lairg station then another wait until the train hopefully arrives to take me to Inverness and the sleeper to London. All seems a bit chance and I can’t spend another night away due to offshore commitments. So I decide to walk from the town to the station, can’t be that far with my full field kit, generous samples, how hard can this be? I am after all a geologist. Hell, there are enough hills and enough samples to make this a very unpleasant walk in the country, and the bus whizzes past just as I get to the station. Michael the same driver that had driven down from Durness shouts out, didn’t you know we always go to meet the Inverness train”. Yes but I didn’t want to risk missing it. All seems a bit flaky compared to what I am used to in London. Thanks for joining me! Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
A new look at an old thrust belt. 