As I head to bed, we’ve got just the lightest of dustings of snow here in Newcastle. But with an amber weather alert in place for a rather heavier dumping over the next 24hrs or so, who knows I’ll be battling through on my way to and from work tomorrow!

When I got up this morning, this story about the Guardian’s Araucaria revealing his diagnosis of terminal cancer through one of his cryptic crosswords was all over my Twitter feed. It brought back many happy memories of my grandad, who always enjoyed cryptic crosswords. I used to keep them from the Sunday Times and, occasionally latterly, the Observer, and take them to him. If he managed to complete it within the week, he’d give it back to me to post away and enter the weekly competition, to try and win a pen. We never won!

Sadly, I don’t have my grandad’s intelligence, nor his ability to think through the wordplay of cryptic crosswords, and so haven’t managed to follow in his footsteps in that regard. But when I read the story this morning, I thought that my grandad would have approved of Araucaria’s ingenuity… and I’d certainly have clipped the article and taken it to him!

If something’s going to summarise my day today, it’s probably the fairly addictive game QuizCross! It’s one of the more entertaining social games for mobiles, cleverly combining deceptively simple strategy with fairly tough (by my standards) trivia questions. I’ve been playing it quite a lot over the last few days – and losing a fair amount too!

If you’d like to challenge me, search for ‘sjhoward’.

So given that I’ve stopped posting pictures of my face, I’m trying to record something in my scrapbook each day that means something to me – whether that’s something memorable that I’ve done in the day, something that summarises what I’m up to, something meaningful I’ve read, or something that’s brought back memories.

Today, I’m going for the final category. This article about autopsies* (I’d say post-mortems) from the Student BMJ really reminded me of my time studying Forensic Pathology in Calgary. The description of the autopsy process was particularly redolent of my experience, and the quote above certainly made me smile! The aromas were particularly unfamiliar when dealing with “decomps” – corpses that had lain decomposing for some time before being discovered!

It was a great experience, and I’m really glad I chose to take the opportunity to do something completely different to the rest of my medical career when I had the chance.

*You need to complete a free registration to read the whole of this article. Irritating, isn’t it?

If you’d visited this site four years ago, this is what you’d have seen. There are some elements of that design which I think are better than the ones I have today. And so… watch this space!

Today’s the 8th January, one of the commonest days for New Years Resolutions to be forgotten. And, after a week, I’m fairly sick of posting pictures of my own face…

But hey, this is my scrapbook, and I can do what I want with it! And today, I want to post a link to this intriguing brief article by Time’s science editor Jeffrey Kluger about the risks of getting ill in space. It’s really very good!

Here’s me in the office at work. When this was taken, I was writing a lecture for first-year medical students about public health data sources, which isn’t the easiest topic to make engaging! I’m due to deliver it later this month.

I really enjoy teaching as part of my role, and do a fair bit of it. Having said that, this will be the first time I’ve presented to a big scary lecture theatre full of people since I left medical school myself…! Here’s hoping I don’t die of stage fright!

Here I am by Kielder Water, the UK’s largest man made lake. It holds 200 billion litres of water – that’s more than 3 million times what the average person drinks in their lifetime!

Wendy and I had a lovely walk through Kielder Forest – Europe’s largest man made forest – which stands on the banks of Kielder Water. It was a bit chilly, though! We also had a look at the dam and hydroelectric plant, which were quite interesting to see!

Here’s me with Crimbo, the smallest of the Metrocentre’s oversized reindeer! It’s almost twelfth night, so I guess they’ll have to be dismantled soon!

Here, I’m outside the Wolfson Building at Durham University’s Queen’s Campus in Thornaby – just a short hop across the river from Stockton.

This is a very important building. It is not only home to the North East Public Health Observatory, it’s also the building where an informal reception for new medical students was held (at least in my day!). It was at that very reception in this very building that Wendy remembers first seeing me across a crowded room… although we didn’t formally meet until a couple of days later.

The rest, as they say, is history!