On Thursday 11th May I travelled to Shrewsbury to celebrate Rhodri’s birthday with Claire and Eustace. In addition to the pleasure of being with Rhodri on his birthday, a most unexpected and delightful surprise awaited me. The surprise was a replica of The Cremabh Stone, a presentation and inscribed gift from the DECIDE Management Group - Rhodri, Eva, Andrew and Ton – to celebrate the achievements of DECIDE. It is a very beautiful sculpture and has pride of place on the table in the centre of my living room.
The sculpture is by Kevin Casey and has been made from a cross section of bog yew that has been dated (by Queen’s University, Belfast) as 4,600 years old. There is a stone in Ireland known as the “Cremabh” which is a stone that fits into a hollow in a larger stone. Anyone who is accused of wrong-doing has to swear on the stone and if swore falsely, the person and relations are marked for seven generations. The stone that fits in the hand can be moved three times to seek love, but the stone should not be moved on a full moon!
The gift is most cherished and many thanks to the Management Group for such thoughtfulness and kindness.
Geoff Brown, DECIDE Coordinator
Note from Rhodri:
On behalf of the Management team and all DECIDE participants, I would like to tender our profound appreciation of Geoff’s contributions to the DECIDE network. By any parameter, especially outputs, the scientific program undertaken under the DECIDE banner has been extremely successful. Several of our ESR’s are already launched in their respective scientific careers - surely one of the main purposes of the Marie Sklodowska Curie networks.
Posted on Wednesday 31st May 2017