The annual weekend for 2005 took place in July at the Belstead House field centre, whose beautiful grounds are set in lovely Suffolk countryside.
After arriving and settling in, and a calming drink (many participants had endured the M25 at its worst!) and a delicious evening meal - a well-known feature of Belstead House, whose cuisine would not disgrace a four star hotel - we were welcomed by Joan Bingley who organised the event and introduced the evening speaker, Phil Wilkins.
| Joan Bingley after welcoming the participants, introduces Phil Wilkins who spoke on 'Painting Insects under the Microscope'. |  |
Phil described the history of the art, and discussed the difficulty of capturing both detail and texture, showing numerous examples, both successful and not so successful.
Saturday was a very full day indeed.
We started with Henry Tribe on 'Microfungi in Action'. Henry had for many years, researched soil fungi and organisms.
 |
Joan introduces Henry Tribe |
| Henry described how the soil is a mass of fungal spores |  |
 |
He showed his technique of culturing these on celluloid left in the ground for a period of time. |
| He went on to outline how a progression takes place as bacteria move in, followed by amoebae, and then nematode worms (see right). Some fungi have developed a means of trapping nematodes by means of a kind of lassoo, and then invading and digesting the body of the nematode. |  |
 |
He finished with pictures of fungi which colonise glass - a painful topic for me, since after a lot of time spent in tropical countries, many of my camera lenses have become infected. |