2. is unlikely to change, 1. and 3. might change, might not. So if you're prepared to put up with these as potential 'problems for the duration' then I think your main problem is not knowing why you're doing a PhD. As an undergrad, I wanted to do a PhD because I felt I had only scratched the surface of a particular research area (in an undergraduate project) and wanted to go deeper - not because I actually enjoyed the experimental work, but out of some kind of commitment to the project - obsessive curiosity? I never really liked practical work - it scares me too, and I've been discouraged because it takes so much work to get one little result. I think I'm just not very good at it (but definitely don't want to be a theoretician), which is why I don't intend to carry on in academia when I finish my PhD.
The reason I'm trying to finish though is that I know I DO STILL WANT A PhD, if not for the same reason I started out with.

Okay, so current problems are
1. no-one to talk to in the lab/write-up area
2. nasty supervisors (or supervisors not living up to your expectations)
3. experiments take ages, and when you finally get to try them they don't work
4. no motivation to do lab work ("it scares me/doesn’t interest me")

Good point re 2007 . Has no-one noticed your re-writing of history? (King Sylvester)

'majoriy" = 'majority'

This is such a strange thread - living a life all of its own on the forum with practically no input from the majoriy of us. And the similarity of all the usernames (woollard, millward, all beginning with k)...it's very odd. Don't mind me - carry on! I bet none of the regulars will read my post here anyway, it's been ages since I looked at the discussion here.

Would you like a pair of scissors??

The procedure's the same here. Now that I think about it, you could slip all sorts of things in!! Nobody looks much at the hard copy! The thumbs up smiley was one from the team, wasn't it? I was thinking if it was 404's creation he/she (sorry, can't remember what you are!) could have supplied the image...

That's I really good idea Piglet (about the ). I want to thank the forum too, that would be a really nice cryptic way of doing it(until sup. says 'I don't think that thumbs up symbol looks very professional'...blah blah))

Do I have any say in who my viva external examiner is or is it completely up to my supervisor? Who pays for the external's travel - my supervisor or the department?

(this is a bit engineer-y, don't know if anyone will understand what I mean) Is it okay (allowed) to put mechanical drawings of commercial apparatus (say from the company's website or catalogue, or the datasheet/manual that came with the apparatus) in my thesis? I'm just a bit worried about divulging design info. that the company is protecting... There's one particular fact a company told me, which is really important for a discussion in my thesis, but they told me it 'in confidence' as it were.

Didn't we have a smiley?

Actually, after I posted I pondered the said nursery rhyme, and it seems that birds can withstand being baked in a pie?! ('when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing') Not that I'd condone anyone trying this. Must have something to do with 18th century (or earlier - see Wikipedia) cooking techniques. Hmm. They also seemed to be able to survive the cutting of the pie!

NO! No baking of magpies, no baking of blackbirds!

Now I'm going to contradict myself a wee bit - I understood the humour about the smell, window etc (don't think it was obscure at all), but in an anecdotal kind of way. I don't understand the message title though... (I know the rhyme)

yeah, but I don't understand what you mean really (confused). Why are you happy? And girls don't like watching birds decay (girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice - boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails )

That's great (I was prepared to send you a copy of the article but I checked and our uni doesn't have the journal either) - it's always nice to get a freebie too