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I’m watching the Australian Open semi-final between Scot Andy Murray (ranked number four in the world) and some chap called Djokovic who’s apparently supposed to be quite good (World number one). Murray lost the first set 6-3 but he’s doing well now and just won four in a row in the second set. Good.
But this isn’t about tennis. Many moons ago, I went to school. In the sixth form a group of about five of us doing A-levels in Physics and Maths used to congregate in a small study room and work there. We treated it as our base – our own domain and having established ourselves, others tended to go elsewhere. We talked a lot as well as working, though a fair bit of the chatter was related to our studies of course.
[tennis: Murray Djokovic one set all]
One of the ‘study’ group was called Greg and I recently found that he is now a professor at Southampton University. For years since then I’ve recalled one particular conversation where I said the moon must look “the other way up” from Australia on the simple basis that their view of the sky is seen by someone whose feet are pointing towards those of a Northern hemisphere observer, so their view is inverted compared with ours. I wasn’t too sure of my position and Greg, who was a keen amateur astronomer who’d spent several years living there, assured me that it wasn’t true. I thought it had to be true, though I wondered whether the rotation of the Earth and the fact that when it’s night time here when we are most likely to observe the moon, it’s 12 hours later or earlier when they see it, so he might be right.
Last night I went to a ‘stargazing’ event nearby, organised in conjunction with the BBC programmes last week. We had a short indoor talk followed by a chance to look through some modest telescopes (the largest a 4.5 inch reflector) while he pointed out the various constellations. Looking at the moon through the bigger telescope (inverted due to the mirror) but the plain unaided view was a beautiful thin crescent with the ‘horns’ pointing upwards and to the left. Later we all lay in a field on a tarpaulin looking skywards while the man talked and answered lots of questions. The moon was very low on the horizon by this time, but still ‘pointing’ upwards.
Back to the tennis; after the first set, we were treated to one of those camera shots intented to remind viewers that life also exisists beyond the tennis court: an extreme zoom view of the moon and it’s ‘horns’ were pointing downwards – the exact opposite of the view I saw last night. So I’m right and Professor Greg (admittedly when aged about 17) was wrong.
One up to me I think; now I’ll watch the tennis.
The people two doors away seem to be having their driveway replaced. Since around 8am there has been intermittent pneumatic drilling, plus screeching noise from work using cutting discs and a fair bit of hammer and pick sounds. There have been comings and goings all day by a number of men in fluorescent jackets, some with hard hats.
A little while ago a biggish lorry (labelled “Dorset Soils and Aggregate”) turned up with a hydraulic ‘grabber’ thing to pick up all the blocks of contrete which had been the driveway. My main concern now is not so much the noise as that must be necessary and has to be of limited duration, but the fact that this truck is parked with its front wheels on my drive. If there’s no damage done, then I have no objection, but my water meter and stop cock are just where he’s parked, so if any damage or leakage occurs, this will be my working assumption as to the cause. I would have taken a picture just in case there’s ever a need to prove where he’d parked but I seem to have mislaid my camera since the quiz at the weekend.
I’ve often seen these but don’t remember buying and using it before. It’s a funny-looking object like a cross between a deformed parsnip and a big turnip, covered in root ‘stumps’ where they’ve been cut off for sale.
Having bought one I wondered what could be done with it. I checked online and the BBC good food site didn’t inspire me but one of Jamie Oliver’s did, see here and I’ve seen him going on about how great they are on TV. It’s a simple recipe, requiring no lengthy preparation or funny ingredients and the comments made by other are positive.
The problem came when I cut into it; there’s that smell, very much like celery (you know – that burnt plastic type aroma) and I’m really no fan of celery. I can eat it raw in small quantities to be polite but cooked it’s really fairly unpleasant. Sometimes it’s tasteless (which is better) but that makes it pointless. Apart from the taste or lack thereof, you get a mouthful of string. Why do people tolerate it?
I hesitated and considered just ditching it thinking Jamie’s celeriac recipe fans are either celery-tolerating drones or not even real people. But I carried on and the result was actually very nice. The texture was surprising and the taste very pleasant. When it was nearly done I realised I’d got nothing to go with it, so I chucked some sliced leeks, sweet red pepper and mushrooms in another pan in some oil with a little soy sauce and made a quick, tasty, colourful accompaniment.
 Mordor! Recently I bought some dirt cheap blue LED Christmas lights in the 99p shop. Then I thought that I could make a display using several of them and decided on an eye which I could ‘animate’ using my microprocessor programming skills. The idea was to make the pupil a matrix of blue LEDs which could display the pupil but show shapes and messages like Merry Christmas.
I intended to use two lengths of plastic water pipe bent into arcs and somehow attach the strings of lights but the pipe I bought isn’t as flexible as I’d hoped, so just for now I’ve stuck them onto a piece of cardboard with sticky tape. The ‘pupil’ is just a third LED string in a bunch. It is animated crudely so the lower arc is illuminated continuously, while the pupil and upper lid are lit in sequence to give the impression of an eye opening and it sort of works.
I imagined something rather more sophistacted which would sit in my front window; it would initially surprise and then please passers-by, and include a Christmas greeting. As it’s now Christmas Eve and I haven’t started on the pupil/message matrix, it won’t be ready for Christmas Day. I haven’t worked out how to suspend it for public view (secondary double glazing means I could put it between inner and outer, but what about the wires?) and I’m not sure people would know what it’s meant to be, and without the message bit it’s not Christmassy, so it’s hanging on the wall over the fire. But you can see it.
… And a robin! I could see several birds fluttering about near the hedge outside the window and grabbed my binoculars to see what sort they were. All the movement had stopped but I spotted a robin sitting proudly on some high up sprig of holly, just like a Christmas card.
I’d always assumed it was a fiction that they choose holly or snow-covered log to perch on but maybe it was just chance and they sit wherever is convenient. It made a nice image though.
I’ve just fitted a new kitchen light fitting. The old one was getting dimmer but I wasn’t aware of it until today.
The old one failed to start properly a few weeks ago and I bought a new starter which helped but not for long. I looked for a new tube in B&Q but they seemed to be £10 which seemed a lot and I thought must be a mistake. Then yesterday I went to Wilkinsons where tubes were £5, but a whole new fitting was £8.24, so I got that.
It’s brilliant (as per design) but so cheap. How can Wilkinsons supply the fitting for an extra £3 and still £2 cheaper than B&Q asks for just the tube?
…. is quite an imaginitive and funny comedy thing on Radio 4 and repeated on R4 Extra. It’s a panel show leading up to a notional ‘big prize’ of 99p at the end of the show and it feels a bit like “I’m sorry I Haven’t A Clue” with a cash prize, made for the 1990s. But this isn’t about that.
Today I went to the local 99p Store. Can you guess the price of everything? I bet you can. I was hoping to stock up on Christmas Puddings like I bought last time, but they seem to have sold out. Never mind. Among a number of bargains including a jar of minced garlic (99p), a jar of minced chilli (99p) and a Christmas cake (99p that’ll be good then) I found a variety of Christmas lights. I picked up an admittedly short string of blue Christmas lights for… yes, 99p!
It doesn’t include a mains power converter, just a small box for 2xAA batteries. That’s ok, I need a 2xAA battery box and is partly why I splashed out my 99p. Anyway, I connected the lights to a suitable power supply and I’m now the ‘proud’ owner of 10 blue LEDs glowing prettily at the other end of the room and they’re actually quite ok – not at all bad for that eponymous (not sure that’s right) price.
I also went to Asda and for about 1% more than the ‘title’ price above purchased what appears to be half a sack of onions – 3kg. How can anything be so cheap? Should anything be this cheap when people need to make a living and manufacturing Christmas lights or growing onions for a customer price so insignificant means we just won’t value the work of others and it just can‘t be truly economic.
When ‘quizzing’ I have to admit that I’m hopeless on questions on the quiz compilers range of music. It’s always limited to pop music from the last few decades as though that’s all there is, or all anyone might know about – and after a brief period in my early teens, I never really found pop very interesting.
At the turn of the Millenium, I bought a boxed set of “Music of the Millenium” without really looking at what it included, and realised later how unimaginative it was – they had a thousand years to choose from and omitted everything but the late 20th Century!
Nowadays my only real exposure to ‘pop’ music is watching old BBC Top of the Pops programmes from the 1970s (why is it always 1976?) and I watch to try and pick up a few facts to bolster my limited knowledge. Most of the music seems pretty dire, while some of it I remember, but not sure where from. Too much is bland and worthless, or catchy tunes from lightweight nobodies, men with pianos, plus big collars, faux American accents, really bad shiny costumes and groups doing formation dancing. Ugh!
The highlight for me is the group of dancing girls; they’ve just ditched the previous mixed gender bunch but kept the girls (good move IMO) and renamed them “Legs Eleven” but tonight they were wearing so little that it seemed less interesting. And the tune they danced to was utterly bland forgettable rubbish. All in all, not one of the best TotP shows.
… Clementine. I bought a 600g bag of them today, ‘originally’ priced £2.50 but marked as Half Price, so selling at £1.25. I had some the other day reduced to 40p but today they’re down to just 20p – bargain!
When I got to the till the lady said “these are past their best before date”. I thought she was going to refuse to let me have them, which has happened before but she just wanted to make me aware. Then she pointed out that one was a bit squishy and mouldy, and again offered me a chance to back out of the deal and save my money. But for only 20p when all but one look alright still seems like a bargain to me.
As long as the choice is left to the customer who is aware of such matters, instead of the shop staff having to follow stupid sell-by date rules, I’m happy.
I was chopping onions for a vegetable curry a little earlier and apart from some irritaion and moistening of the eyes, I felt a little fuzzy and almost light-headed. I started to wonder if there was some previously unknown effect of the gaseous emissions from raw onions, but after some thought, eventually attributed it to the glass of damson wine I’d consumed 20 minutes previously.
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