13 March 2011 (Sunday) - Pork Chop

Last Sunday I stayed in my pit until far too late. I wasn’t going to waste today in the same way. Having been woken by ‘er indoors ^TM ‘s “trumpet voluntary” I was up and about by 9am. I spent a little while working on my presentation on comets for the astro club. I’m not due to speak until October, but I have this idea that should a decent comet appear in the next few months, then I would be ready and it might be nice to be able to present a topical lecture.

Talking of things astronomical, today is the 230^th anniversary of the discovery of my favourite planet. Ur-ANUS!!!!!!

I then collected “My Boy ^TM ” and we went round to Ashford market. He wanted some bits and pieces, and I always like a look round the market, for all that they are selling rubbish. Ashford market these days is rather disappointing. There are half a dozen stalls selling fishing gear, one stall selling out of date crisps and cakes, and loads of people running boot fair stalls full of rubbish fit for the tip. But it makes for an interesting morning out.

Home to collect my wellies, and then on to the BatFarm. I spent an entertaining five minutes playing with my new best friend “Pork Chop”. I’m reliably informed that it is not a good idea to give names to very young lambs because they have a habit of not surviving, but he’s now two days old. Surely that’s old enough for a name?

We then went to the pond near where we have BatCamp and launched the refurbished mallard house. I could see quite a few carp in there. Bearing in mind all the fish that are in there are from when I stocked the pond with tiddlers in August 2007, they’ve grown massively in the last three years.

From there we made our way to the largest pond where we were going to clean out the duck house. We could clearly see ducks nesting in that duck house, so we thought it best not to disturb them. Instead we went up to the diving pond to clean that duck house, only to find that it was full of ducklings. Bearing in mind I have yet to see a single deciduous tree with any leaves on at all so far this spring, the ducks seem to have nested early this year. (And the Egyptian running ducks have grown too – they are double the size they were when we launched their duck house last September.)

So we adjourned back to the barn where I exchanged insults with “Pork Chop”, before watching another baby lamb being born. Today there were four lambs born on the farm.

We then went indoors for a cuppa, and then had a smashing bit of Sunday lunch. Very tasty. After lunch there were farm chores to be done which weren’t for the faint-hearted, so we took that as a sensible point at which to say our goodbyes. I slept most of the way home, and then slept most of the rest of the day on the sofa.

I *really* wish I could sleep at night rather than nodding off during the daytime….

12 March 2011 (Saturday) - Back to the Garden

I was again working overtime this morning. I’m getting a bit fed up with working most weekends, but the money comes in useful. I came home shortly after mid day to find ‘er indoors ^TM in the throes of housework, so I felt duty-bound to join in somehow.

So I had a pootle about the garden. It’s now mid-March, so I turned on the pond filter, and the thing spouted water out of everywhere except the nozzles from which water should come out. I turned it off, took it apart, got stagnant water everywhere, reassembled it and found the leaks were even worse. I then shouted swear words at it, not because that would achieve anything, but because doing so is rather expected on occasions such as this.

I recalled my blog entry from Feb 22^nd when I was at the pond shop looking at new pond filters and I wrote “The current one will (hopefully) do for this year”. Perhaps I’d spoken too soon? But before driving down to World of Water in Rolvenden for a new filter I decided to have one last go at the existing one. I eventually managed to stop the leaks. It’s fixed for now, but it remains to be seen for how long it will hold. I can’t really complain about the thing – it’s been in use for four days longer than the astronomy club has been going (a diary is a wonderfully useful thing sometimes!) But it will need replacing at some stage soon.

There’s another reason to be doing more overtime.

I then gave the lawn it’s first mowing of the year. Extracting the lawn mower and strimmer from the shed took some doing – they were buried under “My Boy ^TM ”’s fishing gear. But I mustn’t grumble – with his broken foot he can’t really do anything about the house.

The strimmer and mower struggled to cut the lawn – it really should have been mowed ages ago. I filled the compost recycling bin with the lawn trimmings; the lawn was that overgrown.

For all that I shall now be mowing the lawn on a weekly basis, and pootling about the garden, I absolutely loathe and detest gardening. It is an ultimately fruitless fight against the second law of thermodynamics (did I mention I'm a Chartered Scientist?) No matter what you do in the garden, and how hard you do it, a week later the garden will look as bad as it did a week ago. I honestly believe gardening is a pastime for people who have yet to discover the concept of "hobbies”.

Talking of gardens, for want of anything better to do this afternoon, we had a look round the new garden centre that’s opened. “Dobbies” had all the standard garden centre tat that all garden centres had, and quite a lot more besides, including a very good ale selection (!) The place was really crowded. I heard that Bybrook Barn garden centre wasn’t happy at the prospect of Dobbies opening up. I can see why.

As McDonalds was over the road we had a quick bit of pudding before coming home where I had a bit of a snooze until ‘er indoors ^TM set off for the Saturday night film-a-thon. I went along last week: this week I stayed at home with “My Boy ^TM ”and we watched the sort of (non-mucky!) films that his mother wouldn’t like. After two hours of World War One violence I ran him round the road to his friend’s house. I had a plan to get my telescope out, but it was raining hard. NeverWinter, here I come…

11 March 2011 (Friday) - Malaria and Cards

To Margate. I wasn’t sure where Ursuline College was, so I sparked up my phone’s sat-nav, which got me to Margate with no problems. I saw the place I was aiming for on the other side of the dual carriageway, and the sat nav said to take a U-turn. So far, so good. A few hundred yards before the college the sat-nav said to take a side road. I assumed the college entrance was this way. The sat-nav led me along various back streets before leaving me in a cul-de-sac with the announcement “you have arrived at your destination”. To be fair to the gadget I could see the college behind a brick wall, but I was hoping that it would have guided me closer than it had. But it didn’t take me too long to get to where I was supposed to be.

Ursuline college was holding a careers fest today, and I was there to run a stall extolling the merits of a career pathological. Much as I (occasionally) moan about it, it’s not a bad old job, really. The idea was I would set up a microscope with some slides, some Petri dishes, some grouped bloods and a tapeworm in a jar (yuk!). The kids would then come round, look at my exhibits and talk to me about working in a path lab. The students would also have the chance to talk to a lady from the NatWest bank, a policeman, a magistrate, some soldiers, some builders, some civil servants from the European Commission, and people from half a dozen different colleges. On reflection I would love to have had such a careers opportunity when I was younger.

In retrospect I was treating the event as a bit of a jolly, a morning off work, and a bit of a skive. The twelve year olds (who came round first) had the same idea about the event, and weren’t really interested. But as the morning went on, the children coming round were older and older, and towards the end of the morning I had several kids who were quite interested in what I was showing, and several who asked about how one goes about becoming a biomedical scientist.

Mind you, there were several not-so-gifted children. At least twenty of them, on hearing that the slide under the microscope was showing cancerous cells, asked if they could catch cancer by eating the microscope. A particularly geeky-looking child accused me of bringing MRSA infection to his school. Another child asked me all sorts of questions about the navy, having mistaken my employer (NHS) for the prefix of the ship on which his cousin served (HMS Ark Royal).

But perhaps the sweetest child of the day was a small quiet girl who politely asked me if I could answer her question; but warned me her question wasn’t about blood. I said I’d have a go. The poor child was interested in emigrating to Australia, and wanted to know what job she should do. I suggested she contacted the Australian Embassy. In a very small voice she asked what the Australian Embassy was. The poor child had no idea what an embassy was - she hadn’t been told the first thing about emigration. I suggested she looked up “Australia House” on the internet: they would have all the answers to her questions. Her face lit up – no one (up till now) had been bothered to help her in the slightest. So I suppose my morning wasn’t entirely wasted.

However the highlight of the day was when the school’s biology teacher got wind that I was there, and came to find me. She liked my microscope, was fascinated with the tapeworm, and hung on my every word about leukaemia and blood groups.

We never had biology teachers like her when I was at school. Much as I liked old Mr Reeve, he never wore stockings like those. I’d swap him for her at the drop of a hat. She could teach me biology any day (woof!)

After a spot of lunch I then drove up to the Margate hospital. It had been alleged that my malarial identification skills were not what they might have been. I am still of two minds about this allegation, but having been offered an hour or so’s tutorial with an expert, I thought I’d take up the offer. I don’t claim to be the world’s foremost authority on creatures of the genus Plasmodium, and any chance to learn more is always good.

I was presented with six cases of malaria which had been prepared for me. I was to perform a species identification on each slide. I got five right and one wrong. So seeing the idea of the session was for me to learn, I held my hand up, admitted I was (probably) wrong, and asked if I could have another go at the one I’d (supposedly) got wrong. I also asked if the expert could watch what I was doing, listen to my reasoning, and explain where I was (arguably) going wrong. So we revisted the case I’d (allegedly) got wrong. We both agreed with my initial observation that the infected cells were round, large and not ragged as would fit a case of Plasmodium vivax (which was what I said it was originally). We also both agreed that the infected cells were not elongated, small or ragged as would be expected in a case of Plasmodium ovale (which was the answer the expert was expecting). The expert looked at me, looked down the microscope, looked at his crib sheet, and went red. And then changed my score from 5-1 to 6-0, whilst muttering about having words with the operative who had prepared these slides.

Engaging “smug mode” I drove home. With the troops rallied we all descended on “chez Chip” for a game of cards. An hour or so of “Texas hold ‘em”, followed by an hour or so of “Omaha hold ‘em”. And again I engaged “smug mode” with a straight flush that literally could not be beaten. It makes a change for me to win at cards. Usually I’m rubbish at it…

10 March 2010 (Thursday) - Dull

I see the Con-servatives have announced that the country cannot afford the public sector pensions. From a purely personal point of view, I can’t help but think that in my situation the Government has left it thirty years too late to tell me this. And what do the mean by “they” can’t afford it? I’m the one who’s been paying for it.

The Government can kiss my furry yellow ass on this one (!) After all, you don’t pay for a round the world cruise only to be given a weekend in Bognor because the travel agent says he couldn’t afford what you paid for.

This evening we went round to Chip’s for a spot of tea, and then on (as part of the arky-ologee club’s rent-a –mob) to an evening staged by the Heaths Countryside Corridor. This lot are an odd-looking bunch who have acquired the land that the Highways Authority didn’t want when they built the M20. Tonight was supposed to be about the archaeology of the area. My hopes weren’t high, but I had nothing else planned - Thursdays can be dull.

The host for the evening was a strange looking cove. My immediate thought was that this individual had recently had gender reassignment surgery: said surgery having been performed by a surgeon who had no idea neither what he was starting with, nor what he was aiming for, and had merely done the best he could under less than ideal circumstances.

The first speaker of the evening droned on about a Victorian ice house. I slept through this. It was tedious. The next speaker was the biddy who runs the arky-ologee club we go to. Not bothering with slides or any illustration for her talk whatsoever, she just rambled incoherently for twenty minutes. She made great show of saying that there were ten members of her arky-ologee club along. I could only count three (including me). Perhaps she was trying to big herself up in case it came to a fight?

The indeterminate host then gave a ten minute talk on exactly what the Heaths Countryside Corridor was all about. From what I can work out, it’s a four mile long footpath, the only saving grace of which is that it has a pub at both ends.

By this stage my nerves could take no more. The host for the evening announced that they were going to adjourn for a cup of tea, and then run their A.G.M. I announced that if any of the assembled “normal people” came near me, I would bite them. So Chip, ‘er indoors ^TM and me went off to the Red Lion for a crafty half….

9 March 2011 (Wednesday) - The House of York

I see Prince Andrew has had his name splashed all over the news. He's allegedly been up to all sorts of nonsense with topless models whilst conspiring with Kazak billionaires and Saudi princes  whilst living high on the hog at public expense.

Apparently...

Whilst we're running down the House of York, I also see that the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are being slated for going out drinking and dancing with their mates until 3am. It's truly shocking - after all, how other kids of that age go out on the razz till all hours?

(I'll give you a clue - "all of them").

However, it would seem that the newspapers are now retracting the lies they've printed about the Prince. One can't help but wonder how many more lies they will be retracting in the next few days.

It rather annoys me when the newspapers pick on the Royalty. The media bang the drum with rabble-rousing about how these parasites are living high on the hog at public expense. But the same media gloss over the actual truth of how the Royal Family is actually funded these days.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the Yorks are beyond reproach. But I do wonder where their failings stop and the blatant lies about them start.

The problem is that the Royals are an easy target: it's very easy to stir up indignation and republican fervour in the "Great Unwashed". And the "Great Unwashed" never realise that by falling for all the lies and innuendo they are merely funding the newspapers who are growing rich on their ignorance.

Meanwhile closer to home my phone hasn't stopped ringing. Firstly from some woman who demanded I told her how much money I pay each month for my leccie and gas, and to whom I pay it. And then some snotty bloke demanding to know when the service agreement on my SkyPlus box expired.

I gave them both the same answer - if they actually needed that information, they would know it already. If they were asking me, then it was clearly none of their business. 

I suppose enough of the "Great Unwashed" must fall for these people's spiel to make it worth their while carrying on…

8 March 2011 (Tuesday) - Pancake Day

Following on from the success of yesterday evening’s stargazing, I’m quite keen to do something similar again. However… one of my failings is always to see the negative, and whilst I really enjoyed last night, car parking at the East Cliff was somewhat limited. Whilst I’d very happily go back to the East Cliff (and probably will in the near future), I’ve found myself wondering about where else we might stargaze. Ideally we’d like somewhere which is:

• Within reasonable (half an hour’s drive) reach from Ashford or Folkestone.
• Has no street lighting.
• “Up” – so we’d have a clear view of the skies.
• Plenty of car parking space within convenient distance
• No houses full of normal people nearby to get upset with us
• Not already taken by the doggers.

There is a car park above Wye at the Devil’s Kneading Trough which may well be a good spot to go telescoping at, and a colleague thinks he knows of a sports field in Brabourne which might be good. There’s also the village green at Woodchurch.

Also we (I) need to establish whether any such nights are a bona-fido (sic) astro club event, or just me and a bunch of mates going telescoping.

At first sight this might seem a trivial and somewhat pedantic point, but let me ask a theoretical (so far) question: Should someone who has come to such an observing night go arse over tit in the dark and injure themselves, then what?

As far as I am concerned, that would be their own stupid fault. Certainly with the gang of mates who were along last night, that would have been the attitude of all present. However if there is the possibility of claiming that going arse over tit happened at a formal club activity, then there is the whole sordid question of claiming off of the club’s insurance, having risk assessments, rules and regulations….

I know of other societies which in the past have had problems arising from bunches of members thinking they were operating under the auspices of a club when in fact it was arguable that they were not. I’d like to thrash this problem out before it actually becomes a problem. I’ll email the committee (if they don’t comment on this post first!)

Meanwhile did you know that today is "International Women's Day"? No? Neither did I. Apparently it's a major day of global celebration of women. Originally a leftie political event in the former Eastern European communist countries, the day has now mostly lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day. Yuk!!

Mind you, in some parts of the world, Wikipedia tells me that the original political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

'er indoors better not get any ideas. My pancakes don't cook themselves….

7 March 2011 (Monday) - Stargazing in Folkestone

On Friday I scraped ice off the car before going to work. I did so again today. Work was dull, but was livened up by news from home. “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” has had more university offers. And then I had a text from Stevey. The weather forecast was for a clear night – did I fancy a spot of telescoping this evening?

Stevey had also put a message on the astro club’s Facebook page, and straight after work, me Stevey and the Rear Admiral set up on the East Cliff at Folkestone, just above the Warren. Whilst it wasn’t the best place for practical astronomy that I’ve been to, it was far from the worst. Once our scopes were all set, we turned them onto the crescent moon which was clearly visible over the rooftops. Really pretty. I then turned the scope to the nebula in Orion’s belt, and amazed myself that I managed to find it.

Steve & Andy arrived and set up scope, as did Jason, and Stevey had a go at my scope’s “Go-To” function. With a little help from the Rear Admiral he puzzled out how to work it. It’s (relatively) simple: you set the telescope up so’s it’s level – it comes with a spirit level – and you tell it where in the world you are, and what the time and date is. You then point it at two stars, and tell it what the stars are. Ideally the two stars should be on opposite sides of the sky. And then that’s it. You then tell it what you want to look at, and the telescope then points itself at our chosen target, and tracks it as it slowly moves across the sky.

We had a look at the crab nebula, the Pleiades, various Messier objects, and at the evening was drawing on we turned our attention to Saturn. The Rear Admiral found Saturn by use of skill and expertise with his scope. I used the “Go-To” function. It was easier.

I’m reliably informed that the list of objects we saw was (with varying degrees of success) M66, M65, M67, M48, M50, M93, NGC2362, M41, M3, M13, M42 (the great nebula in Orion), M33, M1 (Crab Nebula) M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) M44, NGC2903, Saturn and the beautiful waxing crescent moon with earth shine. It was a shame I’ve got to be up for work tomorrow morning – I could have stayed out much longer, but it was getting cold.

I was really pleased with my new telescope. This was the first time I’d used the thing properly. I would have been happy just being able to look at things though it. Having the “Go-To” function up and running was a definite bonus.

We must go again soon so’s I can try to photograph things properly, rather than sticking my camera up to the eyepiece.

The next time the weather’s looking good we’ll put another message on the astro club’s Facebook page and see what response we get. I’ve half a mind to put together a two-minute presentation for the next meeting of the astro club showing what we did tonight to see if we can’t drum up support for future impromptu stargazing sessions…