26 June 2010 (Saturday) - Hot

Now I know that I can’t see the comet from my back garden, I wasn’t up at 3am looking for it. But I was up at 6am doing the ironing before going in to work. I’ve been working Saturday morning shifts at my place of work for twenty six years on the understanding that we don’t get paid, we get time off. For some time it was time an a half off – for every hour we worked we got an hour and a half in lieu time. But management but a stop to that, and it became straight time in lieu; if we worked four hours, we got four hours off later. But starting today we have a choice. It’s either straight time in lieu, or we can be paid at time and a half. Didn’t I hear politicians saying we needed to economise? Mind you, I’m not complaining.

I then came home and spent a while playing with “the precious”. “The precious” is the astro club’s solar telescope. Normally, looking at the sun through a telescope is a very stupid thing to do, as it would permanently blind you. But the astro club has acquired a telescope with all sorts of filters and stuff which is made so that you can see the sun through it. There is a drawback though. For me, in much the same way as getting out a kite kills the wind, getting out the solar telescope makes the clouds some out. But we got to spend a few minutes looking at the sun. To be honest, the sun looks like a yellow ball, and isn’t that riveting. Or, that is, it wasn’t for me. ‘er indoors ^TM spent most of the afternoon playing with it, and spotted several prominences (!). Me – I slept in front of the computer. It was too hot to be in the garden.

To Kennington, for an evening birthday party. Or an un-birthday party; and I would do the same if my birthday was on Boxing Day. I imagine Emily’s un-birthday will become an annual event. I’d certainly be up for it. We had a great time, and sat chatting long after the un-birthday girl had gone to bed.

And then home to watch the last episode in the current season of Doctor Who. Bearing in mind how good last week’s episode was, tonight’s was a disappointment….