14 December 2010 (Tuesday) - Meteors, Art...

I woke feeling rather exhausted, but for once it was with good reason. Last night was the Geminid meteor shower. My blog from this time last year tells me that I missed the meteor shower because of all the cloud. This year I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as clouds and rain spoil my enjoyment of the meteors, and so yesterday evening, together with the Folkestone contingent, we set off to Woodchurch to meet up with the other brave (daft) souls of the astro club. The idea was that the BBC would be coming down to do some filming for the “Stargazing Live” events that are coming up in January, but they let us down at rather short notice. But we carried on regardless.

We started off in the lesser of the two pubs in Woodchurch. The Bonny Cravat (or Bonny Crap Hat as My Boy ^TM ” likes to call it) is all right as pubs go, but after all is said and done, it’s a Neame. Six of us met up, observed a pint of “Bishop’s Finger”, and then went to look for some meteors. We studied the cloud-filled heavens all the way from the Bonny Cravat to the Six Bells. For those of my loyal readers who are unaware of the geography of Woodchurch, it’s taken you longer to read this sentence than it would have taken to walk from one pub to the other.

The Six Bells is next door to the Bonny Crap Hat, it is a free house. And it has much better ale. A pint of “Finchcock’s Original” was next on the list of objects to be observed. We were considering observing a pint of “Golden Braid” as well, but you can get too much of a good thing - after all, this was an astronomical observing session, not a booze up. (Even if we had been to two pubs which technically made the evening a pub crawl).

We wandered down to the village green to try to see some meteors, but the cloud cover was so thick we couldn’t see anything at all. We did consider going back to the pub to observe some more, but it was getting late, so we called it a night and came home. Personally I feel the evening was a victory for the “Google Images school of Astronomy” – after all, there’s always piccies of meteors to be found there.

(Talking of the astro club, the R.A.S. have given the club a grant of fifty quid. That’s better than a poke up the bum. I’m just left wondering who and/or what the R.A.S. is.)

And so feeling exhausted, I set off to work. Today I got to spend the day sat at a microscope, and when this opportunity arises, I switch the internet to Radio Four. They have an amazing range of stuff on in any one day. Take today for example. They had news, featuring politicians getting crucified live on air. There was an interview with an exiled Iranian politician who faces death if he returns home. This was followed by a cookery article in which they made a pavlova live on the radio. I never thought that a cookery demonstration would work on the radio. I was wrong.

There was then a discussion about how shocking some of the music videos on TV are these days. Some stuck-up twot was boasting how he'd thrown away his TV so that his children wouldn't be exposed to the filth that masquerades as public entertainment. In the same breath this stuck-up twot was trying to defend all the nudey statues and paintings in the London museums as being "art". He actually boasted how is is better that his small child has an admiration of the paintings and statues of Perseus holding up Medusa's severed head, rather than liking X-factor.

There was a brilliant play about women golfers who played golf at a cursed golf course, and an article about the plight of sloths in the Caribbean. Anneka Rice spoke about her passion for drawing; especially drawing nudey people (how rude!). There was discussion about the morality of the Wiki-Leaks revelations. There was an article about the life and times of D.H. Lawrence, and then a very interesting investigation of how science and medicine are at odds with the law when crimes are committed by people sleep-walking.

And so home, where the sky was crystal clear, and the occasional meteor could be seen…

Meanwhile there's a new kid on the block. Or on the other bus, seeing how he's wearing a cravat and lipstick. Mind you, he might be French, (or a girl), which would explain a lot. He, she or it is brandishing a baguette: the saucy devil.

The young chav is waving his chopper about. “Her next door” has got a pussy. The dog has a sausage.

Frosty clearly doesn't understand the concepts of subtlety or innuendo…