21 March 2015 (Saturday) - Stargazing Live

Last night at five to bed time I had some emails. One of which was telling me of a new puzzle geocache. I had a look at the thing. I had it solved in a few seconds, and went to bed. I woke rather earlier that I was expecting to, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I hopped in the car, went for a drive and soon had this new cache in my hand. First one to find it too. I was pleased about that.

Once home I collected "Furry Face TM" and we went for a little walk. We stopped every five paces so's he could sniff where other dogs had tiddled. That gets a little frustrating really; if all he wants to do is sniff tiddle then I might as well piddle up the garden fence and leave him in the garden for the day.

We had stale hot cross buns for brekkie. Stale, but they toasted up fine. And with brekkie scoffed we drove down to Folkestone to see the baby. He's getting bigger. For all that I like seeing the littlun there's no denying that I spent most of the visit fast asleep.

We came home with a rabbit (!); and when the rabbit was collected by its new parent I went for a brief bit of shopping before setting off to the astro club's annual "Stargazing Live" event.
In previous years this has been a really good evening; well supported by the public who have been enthused by a week's astronomy frrom the BBC. This year I think it would be fair to say we had ben let down by the BBC. The material they supplied us for the public was rather poor compared to previous years; and it was all about the solar eclipse which happened yesterday. It seemed odd that the BBC provided this stuff about what happened on one day but asked us to have the events the day after. And they didn't publicise the thing like they used to; despite our best efforts to advertise locally attendance was half that of previous years.

Mind you we still had over eighty people along. Some excellent talks, and a rather good bit of chilli too; most people seemed to like what we put on. The only fly in the ointment was a rather garrulous child who persisted in repeatedly asking trivial and pointless questions. This child wasn't expressing a genuine interest (which I would encourage) but purely liked the sound of his own voice.
When my children were younger I wouldn't put up with that behaviour and they knew it. I do hope this child doesn't show up again...

Between that little brat (who *really* boiled my piss) and managing to get myself locked in the hall when trying to close up at the end of the evening I had to stop and take a pace back to realise we'd actually had a good session. Next year we won't rely so much on the BBC...


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