Time travel

When they were but youngsters, my children liked to watch Dr Who on the television.  The good doctor was (and still is as the programme is still running) described as a Time Lord, somebody with the ability to travel through both space and time.  I'm not sure that the children who comprise the audience either then or now actually believe in the possibility of travelling through time, but hey! nothing is impossible.  At least, that is what Napoleon said, according to a French electrician from whom I was seeking a quotation for some work.  But that's another story.

The quotation (Napoleon's, not for the work) does bring to mind one of the most interesting museum's I have visited in France.  Actually, to call it a museum is a tad inaccurate.  It is actually the house where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life, the Château du Clos Lucé at Amboise.  On one floor of the house are scale models of many of Leonardo's inventions, while in the grounds some of those inventions have been constructed in full size.  Among them are what might be described as a machine gun and a tank, while Leonardo drew plans also for a parachute and a helicopter. Remember, this was 500 years ago!

If Leonardo could "invent" things like a helicopter 500 years ago, who is to say that time travel will not be possible at some stage in the future?  In one way, time travel is already with us.  After all, the light from some distant planets and stars takes several years - even hundreds or thousands of years - to reach us.  Is it not possible that some form of sentient life on one of those distant planets could have invented a very powerful telescope and might even now be watching Custer's Last Stand or the Battle of Agincourt?

Now I come to think of it, it is already possible for us to travel backwards through time.  When we come back from France, we leave Calais at, for example, 8.00pm but as the journey takes just 35 minutes, we arrive in England at 7.25pm - before we have left France!

But if time travel were available to us, what period would I like to visit?  And should I go backwards or forwards?  I'm not at all sure that I would want to travel forwards and risk seeing what a mess my generation made of things, so perhaps my journey would be back through history.  There are most certainly some periods and events I would want to avoid: the Roman empire at its cruel height, building the pyramids in Egypt, the Black Death.  None of these seem suitable for even a short visit.  Perhaps a glimpse of California at the time of the gold rush, or the English countryside during a fine summers day in the mid-1930s?

Of course, what I would want would be modern comforts while I just observe life going on.  In that case, watching the pyramids being built would be no problem, so long as I am not one of the slave labourers!

But maybe, just maybe, I'll stick with what I know - the present day.

~~~~~

It's haymaking time.  Not quite the sort of thing that Constable would have seen, but this is what it looks like nowadays on the South Downs.

Television serendipity

Yes, I really have given this piece the title "Television Serendipity".  I realise that it might seem to you to be an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like an honest antiques dealer or a cheap lawyer, but serendipity is what I found on the television yesterday afternoon.

Now I come to think of it, linking the words "television" and "afternoon" is something of an oddity for me.  I may well have been retired for more than eleven years but I still have this mindset, a mindset which some people might describe as puritanical, which tells me I should not be watching television in the afternoon.  I still can't get out of the feeling that the day should be taken up with work and relaxing activities (there's another oxymoron for you) should be left until the evening or when one is on holiday.  There really is no reason at all why I should not watch television during the day and leave things like ironing and such housework as I do until the evening.  But I don't.

Now look at me: I'm blethering away again on something completely off-subject.  Let's get back on course - and "getting on course" has a loose connection with yesterday's television viewing.

Hilary and local Lions at the reception.

I had been warned that Auntie BBC was to broadcast a programme about Hilary Lister's dream to sail round Britain - solo.  Hilary, a quadriplegic who can move only her head, is also a member of a Lions Club.  It was after she became paralysed that she took up sailing, controlling the boat by blowing or sucking on three straws to raise or lower the sails, change course etc.  She made her first attempt back in 2008 and I met her at a reception Brighton Lions organised for her and her team when they stayed overnight at Brighton marina.  It was only in 2009, or maybe 2010, that Hilary finally achieved her aim but quite why the BBC have taken so long to broadcast the programme has not been explained.



Anyway, I wanted to watch it.  The programme, which lasted an hour, was to be aired starting at 6.30pm, a time which is completely hopeless for me as we would be eating.  So I set the recorder.  But our recorder has developed an irritating occasional fault.  Sometimes, when it is switched on a message appears: "Updating software".  I can't imagine what software they might be that would need updating but once the machine goes into this mode, everything freezes until the machine is manually told to stop updating.  So late in the afternoon I switched on to check that the recorder had not done the dirty on me.  It hadn't, but when I switched off the recorder, I found the television was showing a programme about birds of South America - scarlet macaws, condors, cranes, humming birds, vultures and harpy eagles et al.  Neither the Old Bat nor I had seen any advance publicity about it, but what an intriguing programme it was.  This - nature programmes - is what the BBC does superbly well and I will make a note to either watch or record the programme next week when it will be looking at Asia and Australia through the eyes of birds.

Television serendipity indeed.

~~~~~

This picture, showing the same stretch of Brighton beach as the picture I posted yesterday, shows the beach at 4.00pm yesterday.  I've "borrowed" it from the Daily Telegraph web site.  You can see why I keep out of town over summer weekends.

The Great Storm

We have had no rain here for quite some time and for the last couple of weeks the temperature has generally been into the 20s during the day, hitting the highs of about 27*.  I grant you that 27* (Celsius) is not very high compared to the places some of you inhabit, but to have such high temperatures for such a long period is not normal - even here on the sunny Sussex coast.  It is noticeable that the grass is beginning to turn brown and some gentle rain would be welcomed by keen gardeners.  I'm not sure that all the farmers would appreciate it as they are busy hay-making.

This slightly unusual spell of fine weather puts me in mind of 1976.  There have been good summers since then - it was only two or three years ago that we went so long without rain that rivers and reservoirs dried out.  But 1976 is firmly in the folk memory as a long, hot summer.  The Old Bat remembers it vividly as she was pregnant with our daughter, who was born 37 years ago this week.

That year there were standpipes in towns and we were encouraged to run baths no deeper than four inches or so - I don't remember the exact depth.  In August we had a holiday at Mrs Longman's B & B in north Devon, close to Westward Ho!, a place we returned to year after year as she looked after us so well and the beach was/is long and sandy.  Daughter was only about three weeks old when we went and I remember that Mrs L was most insistent that we ignored all restrictions on water supplies when it came to bathing the baby.  What was more, she washed the nappies!

That is the best summer in our collective folk memory now, although for my parents' generation there were earlier ones.  They talked about the dreadful winter we had in 1947, but I have no recollection of that at all.  We have had a number of winters with short spells of severe weather but I don't really think there has been a terribly bad winter for quite a number of years.

What many people do remember, though, is the Great Storm.  It was in October 1987 that hurricane force winds ripped across southern England uprooting thousands of trees, knocking over telephone boxes, hurling garden sheds across neighbours' gardens and generally causing mayhem.  The signs are still there today in Stanmer woods if one knows what to look for.

But again, that storm was as nothing compared with the hurricanes of the West Indies and southern USA, or the tornadoes that whip up Tornado Alley.  We might moan about our weather here in England, but if we are honest with ourselves, it's really very gentle compared with other places.  Indeed, it has been said that we don't have weather, we have climate.  And our climate is about the best in the world for growing certain fruits - apples and strawberries especially.

~~~~~

I have been posting pictures taken one day last week when I was on the seafront here in Brighton.  We can't leave without seeing the pier, complete with the funfair on the far end!

To the library

I've mentioned before that one of my favourite authors is Robert Goddard and it was only a couple or three weeks back that I said I would order his latest title, The Ways of the World, on my return from France.  I did just that but it was a few days after the book arrived before I was able to open the cover.  Well, I could have started reading it earlier but I decided to finish the book I had started, whatever that might have been.  Anyway, I finished the book yesterday evening so I must hie me to the library today for some more brain fodder.

I can't say that I thought The Ways of the World one of Goddard's best offerings.  He contrived a few coincidences too many for my liking and certainly there was one event that, to my mind, needed some explanation.  And the ending - well . . . words fail me.

I rarely buy books, preferring to save my spondoolicks for other things.  Why should I buy books when we have a very good free library service?  I know people who do buy the books they read - and then never seem to turn them out.  Almost every room in their houses is lined with bookshelves and the books are rarely if ever taken down and read again.

The one snag with using the local library is that it is small and the stock of books is not the greatest.  This means that I can have difficulty in finding books I want to read, but it also makes me try out different authors so I suppose there is an up-side.  Anyway, I'm off.  There's just time to leave you with another picture.

This one shows the Brighton seafront to the west of the Palace Pier and was aken from the said pier.  This stretch of the seafront is where all the big hotels are located - the Norfolk, the King's, the Holiday Inn, the Metropole, the Grand, the Old Ship, the Thistle, the Queen's, the Royal Albion.

Gone shopping

Friday morning.  The Old Bat is at the MS Treatment Centre for her hyperbaric oxygen session so I have taken myself off to the supermarket with the shopping list.  At least, that is the situation if you are reading this.  Of course, I do fully appreciate that you might not be reading this while I am in the supermarché but I am writing this on Thursday and will ask Blogger very nicely to schedule it for posting tomorrow morning.  I really cannot even begin to think why it is that I want my posts to show in the morning.  Anytime at all during the day would be quite alright, but there it is.

It seems that I have been doing the Friday shopping run for several months now.  It always was the case that the Old Bat would drive herself to the MS Centre and do the shopping on her way home, then the wind started getting up and as she is so unsteady on her feet, I was dragooned into driving her so she could take my arm while walking.  "Dragooned" is a particularly poor choice of word as it implies that I didn't want to do it whereas I am quite content to help where I can.

I must say that the Old Bat has been remarkable stoical about her gradually deteriorating condition.  I don't remember how many years ago it was - three, possibly four - that we were at King's College Hospital in London when she was told that there is no treatment for it.  After we had returned to the car she said to me, "It's not going to go away, is it?" - rather tearfully - and that is the only time she has shown anything like self-pity.  I do try to avoid doing things that she can no longer do, such as going on the Brighton Wheel yesterday, but quite obviously that is not always possible.  Somebody has to walk the dog, for instance.  But it certainly does cramp her style.

Mention of the Brighton Wheel prompts me to post this picture taken while I was on the Wheel on Wednesday.  This is the view to the east.  You can see Volk's Railway - the oldest electric railway in the world -running along the top of the beach as far as the marina, the man-made harbour in the distance.  Beyond that are the chalk cliffs running past Roedean to Rottingdean, Saltdean and on eventually to Beachy Head (although we can see no further than Peacehaven in this picture).

Perchance to dream

But before we get onto that, just a quick catch up from yesterday when I mentioned the first Ashes test.  England supporters were biting their nails as our side was bowled out for a paltry 215 runs.  However, things were soon made more even when the Aussies were just 19 for 2, though they made something of a come-back to end the day on 75 for 4.  Could be this match won't last the full five days.

Late yesterday afternoon things started to cool down and it was really quite comfortable going to bed.  I managed the best night's sleep for several days - and without dreaming (as far as I am aware).  I know I dreamed the two nights before - even though I can't remember too much about those dreams.  I do recall that in one of them I was with my wife, an elderly lady, another lady of an indeterminate age and my two younger children when they were children.  (What had happened to the elder son is still a mystery.)  We were trying to get to Euston station on the London Underground but were lost and none of the trains were going where we wanted to go.  It didn't help that my wife, with our two suitcases, and the other two ladies became separated from me and the children.

Those dreams can't have been a result of me eating cheese as I have eaten none for several weeks.  Perhaps it is all to do with my ka leaving my body.  Many years ago I read a theory that while we sleep, our spirits (or kas) leave our bodies and travel on other astral planes.  What happens while our kas are travelling comes back to us as dreams.

Yesterday evening the weather man told us that yesterday was the seventh consecutive day that temperatures had exceeded 25* somewhere in Britain whereas this time last year we had rain and floods.  Which just goes to show the vagaries of the weather here in England.  At least it is consistent in its inconsistency.

It is still a lot cooler - and cloudy - this morning so I am glad that I took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to go into town and take a ride on the Brighton Wheel.  I had noticed earlier that visibility was excellent - no heat haze - so I grabbed the chance.  The Wheel is on the seafront, right by the Palace Pier.  Well, it always used to be called the Palace Pier.  Now it has been renamed as Brighton Pier but most locals still refer to it under its old name.

This picture shows the Wheel and was taken from the Palace Pier.

Ashes to ashes

Among the better things that we Brits (horrible term!) have given to the world is cricket.  Not that the world in general appreciates the gift.  Just about every country plays football (another English invention) but cricket is pretty much restricted to the older Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  Perhaps strangely, cricket doesn't seem to have taken off in Scotland - although the Dutch play the game.

Today sees the start of the first test match between England and our keenest adversaries, the Aussies.  Why international cricket matches are called "tests" is something I have never even considered, and I suspect few other Englishmen have either.  They just are.  A test match is scheduled to last five days whereas county matches are generally four day affairs.

Anyway, today is the first day of the Ashes series, a series of five matches.  Matches between

England and Australia are known as Ashes series because back in 1882, an English team lost on home soil for the first time - to Australia.  The next day, a mock obituary ran in the Sporting Times "in affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th August, 1882".  It added: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia".  When an English team toured Australia the following year and won the series 2-1, the English captain was presented with a small urn containing the ashes of a burned bail.  130 years later, that urn is still the prize.  The urn is not exactly the world's most stunning sporting trophy, standing as it does little more than four inches tall.   But it is one of the most keenly contested.

British sport seems to be on something of a high at present.  Our cricket team is considered by most to be number one in the world (and already holders of the Ashes), an Englishman won the Tour de France last year (and another is currently in the lead), a Brit (OK, a Scot) won the men's singles at the US Open and also at Wimbledon (and the Olympic gold), and we did extraordinarily well at the Olympics.  Could be that the Ashes will remain in these islands.

~~~~~

Not exactly the Ashes, just a local club match on Patcham Place playing field.