Observations from a Hill

The casual observer from the past might be forgiven for thinking that the above blurry photograph was taken of the decisive moment of one of those tragically misguided thermonuclear tests in the forties and fifties that ushered in the Cold War and divided East from West. But no, this is a Jeff Bezos Blue Horizon Origin  [Freudian Slip: Blue Horizon was a now defunct record label] rocket ship exploding on its launchpad during what should have been a routine operation. This behemoth of a launch vehicle, alongside Elon Musk's similar efforts in this field is meant to usher in a 'new age' of space exploration by offering us mere humans the opportunity to colonise our one and only planetary moon; a place visited by a very few of our species in one very specific era of our history. But the question one has to ask is: Why? to what ultimate end is this frontiersman-ship directed at such huge expense, when our terrestrial, humanitarian issues are so pressing and in need of such eno...

Some days it's so difficult to come up with a single idea for a post on this blog: sometimes a single-themed channel seems like it might have been a better idea to commit to, but there we are. I opted for this open-ended format out of choice and I'm committed thereto, for better or for worse; for good. So tonight is ramble territory; a stroll through the byways of the day, my thoughts, and unfortunately, the bloody news. First off, of course, is that hardy perennial of British conversational gambits: the weather. What on earth transpired today? We had been told of a gradual turndown of the heat of the last few days in the coming week or so, and it was so unseasonably hot yesterday at 32 Celsius, which predictably precipitated much atmospheric electrical theatricality last night; but today? From a warm, hazy start to the morning, the temperature reached a still pretty warm high of 26 Celsius by the middle of the afternoon; but by around seven-thirty this evening, the wind having...

Well it's been even hotter here in Fairview Heights today, with the mercury substitute hitting thirty-two Celsius late afternoon. We did some more kebabs on the barbecue: this afternoon's fire being lit in a jury-rigged affair built of otherwise redundant storage heater bricks atop my old Black and Decker Workmate, as the easy-to-light charcoal bag was too big for the the little kettle barbecue I used for yesterday's meal. I've used these bricks many times before for building temporary cooking structures: they are ideally suited for the purpose, as they hold heat wonderfully. I fully intend to build a permanent pizza oven with them sometime, now my collection has grown sufficiently so to do. My motto, like my dad's is not to chuck out anything that can possibly be of use in the future: it's a philosophy that works more often than not. After we'd eaten al fresco in the baking heat and cleared the patio table of our stuff, I decided to sit out there and read f...

  I was of a mind to pen something today about an article on Medium that I've been reading over the last few hours, about 'Euler's Identity', the celebrated 'Most Beautiful Mathematical Equation'. I've come across this before, but not until I chanced upon this particular piece about it did so much start to fall into place about the mysteries, as they seemed to me, of mathematics. I wish I'd had the person who penned the article as my maths teacher back in school; I think I might have made a much better fist of the subject than I did. However, I'll leave that topic for later as I'm knackered, it's hot, and I'm full of barbecued food, viz, the above kebabs in progress, served in a soft tortilla wrap with fresh salad, and in my case, Encona California Reaper pepper sauce. Yummy. Must stop now as I feel like a nap...  

Definitely the warmest day of the year so far, with the temperature in the shade outside our front door reaching 30°C this afternoon. The temperature here is always elevated because of the tarmac over thousands of tons of slate waste that form our patio: it's akin to a gigantic storage heater, throwing back all the heat it's built up during the day. However, the temperature in the bottom garden has stayed at an even 27°C all afternoon, anyway. We went over to Ynys Môn earlier to take a look at a Neolithic Burial Chamber that in all the years we've lived in the area, we've never visited: Barclodiad y Gawres, between Aberffraw and Rhosneigr, which is of particular interest because of the carved rock designs found within its structure. We figured that today being a Bank Holiday, visiting a Stone Age monument might be a way of avoiding the very many tourists that always descend on such occasions [can't blame 'em - this is God's own country, after all]; but what...

  Another diary post tonight, as the weather has finally caught up with the season's turn. Pictured, the far corner of the bottom garden, with the dilapidated old shed that I built with the help of my late friend JC back in 2003, just after we moved into the house. On the right in the foreground is the New Zealand Flax that I wrote about six years ago, during Covid , and not long after I started this blog. The Flax is flourishing, despite the enormous growth of brambles, lilac and nettles that surround it. It now stands eleven or twelve feet tall and looks in decently rude health. It forms a bit of the wilder part of our gardens, and is much visited by bees at the moment. I look forward to the return of the butterfly population after the the unseasonable dip in temperatures of late; they're another regular feature of our mildly unkempt but wildlife-friendly space, alongside the myriad small birds, mammals and amphibians that visit. We keep enough structure, however to please ou...