Write-Place

 On reaching sixty five years old ...  Until around 2010 I'd imagined my 65th birthday to be more of a milestone than it's turned out to be, though the words 'pension' and 'retirement' age are so ingrained in my past that it is inevitable that they are still on my mind now that the day has come, and gone.  (25th July for anyone interested; I was too busy celebrating with my family from 23rd onwards - and managing to stretch the 'birthday period'  to at least the second week in August - to write a blog post, on the day).  Over the last few years, there have been a number of significant changes to the State Pension entitlement for women.     Between 2010 and 2018 the age  changed from 60 to 65 for women  and  is now increasing in stages, alongside men, until it reaches 68. At the moment, it is forecast that I will receive mine at age 66 next year, but I have no expectations whatsoever that this will actually happen. I feel that it's m...

I thought I ought to write a post here, on the day that temperatures are likely to exceed the highest we've ever known - after all, it might be a day, week or month which is remembered in history for this very thing.  Or, sometime in the future, it may even be noted as the time when we had relatively low temperatures compared with what they are then experiencing - in say, 2072 and beyond, whether due to climate change or not.   While the Met Office seem to often  say  "since records began in 1914" to describe any kind of record topping  weather (such as 2007's 'wettest summer'  and 1976's 'heatwave'),  there are of course records that go back much further. Rainfall and snow is measured by the 'England and Wales Precipitation Series', which  goes back to 1766, and the 'Central England Temperature Series' which covers the temperature from the south Midlands to Lancashire, and dates from 1659. Many records have been kept on a personal ...