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Showing posts with the label UK

It's Hot, Hot, Hot - how are you coping ?

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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 ...

What's The Date Today ?

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  I couldn't let today go by without mentioning the date, which I mostly am not sure of until I have checked a calendar of some description.  However today's date is significant (or can be made to seem significant) by noticing that it is a palindrome as well as an ambigram date.  Palindrome Days happen when the date can be read the same way backwards and forwards. The dates are similar to word palindromes in that they are symmetrical. As well as this, it  is a 2's (two's day) and it falls on Tuesday, the second day of the week - though this only works if you say it in an American accent and ignore that Sunday has historically been classed as the first day of the week; well at least according to the The Bible and Christian message.  I know I should have thought and written about this month's ago as social media is already awash with this information and more, but as I get older, I find that planning ahead is, generally, not for me and 'spur of the moment' is...

Crossing Borders Sequel - Changing Lives : Preface

                                                                   *Preface*                    "But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man                                             and the life he leads? "                                                   Albert Camus     So what happened next? This is the question I have had from many people who have read “Crossing Borders” (my account of my meeting with my Palestinian husband) and of those who have l earned of the background of my husband and ste...

Time and Tide Wait for No Man

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Here we are again on the last day of the year, looking back on the year past and forward to the next year. Some of us will be glad to see the end of 2016 and happy to see the start of a new year, while others will be cautious and perhaps nervous of what 2017 will bring.  Of course, the concept of a "new year" is a purely man made notion to help us fix ourselves in time within days, weeks and months and likewise in hours, minutes, seconds and even nano seconds - which I understand is equal to one billionth of a second, one nano second being to one second as one second is to 31.7 years. At this point my mind boggles and fails to comprehend the enormity of "time" as we as humans on earth, know it. Our idea of a month comes from the moon and many cultures over thousands of years have used months with lengths of 29 or 30 days to divide the year up into manageable pieces. With this system though, there is the problem of having moon cycles at 29.5 days not dividin...