Published on
September 20, 2009 in
Personal.
While walking home one night last week I couldn’t help but notice that the trees appeared to be particularly heavily laden with berries. Now I can’t actually remember the berry yield from year to year but my immediate thought was: looks like it’s going to be a bad winter.
I’m not alone in thinking like this. Judy Lowe rejects this reasoning out of hand but – and this may be a coincidence – New England did have a pretty harsh time of it last winter with ice storms and the like leaving one million people without power. It was also colder than average for us at this side of the Atlantic with everything pretty much grinding to a halt after the first significant snowfall in years.
My thinking like this probably stems from growing up around farms in the Pennines and picking up natural weather forecasting indicators like cows laying down in fields, spiders at the edges of their web and rings around the moon.
Although having said this, after the BBQ summer failed to materialise maybe I should take a break from the weather forecasting lark.
Published on
September 16, 2009 in
Personal.
“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”
- Charles F. Kettering
I was delighted to learn at the start of the week that episodes of the seminal technology show Tomorrow’s World were being released from the vast BBC archive for viewing online.
Judith Hann, Maggie Philbin and Howard Stableford nurtured my nascent interest in all things gadget. I still remember fondly the first (and possibly last) time I saw a Laserdisc, an international ATM in operation and the electronic word processor with cut-and-paste abilities.
The past 30 years have seen some truly amazing inventions and the developments don’t appear to be stopping any time soon. Personally, I think that it’s a fantastically exciting time to be alive and I take some degree of comfort in the hope that these brilliant minds can continue to innovate in order to help the human race overcome the terrible future scenarios that we appear intent on bequeathing our children.
Published on
September 1, 2009 in
Personal.
There is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing
- Sir Rannulph Fiennes
It was late again before I left the office this evening – partly due to waiting for the rain to stop. I got about three minutes along the road before the first rain drop of a fresh deluge hit my chest and I was surprised by just how heavy it felt. I looked up and the sky was very dark; this was going to be some downpour and there was I without my umbrella or anything vaguely approaching waterproof in terms of clothing. Sure enough, I was forced to shelter in a doorway for the next ten minutes while stair-rods bounced down.
Today is the first day of September which, for me, indicates the end of summer. The Edinburgh Festival is over and done with for another year bar the fireworks, a new football season is underway and the evenings are darkening earlier.
I had a good feeling about this summer and while the weather may not have lived up to my expectations, in many other ways I couldn’t have hoped for better.
