Wow, I’ve just read (see here  and here) about the Thames river festival to be held in London on Sunday June 3 for the Queen’s Jubilee. Wow! I wish I could be there. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

The Olympics leave me cold. I’m sure it’ll be great for people who like sport, but crowds, transport, security, not to mention cost mean I wouldn’t go even if I could. But to see a spectacle of royal barges, music, massive peals of bells, fireworks and colour even bigger and better than they used to do it in the 17th century would be near the top of my list of things to do before you die.

As the article says, the procession will take 90 minutes to pass any given spot and will be loud, colourful and best of all, advertising free. It will surpass anything seen in the past 300 years.

I’m sure they’ll be recording it and I’ll line up to buy a BluRay DVD. I hope they do it justice.

PS: Yeah, why don’t I just go? I just checked airfares – Singapore – Paris return for ~$1050. Eurostar to London to avoid the delays at London airports. But I can’t even get my shoes on or walk to the shops these days. Not feasible. Not a hope.

 In the post before this one I said I bought a Lotto ticket on the strength of the PIN chance.

Well, that one didn’t win, but the next one did. Yes, folks, I’m a Lotto winner. Don’t start queueing, though. I won $12.90 (the ticket cost $7.85). I think this is the first time I have ever won anything at Lotto or the lottery.

Aaaaah, I love this cool, still, damp weather. Perth used to be the Windy City. I didn’t like the way the wind was always blowing, gusting, swirling the leaves, bending the branches. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems to me it’s much calmer these days along with less rainfall and warmer temperatures.The climate is changing.

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I did a double take the other day — my supermarket checkout bill was an anagram of my PIN. I’m not going to say what the number was, but I immediately thought, wow, what are the chances of that?

Well, the chances are one in 10,000 of course. Four numbers, four digit PIN. Sooner or later they must come up. BUT, what are the chances of them coming up in the same order as your PIN? Those are different odds. I’m still working it out.

Yes, I bought a Lotto ticket. No, I didn’t win. What are the odds of that?

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A website I visit every day posted this image yesterday:

In the comments section I said, “Best thing about it? The USA is nowhere to be seen. And for once we can see my home town, Perth, Western Australia.”

Being a US website I expected a few sarcastic replies, but instead I got 9 Likes and mine is the most popular comment. Wow.

You can see a 1.2 Giga pixel version at http://gigapan.com/gigapans/103187 It’s pretty interesting.

You may remember the post a few weeks ago (15 March) about the destruction of the trees at the ovals near here. Well, we lost the fight.

At a meeting of Stirling Council last Tuesday, the vote went about 14 to 3 to spend $5 million on a new football club, so nearly all the trees in the photo below will be bulldozed.

One of the things I find most disheartening is that most people don’t care. I mentioned it to my “friends” at the club on Friday night. All I got was blank looks and so-what shrugs. “When did you last walk under those trees, Crofty?” was one response. My turn to say, so what? Whether I use them or not now, plenty of people do. But more importantly, dozens, scores, hundreds of birds do. I’ve been watching them for 25 years.

One of the councillors is quoted as saying, “they build what the community ask for.” The community in this case is the subset of parents who have kids who want to play football. I can’t believe that subset is a majority. It’s more that they have the ear of the council.

It’s not as if they can’t play football now. There’s already a full sized oval and a smaller, but still legal-sized oval, plus a clubroom. But, not content with having 95%, the sporters want 100%, or even 110% by the time they take over the car park area as well for the clubhouse.

I think it’s summed up by a Holden SS ute I saw at the shops yesterday. A big sticker in the back window said, “Don’t like my driving? Call 1-800-EAT SHIT”. How nice.

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How nice to be getting some rain and coolness. I got my March /April electricity account yesterday and it was less than half what I used for the same time last year. That’s because that time last year was hot, hot, hot – 33/34C every day from January right through to May. I was running the aircon nearly every day, whereas I haven’t needed it now for many weeks. Good.

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I drove up the street round the corner from me yesterday and saw a For Sale sign on a house I know to be the home of Cyril, a fellow dog walker who was 92 last time I saw him, which was more than a year ago. I can guess what the for sale sign means, then. He was a widower with only his dog Tina for company and he was very hard of hearing, which made it hard to talk to him much, but … he was a nice bloke. Thick Yorkshire accent. I wonder what’s happened to Tina?

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I just found this on Google Earth this morning:

How about that! It’s a passenger jet flying over London, photographed from above. 

Wow. Take a look at this if you like tricky graphics.

Copyright 2012.  Magnifying the Universe  by Number Sleuth. 

or go here: http://www.numbersleuth.org/universe/

The photo above is the location, I’m pretty sure, where we used to live in an old weatherboard and corrugated-iron roofed house in the early 1950s. It was on the point where the wide sandy path in from the road meets the scrub. I used to walk down that track to the road and wait for the school bus to take me about 6Km in to Bruce Rock for primary school.

It looks now as if nothing was ever there, yet there used to be a stone built shed among the outbuildings. House, sheds, all wiped away. Dad cleared a lot of those paddocks in the picture. He was only in his mid twenties and had never worked the land before. It was hard work.

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Oh, this unrelenting fine weather. Every day, cloudless blue skies, warm temperatures, no rain. Will it never end? Boring.

That’s irony, folks. Saying something as a joke when you mean the opposite. But I’m not sure I do.

In Britain, they’re getting worried because they’re in a bad drought. The forecast is no change for as long as next year. Amazing. Water restrictions, hose bans, crop failures, water courses and lakes drying up. That green and pleasant land could look like here soon. Now they’ll know what it’s like. C’est la vie.

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I’ve been thinking – every year this decade we’ve had a catchy date – 01/01/01; 02/02/02; …. 11/11/11 etc. This year, we’ll have 12/12/12. Then no more for a long time. We can’t have anything like 13/13/13 or any month like we’ve had this dodecade (12 years) for the rest of the century.

Last century, we had 6/6/66; 7/7/77; 8/8/88; 9/9/99 – those are the ones I remember. I suppose we’ll have 2/2/22, 3/3/33 … to go on with. At least, you will. I should see the first, but I doubt I’ll see the second and subsequent. C’est la vie.

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I’ve just taken some boxer shorts out of the washing machine to the line, and a brand new pair, worn and washed once, has pulled a thread and virtually fallen apart. I have to buy these K-Mart shorts to get my size, but the quality is just going down and down. Made in Bangladesh now, and so flimsy you can see through the cotton. I had a choice of exactly two. I complained about the scarcity and they said, yes, we don’t have much stock, try Target. Big help.

I may have to get a supply tailored for me in Bali!

Bugger, bugger, … bugger.

I got a letter yesterday marked O.H.M.S.* What’s this, I thought. Well, it was a nice note from the police with a speeding fine notice. There was my car in the picture, 47Km/h in a 40Km/h zone.

First time in over 47 years of driving!! I can’t deny it … I remember it clearly. I saw the 40 school zone sign before I entered the roundabout but another car distracted me and I immediately forgot. Not a human being, let alone a child, in sight, mind you. $75 fine but no demerit points, thank goodness.

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A new exoplanet has been found which seems to be right in the temperate zone around its star, ie not too hot, not too cold.

Isn’t that beautiful? I’m thinking of buying a villa there. (Click to get a big version.)

This illustration is pure supposition, of course. It’s tens of light years away and is four times earth’s mass, so you’d grow old and die on your way there and weigh so much you couldn’t walk if you survived! Hah. Better take out travel insurance.

First, did you know there was a supernova a few days ago?

Not surprising if you didn’t notice – it’s 37 million light years away, so it happened 37 million years ago and its light has just reached us. But it’s notable because it was seen right at the beginning of the explosion, so it’s being studied closely.

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Hard to imagine, isn’t it? But Scotland had a new record March max temperature on Sunday – 22.8C. Wow! Ireland is joining in – Belfast sweltered at 19.8C at 4pm, with cloudless skies in many areas.

People in England and Wales were hitting the beaches. Health authorities are saying, Yeah, get out in the sun, you need the vitamin D.

At the same time, Britain is experiencing a drought. Rivers and streams are either dry or drying up. Birds and small animals are in danger. Water rationing is very near.

Yet it’s only spring! Winter with all that snow has just finished. Very strange.

However, silver linings and all that: if you wanted to visit Ireland, now’s the time. Clear “warm” weather, depressed economy, and high $A against the Euro would make it good for us.

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I read The Guardian on-line and so I read all about the UK economy and last week’s budget. The Conservative government is unbelievable. In the midst of Britain’s worst economic crisis, they’ve cut taxes for the rich by abolishing the 50% top tax rate! They’ve slapped VAT on bread, raising the price of a staple food for the poor, and cut the NHS budget by £500m, increasing waiting lists for, you guessed it, the middle and lower classes. They’ve also imposed what’s being called a “Granny tax”. 

Those are just a few of the things the Tories have done. One columnist quoted George Orwell from an article he wrote in 1941 about the upper class in Britain:

“It is important not to misunderstand their motives, or one cannot predict their actions. What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable. Only when their money and power are gone will the younger among them begin to grasp what century they are living in.”

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Minnie had an unusual event yesterday. I gave her the usual meaty bone in the late afternoon and she went off to her usual spot to crunch it up. But after a while I wondered where she was and noticed she was lying down near the front fence with the boney thing in her mouth. She was taking much longer than usual to eat it, and only trying to chew it every minute or so. In between chews, she was gazing at the road, up into the sky, but not chewing.

At first I was mystified, but then realised that the bone was stuck on one of her lower canine teeth! She couldn’t eat it because she couldn’t move it around her mouth. Never seen this before.

I went out and used tongs to pull it loose. She was reluctant to let me, but it was easy, so she made short work of the remainder.

First, ever get that constricted feeling on public transport?

Ain’t that great? It’s advertising painted on a bus in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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I think I’ve mentioned coincidences before, but I had a beauty today.

I’ve read about Cholmondeley before in a guide book or something. It’s a village in England. In typical English fashion, it’s pronounced Chumley. So quaint.

It popped into my head just after rising this morning for some reason, as words often do, and I thought about it briefly in the shower before moving on to other things, like getting my desk inside and having to vacuum first, exciting stuff like that.

A couple of hours later I was reading my latest novel, set in London in the 1990s, when one of the characters says, “You free for lunch? I’ll pick you up. Cholmondleys?”

I was so surprised by the coincidence I looked skywards and laughed involuntarily in sheer amazement. These things keep happening. I don’t think I’m psychic, but what the … ?

Similarly, I reckon I’ve swallowed a juke box at some time in my life. Just about every waking moment I’ve got some song playing in my head. Sixties and seventies hits, mainly, and since I like 6IX that’s not surprising, but it’s so consistent! Luckily, it’s not too loud.

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Are you seeing the conjunction of the planets in the evening these days?

Venus and Jupiter are quite close together in the western sky just after sunset, very bright and easy to see. Venus is the brighter one on the right, even though it’s much smaller than Jupiter, because it’s much closer.