Fancy a trip?

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.
Artist’s impression of sunset on the super-Earth world Gliese 667 Cc. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
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.

Heat Wave in UK!

First, did you know there was a supernova a few days ago?
SN2012aw supernova in M95 galaxy
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.

It’s Uncanny

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?
This is tonight, Saturday
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.

Anyway, as I was saying …

Golly, is that the date? Must try harder.
It’s hard to think of things to write about, but becoming an Aged Pensioner qualifies, I suppose. Yes, it all happened, and I was going to say it went smoothly, but Centrelink failed to return my original documents once again. I even include a stamped self addressed A4 envelope when I send them, but it does no good. I’ll just have to try again.
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Oh yeah, nearly forgot. The Bali villa is now open for rental and advertised on the web. Thanks to Ian and Naomi, who’ve put in an enormous amount of work.
The Balinese managers’ website is http://www.bbevillas.com/villa/villa-frangi
and the Perth website is http://www.villafrangi.com/
Have a look. 
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For the benefit of my interstate and overseas readers, if any, the heat goes on. The eastern states people (ABC News website) are saying it’s been such a cool and wet summer over there that they’re in danger of disbelieving Global Warming, but we can’t forget over here in the west.
Last year here was the hottest on record, the winter was the warmest, and now we’ve broken the record since records started (1877) for the highest number of heatwaves in a row. A heatwave is defined here as more than three days of maxima over 35C, and we’ve had eight this summer. It’s not too bad now, 29C today, but I’ve still turned the aircon on for a while. It feels hot. And this is autumn!
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The Stirling City Council have announced that they want to do their bit for the environment by trashing 45 mature trees at the north end of our Charles Riley Reserve. These are beautiful decades old peppermints and tuarts that are the only shade for the area, used by many picnickers, school sports people walkers and dog walkers, including me.
Why? The sporting people want the practice oval enlarged and yet another sports pavillion built, at a total cost of $5 million! (There are already two pavillions on this ground, one for football and cricket and an enormous one on the east side for athletics that seems to be quiescent most of the time.
All these trees will be cut down!
Under the council’s plans, every tree within the grassed area above will be uprooted and trashed! I took this shot in 2004, so the trees are bigger now, and they are used by magpies, crows, galahs, rosellas, black cockatoos, sulphur crested cockatoos, wattle birds, silvereyes, doves, peewits, mudlarks, kookaburras and other birds I’ve missed.
The new pavillion is to be built about where the pine tree is in this shot. Oh, and dog walking is to be banned from the grassed area and restricted to an area behind those trees to the left!
It just fries my brain that this could even be considered. The council say new trees will be planted. Yeah, sure – for future generations. They’ll take 20-30 years to grow enough to give shade. This area is used by school sporting people and people like me, but footballers have the councillors’ ears, so they’ll probably win. There’s a strong protest being mounted, but I don’t hold much hope.  Gloom.

Ya gotta laugh!

…or you’d cry.  I know I’m a sad case when I read the fine print at the end of newspaper advertisements, but the ad for Polytechnic West on page 53 of The West yesterday caught my eye.
In the last line it says, “Errors and ommissions accepted”. Obviously! A double banger. I reach for the sic bag. I think I’ll have to send them a rocket.
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I got the letter from Centrelink on Friday: pension’s all fixed, payments start on 15 February. Nice to be getting something back after all these years. Apart from the Health Care concession card, I’ve never had any government handout before. 
I never got the First Home Buyer’s grant in the 1980s, nor did I get the $900 bonus in 2008 for the GFC. Why? My income is so low that I don’t submit a tax return, but that meant I didn’t qualify for the bonus!  I wrote to the PM’s office to protest, but just got a gobbledygook fob-off reply.  At least they did reply.
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Phew it’s hot!  Air conditioning makes it bearable, but I feel imprisoned in the house at times. It’s junk collection this week and I wish I could go scavenging, but not in this heat.

Lucky Dog

Good news about the lost dog running up the road I wrote about on Tuesday. I was leaving the rugby club last evening and happened to glance over the fence and through the hedge at the tennis courts below.
There was the same little dog, running back and forth chasing a tennis ball with someone down there. I could be mistaken, but I reckon it was the same dog. All’s well that ends well.
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Historic day last Wednesday: I submitted my application for the Age Pension. It took me days to figure out how to answer the Income and Assets questions and in the end, I just had to front up with one of the questions unanswered, pending their advice.
A supervisor was called over and he eventually agreed with my interpretation, so it was easy after that.
I’d been told that opening time is the best time to avoid queues and so it proved. I arrived at 0840am and there was no-one in front of me. They still made me sit down and wait for 15 mins, but I was all done and out by 0920.
It means I’m in their clutches now! Every change in my financial circumstances has to be reported from now on. Ho hum…
Anyone who calls me an old aged pensioner had better be ready for a slap!

I Love Dogs!

My heart melted today, and it wasn’t the heat. I was waiting at the lights to turn into Marmion Ave and a small(ish) white dog ran past on the road, in the middle of the left traffic lane. He was just running up the slope in the centre of the lane, not diverging and not weaving.
The cars caught up with him, blowing their horns, and he eventually got the message and eased over onto the verge, then looked lost and wandered into the undergrowth toward my street.
I wanted to jump out and take him (her? it?) to safety, but I couldn’t because of the traffic. Poor little dog, lost, bewildered, burnt feet… I hope he’s OK. He had a collar on, so I hope someone did the right thing.
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Minnie scared me this morning. Years ago, I found Boopsie, my Border Collie, curled up in the far bottom corner of the yard. It turned out she had a bowel blockage and must have been in bad pain and had gone there to die (as dogs do). Luckily I found her and got her to the vet and $1500 later, she was OK.
This morning, when I called Minnie at about 8am, she was down there too. She came out and just looked at me, then slowly made her way up to the path and inside. This is new behaviour. She seems OK, so I hope…
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I finished reading my latest book today, Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, and all I can say is Wow! Phew, 850 pages and I didn’t want it to end. Luckily the cover says it’s part one of a trilogy, so I’ll be waiting for the next one.
It’s a historical novel starting at about 1910 and covering WW I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Treaty of Versaille after the war and the origins of Germany’s years of poverty leading to the Nazi party. It’s a soap opera in a way, but it’s engrossing. I now know a lot more about those times.

By Goddard

Thanks to KG (no, not King George V) I’ve discovered Robert Goddard, the British author, and I’m a fan! Good writing, complex plot lines, surprising twists and turns and quite a few new words to look up and learn.
I thought the author’s name seemed familiar and a few nights ago I was watching a program about rocket development (yeah, rocket science, slightly). There was the name Robert Goddard again, this time the American rocket developer in the 1940s and 50s.
I’ve just finished the UK author’s book Past Caring, and here’s another coincidence: the storyline encompassed British politics around 1910, David Lloyd George, the suffragette movement and King George V (hence my reference above). My current book is Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, and by coincidence, it’s set in the same time, 1911, suffragism, Lloyd George and King George V.

That’s handy, because now I understand all the references in Follett’s book, which, by the way, is not nearly as well written as Goddard’s. Follett’s a good story teller, but not a great writer in my opinion.

Don’t eat the mushies!

An amazing and tragic coincidence. A month or so ago, there was a report in The Guardian web news site http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/13/filmadaptations?INTCMP=SRCH about a London couple who went to stay with friends in Scotland. They decided to pick some field mushrooms and cook them up for dinner.
Apparently one person assumed the other person knew which mushrooms were OK to eat, so they went ahead and et ’em. Later that night all four of them felt sick and by morning they were alarmed enough to consult a book on mushrooms to identify what they’d eaten.
Ambulances were called and they all ended up desperately ill in hospital, with kidney and liver failures, dialysis, transplants etc etc. Ironically, both couples had nominated the other couple in their will to look after their kids if anything happened to the parents, yet here they all were, at death’s door. They all were/are in dire straits. It caused a serious rift in their friendship, because the visitors assumed the locals would know what was OK, or vice versa.
Now we have the ABC News item http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap-mushrooms/3757764?WT.svl=news0  of a very, very similar tragedy in Australia, Canberra, with two people dead.

I wonder who pronounced the mushies fit to eat in this event?

2012 !

Well, 2012 at last. Happy New Year to all my readers… all three or four?
It’s significant to me, as well as many others, because it’s the year we 1947 baby boomers turn 65. I can clearly remember where and when it was that I first thought about this milestone.
It was while I was walking, or perhaps riding in the pale green Commer mini bus driven by Joe Crawford, along the dirt road to the Werribee hostel. It was 1959, my last year of primary school at Wundowie. I worked out that I’d be 65 in 2012 and of course it seemed so remote as to be unbelievable. But here we are. I made it. We made it. Well, I’ve got six weeks to go, but barring accidents…

It was a quiet night around here last night, and Minnie wanted to sleep outside in the sand pit as usual. But about midnight the fireworks started to go off.

Well, she doesn’t take kindly to them and let out a few barks. Then she went quiet and I nearly let it be, as I was nearly asleep, but then I realised I’d left the gate open. And then I remembered that I’d taken her collar off earlier to wash it. Uh oh.


I got up and went looking for her and she was nowhere to be seen. So there I was standing on the street at 1210am in my jarmie shorts calling her and panicking a bit, because I didn’t want to have to go looking for her.


Luckily, after a few minutes, she appeared under a street light a few doors down and came when I called, albeit slowly and reluctantly. She thinks she can run away from thunder and loud noises.


That was the only problem I had. No loud parties in the neighbourhood, thank goodness.

Beautiful day here, cool 25C heading for 30. Very nice.