Category: phenomena

Halo, Halo!

Another very warm and sunny so-called autumn day. A2 was out watching a very feeble sundog and willing it to brighten up when she looked up and saw not one, but two, very bright arcs nested together. Possibly a segment of a circumscribed halo.
Meanwhile A1 is reading Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan, which has a pleasingly complex plot and is much darker than previous volumes (and is all the better for it). But VK does enjoy his similes…
A2 is reading The Misper by Kate London (thank you A1), a boy goes missing under the influence of a County Lines panjandrum who is himself under the influence of Game of Thrones (an unnecessary distraction).

Circumzenithal Arc

Not a very impressive one, but the first we’ve seen in ages!
In other news, our weather station is now integrated with Wunderground, with live updates. Sample below (click on the image to open in a new tab):

We had stroggers and homegrown apple and blackberry pie for our family dinner and scored 10.5 on the GSQ.
Admin2 was reading 1989 by Val McDermid but abandoned it because it was boring and is now rereading Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.

Glow!

A peculiar glow in the night sky turns out to be common in all cities that have sports grounds and is the reflection of grass-growing illumination on the Headingley rugby pitch a couple of miles away.
Admin1 is reading The Water Clock by Jim Kelly, a book neither of us remember buying which has lain on the windowsill getting slightly foxed for a couple of years. A very chilly crime book with a reporter protagonist, set in the frozen fens of East Anglia; a pretty good read though.
Admin2 is reading Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths.

When the Nights Are Blue

Happy birthday twins!
To celebrate, some low-down noctilucent clouds, the first of the year, and 13.397kWh on the solar panels, our third sunniest day ever, by 2 watts, what what!
Admin1 is reading Tragedy on the Branch Line by Edward Marston, which was a considerably cosier train ride than Bullet Train, soon to be a big film. Admin2 is reading Crow Court* by Andy Charman, another crowdfunded debut, not so interesting.

Batting for Africa

One of the questions in yesterday’s Guardian quiz prompted a family discussion about the Kasanka National Park in Zambia and its enormous colony of bats. Admins 1 and 2 paid a visit there in 2010, which involved getting up in the middle of the night, trekking through a swampy jungle with some armed guards and climbing rickety wooden towers to view the bats flying around. It was spectacular. Here’s another shot we took:
Anyway, in a weird coincidence the Park turned up in today’s Guardian. Apparently some company wants to open a huge commercial farm which would have a catastrophic effect on the wildlife. The paper also has a nice photo essay on the Park’s bats.
Admin1 is reading The Special Dead by Lin Anderson. Admin2 is rereading The Second Sleep by Robert Harris.

Festivals of Light

Happy Hanukkah and Lucia Day. Christmas Lights Man displaying as usual, with a giant snowman standing in the hall before he hastily shut the door. And Admin2 saw three Geminid meteors in the night [update: later we each saw dazzlingly brilliant ones].
Admin2 is reading Accidental Agent by Alan Judd; most boring spy novel ever.
We scored 8 on the GWQ; no, let’s make it nine because our answer to “What links Johann Strauss II; John Philip Sousa; Benny Goodman; Elvis Presley?” Blue (Danube, Ridge, Moon, Hawaii) was just as good as theirs (King of).

Happy New Year


Sadly it was too windy to let the drone out at midnight, but Admin2’s new camera has a firework setting so here are some fireworks.
Happy New Year everybody xxx

Happy New Year


Happy New Year everybody!
It was the best of times and in some ways, including the solar panels, it was the worst of times, but only because they were switched off on some of the sunniest days.
Admin1 watched Live Die Repeat. We scored 8 on the Guardian Weekend quiz, bringing our yearly average to 8.19, which is a slight improvement on last year.

Let There Be More Light


Christmas lights man goes even more over the top. 22,000 bulbs, he says.
Admin1 is reading The Second Deadly Sin by Asa Larsson. Admin2 is reading Blood Stream by Luca Veste which was pants. Detective with foreign female sidekick (Rankin, Harvey), old-fashioned musical tastes (ditto) chasing serial killer (everybody), ends up in serial killer’s trap (ditto) but escapes (phew!). And in this case the serial killer has an extremely implausible motive and an incredibly ghastly technique.
We scored 7 on the Guardian Weekend quiz.

Bang Bang!

No pic tonight but two loud explosions shook our windows, rattled our walls and brought people out into the street. Apparently sonic booms from RAF Typhoons escorting a civilian plane to Newcastle.
Admin2 is reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (a long read and seemingly only the first of a long long series), Admin1 is reading When the Devil Drives by Chris Brookmyre, and we are watching Line of Duty, series 3.
We scored 9 on the Guardian Weekend quiz.