Sun seeker

 

It’s sunny by the sofa and our tom cat never fails to find the sun. As the light moves across the room he will follow it. Eyelids drooping as he naps. Head nodding. Whiskers splayed in the sunlight. Plants display phototropism, bending towards sunlight. Is this an example of ‘catatropism’ (or would that be humans moving towards cats?).

 

In the case of these seedlings I have to turn them round because they bend each day towards the light. True phototropism. But the cat has also moved again. _20190411_111757

He’s a true sun seeker.

Wow signal?

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Peeeeep she heard it on the radio. A loud pulse  then it was gone. What was that? It had been a piercing squeal.

But it was gone. A disturbance in the aether, a cosmic scream perhaps??

She checked the Internet. It was all over Facebook. At precisely 4pm Greenwich mean time a signal had slashed into the Earth’s atmosphere. So strong it was picked up by transistor radios and radio telescopes alike. The Internet was calling it a Wow signal based on a signal heard by a radio telescope on August 15th 1977.

Could it be interference from Earth? But the signal had eminated from the milky way galaxy. Millions of light years away across the sky from us.

Speculation increased  Could it be aliens? Or the voice of God? Maybe there was a new astronomical phenomenon.

For now the sky remained annoyingly quiet and the world waited with mixed fear and hope to see if it would happen again or what would happen next.

Uncertainty

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Watching a programme about gravity and quantum physics. The very big and the very small…

Hard to follow. There is apparently a fundamental problem in our understanding of the universe. General relativity explains Stars and galaxies. Quantum mechanics explains Atoms. But when you get to black holes the laws of nature fail.

Today Nasa published the very first image of a real black hole. Before today any images were just illustrations or mock ups.

The singularity at the centre of a black hole is apparently the same sort of thing as the singularity at the beginning of the universe.

The programme shows how something called quantum gravity explains the universe. Now we have seen a real black hole they may be able to take the theories further.

I’m leaving this now. I don’t understand!

Lifeline

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So many years ago, 2003 was when I did this art work. The hand print was a photocopy of my hand I think. Then I used photoshop to add colours using flood fill and a drawing tool. Finally I used one of the texture tools to break the image up into shards.

16 years on its at my studio at Spode. I really want to do more experimental stuff. I have been trying to get in the front room where my computer is but it’s full of my partners train stuff which I don’t want to move.

Life can be complicated. You have to have give and take. That’s what my lifeline was shining I guess (although I don’t believe in that kind of thing).

Wasp

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Wasp! I’ve stood on one and been stung before now. I don’t like them but I can live with them, except when they built a nest in between some bricks and started coming out into the kitchen when they emerged. I got up one morning and there were a few wasps flying round the kitchen. Two many to catch and I didn’t have any fly spray so I had to hoover them up in the vacuum cleaner. I felt guilty about it. Then over the next week we had more every morning. I had to book pest control in the end.

Now years later I just had a huge wasp fly into the living room. It must have come in from the garden when my partner went outside.

The cats ears pricked up and he started looking up and jumping onto cupboards to try and catch it. I don’t think chewed wasp would be good for him. Then it flew onto the window behind a net curtain.

I shouted my partner as I could not reach. A plastic tub and a magazine were used to trap it, now its free flying around outside.

Phew! Strange how insects can be so upsetting. Wasps are useful for eating pests and pollenation. And thankfully I didn’t have to vacuum it up!

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Red sky morning

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How odd, she thought. The sky was just red in one patch. The rest was grey. And the red was in the wrong place. Not easterly where the sun rises  but north easterly.

She went downstairs to make a coffee. The red glow had increased in the few seconds that it had taken to get to the kitchen. She looked out over the garden  The leaves on the trees were tinged with red.

What was going on? She turned on the radio. It crackled to life but the reception was really bad. She heard the announcers voice through the hiss.

“The star we.. Nova…. It is about …. Milli… Miles away……….. No threat to life but…. .May see two shado…… The eff… Ct on Radio and TV… Ignals is ex… Ted to worsen…… Gamma Ray’s hav… Ready hit.

Small loss of…………. Expected.  Stay . Uned.

She switched off the radio. We’ve been star struck she thought irreverently.

Dawn chorus

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I came downstairs about an hour ago and the sweet, loud, melodious song of birds was filling the air. At this time of year in the spring it seems louder and more beautiful than ever. Fizzing through the air like ripe electricity. A great pleasure to listen to.

Then cutting through it the insistent alarm call, not of a blackbird, but a ruddy car alarm! The bird song quietened for about five minutes, a car engine started up in the street, and traffic noise commenced. But soaring high above it the melodies of a Blackbird and its mate have resumed. Liquid notes rising and falling in complicated trills… And that ruddy car alarm again!

Bottle oven / pizza oven….

A replica bottle oven is growing on the grounds of Spode at the moment. It’s going to be a pizza oven at the hotel on the Spode site.

Around the other side of Spode near the Church Street side is the base of an original bottle oven which had been demolished years ago. There are very few real ovens still standing in the city. Many were knocked down or fell into disrepair over the years. Where hundreds once stood and smoke stained the city sky less than fifty are still standing and many of these are in danger of being lost to the history of the city, county, and country.

Even now buddleia and other shrubs are growing in between their bricks, pulling the ovens down in continued dereliction. Hopefully some can be conserved.

For those who don’t know bottle ovens are bottle shaped buildings containing a central kiln which the oven surrounds. Pottery was stacked inside the kiln and fired by stoking fires under the ovens with coal.