Spectrum

White light

Split into colours

Created by sunlight

Rainbows glow

Chemicals create different colours, sodium used in street lights glows yellow. Chemicals are used in fireworks, like strontium (red?) or copper green, creating different colours, blues, purples, oranges.

The reason sunlight is made up of a spectrum is because the sun is made not only of hydrogen and helium but all the chemicals in the periodic table up to iron (any chemicals beyond that can only be created in Super Novae explosions). All the chemicals in the sun glow in different colours, which is why they show up when the white light from the sun passed through a prism. If you split the spectrum further you can find dark lines, these are markers of which chemicals are present. The older the star the more chemicals. As a star gets older it starts to burn up its hydrogen and helium. New chemicals are created by atoms fusing together. That’s where new chemicals are made. When you think about it, if it wasn’t for stars burning or exploding we couldn’t exist.

Old boat

My grandad was a carpenter and made this many years ago. I never met him as he had died before I was born. But he carved the lytch gate at the parish church where I came from, and the altar rail in the Central Hall (Methodist Chapel). This is carved out of a peice of oak with bits of thick card nailed around the sides and tiny cannon along the sides. Maybe one day I will get it restored. I think I got my artistic ability from him.

Succulents

Houseplants are good for you according to recent research. Apparently just a glimmer of green in an otherwise plain and boring magnolia painted house can improve your mood. If you are locked down in a house or room, having that bit of green can help.

This is a badly watered succulent plant we have at the top of our stairs. I look out over our garden and feel infinitely lucky to have that patch of green.

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Accident?

A phone call.

‘Hello, I’m ringing because I believe you were recently involved in a traffic accident that was not your fault?’

Me ‘oh yes, twenty years or so ago..’

Caller ‘er’

Me ‘oh yes, that time the icecream van hit my car.I gave him a freezing look!’ or when the trapeze artist hit us, I said ‘I could swing for you!’ ‘Or maybe the time I got hit in the rear by a tractor? He ploughed right into us,’

Actually all the caller said was ‘Goodbye’ so sadly I didn’t get a chance to try out my bad sense of humour on her!

Tiles

One thing about living in Stoke is that you get to see beautiful pottery. For instance these tiles may be simple for or wall decorations, but they signify the creativity of the City.

You visit the Potteries Museum and art gallery, in the city centre (Hanley), you will see amazing beauty and talent in the history of the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

A whole history and creativity that has gradually dwindled as austerity has crippled the country. Manufacturing has reduced, has been driven offshore by costs, and although some had started to return, the current situation has made things worse again. Life continues…..

Limerick about hair

I write silly limericks each week on a friend’, Esther Chilton’s, blog. I don’t usually share them here but I thought I would with the one I wrote on her blog last week. I hadn’t been feeling well and I forgot I had written this. I can’t remember the word that we had to base the limerick on, I think it was State, you have a one word prompt. It does not have to be the word you rhyme with, it can sit anywhere within the limerick:

 Just look at the state of my hair!

This lockdowns been really unfair

My mane has extended

Far more than intended

From the top to the foot of the stairs!

I hope it made you chuckle. Limericks have a two, two, one pattern, the first two and last line should rhyme and lines three and four are often shorter and have a different pattern to their rhymes.

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Hubby making apple bread?

An explosion in the kitchen? No hubby making apple bread. There was flour over the draining board, the crockery drainer, in the sink, on the floor. He got me to scrape the dough off his hands it was so sticky. He had added oats and rye flour to a bag of breadmaking flour which had added yeast. It wasn’t rising very well but he added cooking apples to the loaves.

Now they are in the oven, cooking, I wonder how they will turn out? In half an hour I will know.

HS2 (high speed two) railway

Felled ancient Oak

From Facebook. I decided to share this here to show what stupid ideas our government have. This and many other ancient trees are being cut down because we (our government) wants to build a railway between London and Birmingham and then on to Manchester and Leeds. But the lines won’t go into the city centres, so you will have to travel to the new hub stations. They say it will cut twenty minutes off the journey time between Manchester and London! Wow. And to do this they need straight tracks because fast trains don’t like curves. Well, of course chopping down trees for that MUST be justified! Not that we can actually afford it or have people working in cities anymore.

The Hunningham Oak which is one of the ancient trees nominated for Tree of the Year now felled by HS2!

Thank you to all tree protectors who tried to save this once magnificent tree!

Some of the campaigns include these if you want to get involved….

STOP HS2
Save Cubbington Woods – Stop HS2
The Woodland Trust
Save Roald Dahl Woods from HS2

STOPPINGHS2

Anti HS2 – SOC (Save our Countryside)
Save the Colne Valley
Xandra Gilchrist