Spaced out

I love where we live.  We are fortunate in this part of Oxfordshire to have the amenities of a market-town on hand (shops, library, schools, pubs, takeaways, restaurants, museum, football team, churches, health centre, leisure centre, children's groups, social groups etc) or town/city facilities close enough by (hospital, cinema, arts centre, train stations). Yet within 5 minutes walk we're on footpaths that meander through farmers' fields, and in 5 minutes drive we can be on the lovely ancient Ridgeway (http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ridgeway/).  To my mind it's the best of both worlds.

Yesterday we visited the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories for their Space Open Day to learn about other worlds! (http://www.stfc.ac.uk/RALSpace/Default.aspx).  This is only 15 minutes drive away, and was a free event - woohoo, something to fill another day in the school holidays (which by now are dragging on, for both chidren and parents...).

We arrived late, having picked up a teenage friend of my daughter's who took an age to collect her things to be ready to go.  I don't remember being that bad at that age, but memory plays tricks on you, I'm sure.  So we got badged up, had the health and safety talk, and joined our allocated group in the 'Mars Robotics' building.

I'm not good with science.  I've not been able to get my head around it since Mrs (battleaxe) Carruthers (maths teacher at the Convent school I attended in the late 1970s).  If you weren't good at maths you didn't do physics - that's how it was back then - and I wasn't good at maths...  'Mrs Carruthers, I don't understand' 'You don't need to understand it, JUST DO IT' she barked.  Full stop.

So although the things they told us during the visit made sense (in context) as soon as I left the various buildings the normal soundtrack to my life returned and wiped clean the interesting information I'd just been told about electrons, positrons or whatever-trons.  The same thing happened a couple of years ago when we visited the Diamond Light Synchatron (another tron!).  (http://www.diamond.ac.uk/).  But that's another story.

Within the Mars Robotics building is a central quadrangle, which, un/surprisingly, has been filled with rocks and earth to resemble the surface of Mars and enable realistic testing of the robots to be done in the development process.  Unfortunately they didn't demonstrate any of the robots in action, but the roving photographer took a photograph of our group 'on Mars' with the robot vehicle.

The soil and rocks had come from Tubney Wood Quarry ( http://www.hills-group.co.uk/consult/tubney-wood.html), a local site, so it seems that Mars is closer to home than you would think.  They also test the robots in a desert in Chile.  So I learned something then.

The next session was light science - as in the science of light (doh) - lasers, and also much more talk of electrons and charged particles.  They've a lot of interns and students and they were all very enthusiastic to communicate either what they were doing or what the equipment on display did.  A nice young man (!) started to explain something to me, but I had to stop him part way through with 'I'm sorry, you lost me at electron'.

The children had a lovely time here, Phoebe, under careful instructions, became positively charged using the Vandergraph Generator (I thought that was a psychodelic band from the 60s!), and her hair stood on end - to the general amusement/satisfaction of the gathered group.  She was also very taken with the lasers and defraction lenses.  Tom had fun trying to move a laser beam through a maze, discharging the electrons from a plasma ball (?), and racing a hydrogen powered toy car.

I was interested to see the old technology - they had an IBM 360 computer - the size of my car, which was the state of the art when installed in 1969, and had the equivalent computing power of the RAM of a modern day printer.

The final session was space based.  Phoebe and her friend spent time learning about geology with rock samples, and we all had fun with the UV camera and ice-cubes!  This was to demonstrate how the scientists look into deep space to find things hidden to other telescopes.  The solar flare man had 3D glasses for us to try and we missed out on making bracelets with special UV detector beads that change colour in the sun and indicate when it's necessary to put sun screen on.  (These are available on the internet we were informed later, so we may have to have a hunt for those).

The final 'wrap up' session had us in the lecture theater with all 10 groups gathered together to give feedback (by way of handsets you pressed a button for to answer the questions on screen).  The lady in charge had her assistant pouring liquid nitrogen onto a small disc - thereby making a smaller magnet levitate.  You could have a closer look at the end of the session, as it was very small to see in a lecture theater, but it was magic the way the magnet hovered, the polarity reversed, the dry ice swirling around it mysteriously....

She said this was the most exciting thing about working at RAL.  They'd discovered this effect of this super-conductor in the 1980s, and it had initially been discovered in 1919, but, she enthused, THEY DON'T KNOW HOW IT DOES IT.  I love to see someone so animated, so enthusiastic and passionate about what they do.  Life affirming, and still more to explore - out there, and closer to home.  The future, it seems, is science.

See ya!  Kat

Driving me mad!

I'm not a good passenger.

I flinch and flutter and have to sit on my hands to disguise my unease at the other driver's manoeuvres.  I read the road and have braked before they brake. The red brake lights in front of us flash 'danger' and I'm adrenalined up, ready for flight or fight, which is not a good feeling in a confined space (the passenger seat) and may result in a few squeaks or eeks from me when the driver responds to prevailing conditions a smidge later than I would.

Or rather they appear to respond to the situation later than I would have because they are usually driving at a speed higher than I would choose to travel at, so in effect they arrive at the situation sooner than I would have if I were driving.  I drive more slowly, cautiously, to give myself a safety cushion, and I'm not at all comfortable when I'm not in charge.  Apologies to all concerned.

I've done my share of driving this weekend, and we've covered a good distance.  Firstly on Friday night a quick trip up the M40, M42, M6 & M54 to visit friends just outside of Shrewsbury.  On Saturday we then left Shrewsbury to head to Tywyn in Wales for the annual Race the Train event which my husband has been running in for the last 15 years, and this year celebrated its' 30th anniversary.

Here's the train..

2nd train on Rotary Race on Talyllyn line

You can check out the website here:  http://www.racethetrain.com/event-description.html

The runners have heard the legend and run to try to beat the train back to Tywyn - two main distances, 10k and 20k (7 miles and 14 miles - just over a half-marathon).  The key seems to be that you're racing the train, and not the other runners, which gives this race its unique atmosphere.  Also, the terrain is a challenge in itself, (think Welsh valleys and hillside sheep), and this year the weather did its utmost to throw a spanner in it.

So, here's an idea of terrain...

sheep running alongside the moving train - runners in the bottom of the field

back in town/Tywyn the race traditionally starts with a toot from the engine...

And then the weather set in...

It's quite difficult to get good shots from a moving train carriage.

The passengers are very vocal in their encouragement of the runners, and the runners mostly respond positively to the cheery banter, but there are some of them for whom the race is just too much...

this is how close you can get to the train before it leaves you behind to re-evaluate your fitness levels/tactics/shoe choice

Whilst it's fun to ride the train and come up with witty lines such as 'not far now', or 'nearly there' and 'run faster', the drawback to having a husband who is experienced in the event and pretty quick is that we don't actually see him....  Never mind, his time this year 1:47:00.  The train came in 1:48:15.  He beat it.  Positioned around 175 out of 935 who completed the course.  And that's not bad, well done him.

Needless to say we're all a bit tired and emotional from the weekend, so I'll stop here and try to write more during the week.

TTFN! Kat  :)

Things that go bump in the night...

... the thump woke us both up.  I looked at my bedside clock.  The digital readout said 05:11.  Great.  What was that? I thought.  He went downstairs to investigate.  The dog remained silent.  Some guard-dog he turned out to be.  On his return he said the mirror had fallen off the wall and onto the sofa below.  It didn't appear to be broken, so it could wait until morning.  An hour later the alarm clock went off, and it was time for him to start the day.  Groggy, but not from alcohol, I turned over and dozed a little longer until it really was time to get up....

No.  Not the start of my latest American detective novel. This actually happened last night/this morning.  Luckily the mirror didn't break, as the sofa below had cushioned its fall, but it could have been very bad. It's a huge mirror.  Quite simple and modern in style, and can hang either way - full length it's probably 1m75cm by 60-70cm? and is surrounded by a maple frame which is very wide, say 15cm all round - so total size something like 2m x 90cm or so maybe, I suppose I should measure it, but hey-ho. It's big, and something that big falling off the wall in the middle of the night is a bit alarming, to say the least....

On closer inspection it appears that the two picture hooks it was hanging by(!) had, over time (quite some time, it's been in the same place for 6 years...), stretched, so they didn't point upwards any longer.  Hence the weight of the mirror, combined with the pounding the sofa takes with children bouncing on it, making the mirror rattle, and my nerves jangle, had accumulated the effect so that this event happened when it happened.

I've added another picture hook to the wall, and re-positioned the others and re-hung the mirror, and so far so good.  Watch this space, as they say.

Last month we had a couple of birds fly into the kitchen window.  It happens.  And when it does, it's a split second thing, the bang, the peripheral vision, the wait for everything to be allright.... And then the inspection below the kitchen window when after some time nothing happens, and you start to doubt yourself, to doubt your hearing, your periphal vision, your mind playing tricks again...  And you go outside to see is there a poor dazed bird lying there?  And there was.

dazed and confused ... I know how it feels!

So there was this poor juvenile thrush, clinging to the potted courgettes I'm growing below my kitchen window.  And there in the pot next to it was it's poor dead friend.  Must have broken its neck on landing badly.  Were they fighting over territory, or both avoiding a predator? We'll never know. My Mum shooed it away, and disposed of the body of the other one.  All part of life's rich tapestry...

Night night.  Kat.