friday night

I’m glad I dragged the telescope out tonight. Stars everywhere were quickly ignored for the moons of Jupiter. Another planet, another planets moons. After a while I changed the eyepiece to pick out the bands; its storms. Orion grabbed me next, with her nebulae of baby stars. At this stage it was inevitable that I had to have a try at andromeda. It was just a smudge, I always expect it to be more. Eventually it begins to sink in, it can never fully sink in, that it is the furthest that can be seen with the naked eye. That little smudge is a collection of billions of stars, a number too big to comprehend at a distance too far to grasp.

 

server downtime

Over five thousand written comments, over thirty thousand pieces of numerical data, and over six hundred merge fields.  Over the coming days all these strings must mesh together seamlessly to create the school reports. There will be seams, there will probably be tears (rips), and maybe even tears (me crying).  The sever that handles all this magic coughed and spluttered today.  I had been working for over half an hour on getting all the merge fields working properly on one particular report when a colleague bust into the office dramatically, “The sever is down!”  Straight away I saved my work.  No error messages popped up.  It seems that it was still working away but not taking any new incoming connections.  I think I know how it feels.  I turned it off and on again, but it still remained stubborn.  Our ICT technician stepped in and tried his technical wizardry.  He turned it off and on again, but it still did not work.  With all our sophisticated options exhausted, we rang the IT gods that govern the system.  I am not joking; they turned it off and then on again and it worked.  I left the server up time/down time, and the merge fields and data.  I went back to teaching until the end of the day when I ran out into the rain to get the climbers all filled into taxis and on their way to the wall.

A long drive through the rain and puddles found me home and data-less.  There is nothing better to shake off the merge fields and spreadsheets than chopping wood for the fire. There is the slow gentle search through the wood for easily split blocks for kindling, then there is the chopping that moves the arms and shifts the knots from a day spent in front of a computer.  The chickens and cats were then fed and watered.  The chickens are still stoically laying their one egg each ever day.  No one has pointed to them that it is not always normal to carry on through the heart of the winter darkness.  I can’t say it was totally relaxing, but it was strangely comforting to sit with the little man before he went to bed.  Ben Howard was blasting away over the crackling of the growing fire.  The little man sat beside me with his head nearly inside a box of blocks.  Periodically he held up a block to me with a look that said, “Look, look at that! That’s a block, wow!”  I agreed and carried on with a set of papers and a red pen ticking and scribbling away.  There are still about twenty four empty spaces in that database.

 

soil and soul

The point is that we’re all sleepwalkers…..Powerful forces construct social reality – parenting, schooling, television, advertising, dress code, corporate ethos, military drill. They’re all…variations on hypnosis. Mostly we walk around in a semi-trance. We want what we’re conditioned to want. We’re like the hypnotised subject who happily eats an onion thinking it to be an apple. We only believe the onion’s an apple… because we’ve built a mutually enforcing sense of reality with one another. This is known as consensual reality, or consensus trance reality. It’s what makes a football result seem important, what drives fashion, and causes the day to be spoiled by make-believe tragedy in a soap opera. The implication is that we’re all living a dream, a myth, and that if we don’t persist and insist on what C. G. Jung called ‘individuation’ – if we don’t start living our own dream and being authentic to our own deepest calling – then life itself will be sucked away by the energy vampires of consciousness.

From Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh.  I’m only half way through the book but it has already got my head filled and pondering.  It is about people, religion, poetry and our place in this world.  Quite a good read so far.

 

The Little Man’s Star

What do you see my little man?
Is your mind filled with Iggle Piggle and Macca Pacca?
What captures your eye and lifts your soul?
What earthly things are filling up your heart and head?

I see your mother has you captivated.
You crawl and clamber over her in the evening by the stove,
Your own personal guardian and womb.
You’re anchored to her in this sea of life.

What I do sometimes grabs your attention,
A little hawk over my shoulder as I light the fire.
Or, with your neck stretched, you are nearly inside the clock,
As I oil the old brass cogs and pins.

The television is the demon in the house.
I worry that it tears you away from the real world.
It is enchanting enough to cast its spell,
And calm the hunger as we cook and tidy around you.

Last night your mother carried you out of the car.
Opening the front door I beckoned you both in from the winter night.
Your eyes clawed for our attention as you pointed to a bright star and curiously cooed.
If these are the things that pull at you, I think you will be alright.

 

the wolf moon weekend

It’s nearly a full moon and it’s very late when a friend from work and I arrive at the cottage.  The steep walk into the hills warms us as we chat.  I suggest that we can switch off our head-torches as the moon is bright enough. Then, as if scripted, my foot slips on a rock and I stumble to recover my footing.

The fire is lit as a matter of priority as the old stone walls are icy cold and ready to suck the heat into themselves.  After the fire has picked itself up, we have settled ourselves down for an evening of sipping wine and talking nonsense.  When he is back in the civilised world of electricity and DVDs, my friend is working his way through box sets of Supernatural.  It has not escaped us both that our situation, remote and on the edge of nowhere, is the perfect setting for such horror stories.  I tell him the story of the big cats that were spotted in the neighbouring valley.  How they might have been caught on camera and how they were constantly being rumoured about among the farmers until the day two separate sightings were reported by hikers.  These sightings prompted the police to have a look about the area, but the monster cats could not be found. The chance of a puma attack is unlikely and irrational, with this in mind the glow of the full moon on the moor outside still sends our minds thinking of things such monsters and of werewolves.  We laugh, but of course, such laughter and over confidence is exactly the setting for the attacks in horror stories.  Eventually the witching hour passes, then another hour or two, before we load the final shovel of coal on the fire and let it warm us as we drift off to sleep.

annalong valley in winter sunlight

Amongst days of rain, wind and storms, we wake to find a rare clear blue sky.  Our route for the day takes us in a large circle around a big valley in the Mourne Mountains.  The highlight, half way through the route, is a scramble up a gully called the Devil’s Coachroad.  It is a scramble over scree until it takes us to the dizzy summit.  The sky stayed clear and the air stayed still and cool for the whole walk.  It was a refreshing first walk in the hills for the New Year; which has forced me to include extra resolutions to my list:

• To spend more time looking at the world around me; try to let my soul soak it up.
• To make more opportunities to find myself scrambling to the tops of mountains: out of breath with hands full of crumbling granite and sweat.
• To spend more time with friends by the fireside; talking about anything and everything deep into the night.

 the devil’s coachroad – the gully through the middle of Slieve Beg

in the devil’s coachroad

the annalong valley as the sun hangs low

Binnian, Lamagan, Cove and Beg

a slow stream as the sun sets

the cottage behind us during the descent

We did not bump into old Nic on his road.  We did not get attacked by big cats or the werewolves of the Mournes.  When we eventually found ourselves heading down the hill with the cottage to our backs, the full moon (January’s Wolf Moon in the Medieval Calender) made another visit to us as it began to rise with a warming deep orange colour.  It was difficult, but we resisted the temptation to begin to howl.

wolf moon rising

 

seeing stars

I hate crossword puzzles, I really hate them passionately. I think my awfull speling could be partley to blame. This does not mean I do not like puzzles.

This morning I spotted an astronomy/navigation puzzle that got me thinking. The puzzle is from Tristan Gooley, who wrote an excellent book that has loaded me up with intresting observations to take with me when out with groups on the hills. I had an idea when I first read it but had to save it to later when I could spend more time on it. So now, here it is; a lovely nerdy puzzle.

The picture is a star trail picture that can be used to find out

1 – Which hemisphere was the picture taken in?

2 – At what latitude was the location?

3 – How long was the exposure (I threw this question in myself as I was curious)?

4 – In which direction was the picture taken?

The first challenge was relatively straight forward as each line on the picture represents a star and looking at them for a while I recognised none of the constellations that we see spinning around the pole star, which points to North here in the Northern Hemisphere.

I don’t recognise any of these star patterns.

So, I assumed the image was taken in the Southern Hemisphere, with the stars spinning around the south pole.

The latitude, I confess, I did not try and figure out as it said it in further down in the puzzles webpage and unfortunately I read it and spoilt that part of the conundrum.

The exposure length was a wee bit trickier and required measuring the length from the south pole (below the horizon) and the length of the star trail. Along with some GCSE maths this gave me the angle the stars had moved through during the length of time over which the picture was taken. The answer was four degrees.

If we assume that it takes 24 hours for the stars to turn around 360° (actually it is us that is turning) then that works out to be four minute per degree, or sixteen minutes for four degrees. I would not be surprised if I was a degree or so out and I think the camera exposure could be between twelve and twenty minutes.

The exact direction that the camera was pointing took a little longer to figure out (and Stellarium).

Marking the stars….

….then removing the image…

top half from the picture/bottom half Stellarium

…left me with an image I could use with Stellarium to try and match up some patterns.

top half from the picture/bottom half Stellarium

These are not constellations I recognise, but making up some random lines between them helps to see that they are a match.

top half from the picture/bottom half Stellarium

This means the picture was taken pointing at 160°.

Nice! Far nicer that a crossword puzzle.

 

frozen library books

I drove home as the sun set in a beautiful azure sky.  I got changed straight away to cycle into the village and return some books.  The beauty had turned into a beast; a dark grim sky with freezing rain.  I headed on anyway with the books well sealed up in the panniers. With frozen hands I eventually got to the library to find it shut, even though I had checked the times before I left the house.  The sign in the window said it was closed due to short staff.  I would have thought they could have done something with stools or step ladders.  *sigh*

 

the new year’s revolution

I hate the fact that I am actually doing this. I hate the fact that I am starting exercise at this time of year. It is so clichéd that it feels like it is doomed. It’s something we all seem to do and something we all seem to fail at. Today it began with a run in the rain; the wind and the rain. It was not an adventurous route; it was a run with an about turn and a run back. The country roads were little streams to slosh through as the wind turned my thighs a slapped scarlet.

I tried to use the run to wash away all the nonsense from my mind. I let myself think of random things. I would love to say that I pondered on how the grey washed sky touched my soul, or how that the occasional bird bursting from the hedgerow inspired me to think about life in all its glory. The reality was that things like running under the cracking power lines send my mind off on tangents about coronal discharge and noise limitations.

After the run I took myself into town for some chores. It was the last day of my Christmas holidays and so I celebrated. I took a seat in a coffee shop with a muffin, black coffee and a good book. I read then watched through the window and oscillated through these two options. There were still chores to be done and they required the shops to be open; the butchers and pet shop. I knew this but refused to look at the time, instead I relied on watching the changing character of the street. I did not want to be a slave to the clock by giving myself another twenty of fifteen minutes, that’s not relaxing at all. Eventually I unpeeled myself from the seat and headed off in time for the butchers but not in time for the pet shop. The new goldfish will have to wait.

New year’s resolutions (inspired by scribbles, jots and musings):

Exercise more do exercise
Walk
Run
Climb
Breath
Spend more time having laughs with the little man
Go on more walks with the lovely Sharon and the little man
Watch less tv dvd box sets
Read more
Read more poetry
Live more poetry
Stand and look at the stars more
Stand and look at the moon more
Try not to go mad by looking at the moon

Last night’s waxing moon through the little man’s sky light.

 

midwinter geekness

This is boxing day for us.  Yesterday was the actual boxing day, but we had two days of Christmas in a row; two days of unwrapping and the eating of grand festive meals.  Today we lazed about, cleaned up a bit, and relaxed for a time.  I sat for a few minutes in front of the bees.  This is something I have not done in quite a while as the bees have been quite inactive.  Today was mild enough to prompt one of the hives into some action.  Some foragers were heading back and forth, probably for water.  The other hive was all quiet and not bold enough to venture out into the winter.

The chickens got curious when as they watched me set up my tripod and take pictures of the cottage.  I took pictures from the front garden in a full circle.  After that I threw myself into the world of panoramic software to try and stitch them all together.  My head spun (a full 360 degrees) with all options and strange nomenclature of manipulating images on the computer.

Eventually I got it to work with the cottage sliced in two at either end of a full circle image.  Then I had to dig deep into the unknown again to turn the clouds transparent.  There was an intended purpose to all of this, several actually.  For a long time I have wanted to have the cottage background as the backdrop to the software I use very often on the computer; Stellarium.  The other reason for facing the frustration was that I had never done it before and saw it as a challenge.

Eventually the clouds were removed and it was dropped into stellarium to give a proper setting for the sun, moon and stars.

stellarium

Orion rising out of our neighbour’s garage.

The sun rising over the apiary.

To be honest, the north, south, east and west, are not aligned properly.  Also, the ground is a little high.  I can live with these things for a few days; my geekness will only go so far.

 

the shortest day

We did not mark the solstice by getting up before dawn and watching the sun roll slowly out of the ground. We did not spend the night without electricity and lit only by candle. Instead we celebrated by heading to the big city and pottered about among the pulse and throb of Christmas. We did find ourselves having a leisurely lunch in the cathedral quarter among office workers. They were obviously on a Christmas lunch and very much full of festive cheer. They were merry and we merrily dined beside them and fed off their laughter and joy (and fumes maybe?). However, I did insist on connecting with the solstice somehow; by reading, out loud, chapter one of ‘Findings’ by Kathleen Jamie, on the drive from culchie land into the big city. It is a chapter all about the solstice, darkens and Maes Howe.

On the way home I was reminded about the significance that is carried to us by places like Maes Howe. I was reminded of this as we passed a grand old hill near to us and our journey home. This hill/mountain has a mound on its summit so obvious that it can just be seen by its silhouette against the winter night sky. In the daytime it stands out like a sore thumb; a lump of a thing that sits half molded into the earth and half folded into time itself. Yet, it has never been surveyed or excavated. I feel the need to share this observation with the lovely Sharon. Instantly she retorts that I always say this as we drive past. Slightly wounded by this harsh observation of my own dotting personality I reply in the only way I can, “it’s always true.”

 

this is going to be a long night

I once heard a sermon about Christmas which began with the overhearing of a conversation. The conversation was between two shoppers who happened to see a nativity scene in a shop window, “look, they try and put religion into everything these days.” The congregation laughed because obviously the shoppers had got it wrong and possibly missed the true meaning of Christmas. I wanted to throw up my hand and call out, “but, hang on!” The lovely Sharon tells me that this is not the done thing to do in church.

It is true that Christmas has been warped, twisted and crushed by consumerism. However, there is an even older meaning to what is now Christmas. Before Christianity, even before the paganism that Christianity shone a light on; there was a Christmas of sorts. All over Northern Europe there are old stones from a time before bronze and iron. Old stones placed in specific places to time out the year. Close to the cottage here, there is such a set of stones. Thousands of years ago the local people would have stood at the lower standing stone and stared up at the stone on the horizon and waited. They would have waited for the sunrise and on the solstice, tomorrow morning; they would have seen the sun rise at the stone on the edge of the hill. This was cause for celebration, for it marked the turning of the winter. From then on, the sun would begin to claw back at the dark nights, a little at a time. It was a time to break the strict rationing of resources and eat well. It was a time for families to gather together and share stories, laugh, sing and dance at firesides.

Winter Solstice by Henrik Djarv

Merry solstice everyone.

 

the cupboard was bare

Resources are low here at the cottage. Most of the honey disappeared soon after it was jarred. The blackcurrant jam was steadily given away to friends before most of the rest of it was sold; it has been reduced from ninety jars to only about ten. When we sat down last night to see what was left that can be made into little hampers for Christmas presents. The intention was to make up a little selection of five jars in each hamper. When we looked at what was left we could only scrounge together two. The limiting factors were the crab apple jelly and the redcurrant jelly.

Only two hampers seems disappointing, but it simply means that the two people who receive them should feel all the more special.  Especially as it took two kilos of crab apples and a lot of time to make those two tiny jars.  I don’t think I’ll try and make crab apple jelly again.

 

a brief history of santa

a brief history of santa

 

frozen stars

All is frozen.  The chickens are bunched together as close as they can on their perch in the shed.  The bees are clustered in a tight ball and are slowly eating their way through their winter stores, their finite gamble of the summer’s hard graft.  Around these pockets of warmth and life, all is frozen.  The ground around the cottage is a sheet of icy glass, beyond that; frozen earth.  Tonight I took a little time to look at the winter sky.  The moon is waning at the moment.  This means that it is hidden away on the other side of the world, and it means the sky is dark and the stars are out.  Orion dominates the winter sky with Taurus.  Cygnus the swan is still there but we forget about her when Orion arrives.  Earlier tonight we fought our way around the town and eventually left it as we spotted Venus and Jupiter as the only lights in the sky.  Tonight Jupiter was still hanging about, a dedicated planet, with her moons visible with the help of binoculars.  The Pleiades were a joy and the red of aldebaran was strangely warming. Not warming enough to linger though, houses are warm in these dark winter nights.

 

aggressive attack

Friday night Christmas dinner with the lovely Sharon’s work.  A massive amounts of food was consumed, it feels like enough to last me till Monday.  A cold night and a frozen dawn.  Saturday pancakes are even nicer when shared with visiting family.

A little chess was played between my nephew and I after breakfast and before a snow ball fight.  The little man joined in the chess and the game was then forfeited to him.  Neither of us could find a way to defend against the little man’s aggressive attack.  Little man’s choo choo train to B3 taking white’s bishop, pawn and knight, and also black’s queen.  I had never seen anything like it.  Such a creative flare that even a Grand Master would never think of.

 

Sir, this I’m board with this…

I will be the first to admit that the pastoral side of teaching is not always my strong point.  I see myself more as the geek than the caring kind.  As a result, form periods are always an issue for me.  There are resources provided in abundance, it’s just that they are not always appropriate.  Recently we had some time dedicated to bullying.  We had a word search on bullying.  These are intelligent sixteen year olds, so I had to admit (in a sarcastic voice) how nothing can stop bullying like a word search.  Instead I told them a story about a cat, our little cat.  She was destined to be put down due to her tendency to urinate everywhere.  This seemed a little bit harsh in my eyes and we asked the vet if we could take her home for a while to see if she got on with our own cat.  Of course she didn’t, cats tend to be grumpy with each other at the best of times.  We kept her anyway and discovered that she did not pee everywhere as expected.  In fact she was perfect, apart from a bit of anxiety.  It turns out that she used to be the bottom of the pecking order in a house full of cats.  She must have lived in permanent fear from bullying, scared to even venture anywhere even for the toilet.  From that story I swiftly moved on to the social structure of baboon groups.  The baboons took it all to a new level of geekness but eventually some sort of anti bullying message hopefully got through.

For other ideas for form periods I approached the lovely Sharon.  Being a year head, she is a little more experienced in all things pastoral.  To be honest I did not actually approach her, it was more a curiosity as to why we were going to charity shops looking for board games.  She revealed to me that they were to encourage bonding and socialising in a constructive way during form period.  Genius!

Today I tried it out with brilliant results.  We had fun, we played games.  One group discovered the ancient game of ‘Go’.  This two player game ended up with two teams of spectators seemingly engrossed in the game.  Another group threw themselves into scrabble while yet another group asked me, “what is Pictionary?”  Seriously!  Minutes later we were all shouting, “monkey?” “Cage?” “Monkey in a box?” “Monkey in a cage?”

Board games are good.  How often do we have the time to play board games, to get together with friends and be a little challenged while having fun?  I will, of course, never admit to the lovely Sharon how amazing her idea was.  Don’t worry, she does not seem to read this blog very often as apparently it is enough just to have to listen to me, but I will steal her idea and run with it.  I have drawn up my own little list of board games and will soon begin trawling the charity shops.

 

the gory details

I really did not want to write about it, but so many people were asking.  Curious townies perhaps?  So, this is it, this is how the chicken passed on…..

It was a dark and wild night with the wind howling like a banshee.  The innocent chickens were all in the shed, in their warming cluster.  I closed and locked the hatch, they need not be part of what happened next.  I approached the solitary confinement coop and quietly, gently, opened the hatch to find her, the egg eater, guiltily sitting in the wood chippings.  I lifted her as slowly as possible without shining my head torch in her eyes.  She was so warm and so quiet that we both knew she had given up, resigned herself to the inevitable.  She had accepted her fate and I hope she accepted my role in it.  At that exact moment all hell broke loose in the chicken shed.  The others knew what was happening and wanted to be out.  So I let them all out to watch.  They all hopped out in time to see the cloud arrive down.  I set her on the cloud with a little yogurt and chopped apple to see her through the journey, it was her favourite (actually, maybe second favourite after her own eggs). The chickens and I just watched with tears in our eyes as she moved up into the winter sky and off to chicken heaven.  Not a word was spoken between any of us after that.  They silently shuffled back into the shed and I closed the hatch before pausing and looking up into the air.  I don’t know how long I paused and thought about her.  No matter how long, it could never be long enough to honour her.

 

it is done

It has been done. I did not like it, but it had to be.

 

deck the halls

 

Not many people drove past us, but the ones that did saw three people trimming the winter hedgerows.  One of the three of us was attached to my back in his rucksack.  The two of us that were not reclining or being chauffeured along were carrying buckets.  We were carrying buckets full of holly.  Our long walk with buckets full of free Christmas decorations was eventually cut short as the sun began to set and a cold wind picked up.  The daylight is so short these days, the winter solstice must only be days away.  We can see why holly was used as decoration in times past.  Bringing the vibrant green into the home is a reminder of the potential of spring.  Although, on our dander we did find a random hint of spring.  Not the real spring, just some random bounce in response to the strange warmth of November; we spotted a wild strawberry flowering.

 

red alert

red alert