This summer is really coning on for The End Of Days. No rain at all for July, then a good bit of persistent drizzle on 3rd August but we're back to desertification for the 10 days since then. There is a hose-pipe ban for those who on the mains, but I believe it should apply to us for ther same reasons. If we lived in burbia, and water failed to come out of the taps, a national emergency would be…
In 1999, I was the Irish Node [director and sole-employee] of a European academic quango. We had an AGM in one venue or another, and for 1999 some bright spark suggested that the German node at Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ) in Heidelberg should host it. Because the Great European Total Solar eclipse was due to sweep over the continent on 11 August 1999. So, for immediately after the AGM,…
We last met Róisín Normanly BC Before Coronarama when she scooped and classified some 000s of beetles out of ponds as an undergraduate . She is nearly the youngest of The Blob's Women in Science list . No shame in transitory beetlemania; at a similar age 200 years earlier, Charles Darwin was an avid beetle collector, famously popping one in his mouth when a greater Coleopteran prize presented. Of…
“ Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had £20 a-year for his income, and spent £19 19/6, he would be happy, but that if he spent £20 1/- he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a…
We have a polytunnel. At 17m x 9m its footprint is quite a bit bigger than the 2-floor area of our house. At one time we had a straggly grapevine trained up a trellis inside the tunnel. A friend, who knows a thing or two about wine came to view the tunnel when it was new and the plastic was clear and clean. I asked him: if were were to propagate our vine and have a 17m run of plants suitably…
Back in my YouTube days [ie before I went cold YTurkey in Jan 2026], I went on a sub-jag watching, with fascinated horror, Adam "Beard Meats Food" Moran engaged in gluttonous food challenges usually against the clock. Restaurant will account it positive publicity to offer food for free IF the punter clears their enormous platter. 5kg of coleslaw, a 40oz steak with chips and trimmings, a gumboot…
I was at this gaahden paahty in England with a mission. Actually, of course, I went for free booze and sausage rolls but I found myself getting all Ancient Mariner "l ong grey beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stopp'st thou me " etc. on the poor wedding (anniversary) guests. I had to explain to anybody who couldn't escape [wheelchair, dodgy hip, emphysema, whatever] just how brilliant my pal…
The great Euro currency project is 25 years old and Der Mann has decided we need a new design on the banknotes . Which is kinda quixotic given how much change kaChing! has happened in the world of currency transactions. On the shuttle bus to Bristol Airport last week, for example, I sat behind two Australian backpackers who were settling up their debts [in UK£ AU$ and €€€] with a few swipes on…
When I was a teenager, I spent a tiny bit of time at sea on a working ship . The gig was finagled for me by an old boyfriend of my mother. Note the passive tense: I did essentially nothing to make this happen. Nowadays, there is a whole industry mapping out Gap Years for privileged youth so they can get into the socially preferred colleges and universities. One week as a supernumerary 'working'…
Third weekend in July, I was over in England for a Significant Anniversary . International travel can be a schlep, and I wasn't inclined to lease an executive chopper and land on my friend's lawn in time for cake and then zoom off to my next appointment. And that's how I came to spend 4 nights with The Boy and his family in and around Bath = Aquae Sulis . My father was very restless, and so not…
About 40 years ago, I was invited to upskill myself in the white-coat, real-science lab across the corridor from my office. I had been hired to teach population genetics because that _had_ been an important and edge-cutting area of genetics. Pop.Gen. was quite the doldrums in the early 80s, but someone had to teach it, and I was that person. The technology to look quite directly at variation in…
Born within the slipstream of our father’s and mother’s lives, we follow involuntarily in their wake . True dat! It's a sentence from early in My Father's Wake, how the Irish teach us to live, love and die (2017) by Kevin Toolis. Toolis was born and grew up in Edinburgh but Home was a modest storm-drubbed 3 room cottage on Achill Island, Co Mayo. He thus has cultural feet one planted on each side…
In April 1939, the self-proclaimed King Zog of Albania [L lifted from commons.wikimedia ] fled the country with the country's gold-reserves in his carry-on luggage. The power vacuum was filled by the Provisional Administrative Committee of Albania until an "army of liberation" arrived from Italy. The PACA issued a bulletin to its diplomats abroad including the advice . . . stop Listen regularly to…
I have, so, a camera, several cameras, but that does not make me a photographer. Dau.II otoh has a bit of an eye. She was down to the Déise in June, being handy. We seized the moment between chores to clamber over a headland that is only accessible for an hour each side of low tide. You can tel it's low tide because the tide mark is halfway up the rocks: Credits: Dau.II for the crisp picture; me…
Kick-sampling is a technique for assessing water quality in the wild. I've done some kick-sampling myself. Heck, I've taught kick-sampling. Almost the only time I ever used the Lidl middle-aisle fisherman's waders were for kick-sampling up to my knees in a stream. This year, for the first time, we're doing something different with our traditional hay-meadow: harvesting the seed to [potentially,…
Could be a mid-sized market town in Norfolk ? But no, it is rather a rant from me about the mysterious transformation whereby thinly slicing food quadruples the price paid by consumers. A couple of weeks ago, Dau.II foodie sans pareil had day release from Dublin to help her agéd parents with some domestic task. She has hank when she poured off the train at Plunkett Station and we had to repair…
Barry Dalby [ multiprev ] the cartographer [ EastWest Mapping ] lives close enough that, 20+years ago, I helped barrow the concrete for his kitchen extension. That's what neighbours do. In 2013, he published a 1:25,000 scale rambler's map was definitionally (50/25) 2 = 4x and possibly10x more informative that the equivalent 1:50,000 map put out by the salarymen at OSI Ordnance Survey Ireland. Back…
A month ago, by accident / in desperation, I tapped into a rich seam of books about math-for-real-life by Rob Eastaway. I enjoyed it, noted another dozen books in the seam and placed a reservation on his Much Ado About Numbers : Shakespeare's Mathematical Life and Times [2024]. For Eastaway, books are both his medium and his métier. For me, I package my copy into ~700 word Blobs. Nowadays, while…
I was writing about hay-rattle Rhinanthus minor a peculiarly desirable meadow flower parasitic on grasses. Digging a bit revealed that it was part of Family Orobanchaceae . Dang! that rings a bell I thought . . . but a distant one. The family name derives from the Greek ὄροβος (vetch, a legume) + ἄγχω (strangler). And that's the key to the family's success. Their roots invade the roots of grasses…
Friday 26 Jun 26 was International Day here & up the hill. Θ, my old roomie at The Institute, announced that she was bringing her research team away from the Mean Streets of SmallTown, Midlands . . . to get some fresh air and see some green fields. It was the end of a not-quite-record-breaking week of heat-wave and it was muggy hot in our kitchen. In prep for an alfresco tea-party I started…
We have, mainly through inattention, created a Traditional Hay Meadow . There is grass in there, even some Lolium perenne , perennial rye-grass. If Irish agronomists had their way, a following wind and infinite money, the island's pastures would be 100% rye-grass; because scientific studies have shown it a) responds well to nitrates b) promotes faster weight-gain in livestock than any other forage…
My Boy, The Engineer, who has worked in transport all his life, has internalised the NATO alphabet [ whc prev ] to ensure better comms over crackly, lossy, phone-line. That prevlink also hat-tips Clapham & Dwyer's Surrealist Alphabet [1936]: A for 'orses; B for mutton; C for th' Highlanders, D for ential . . . Also relevant acknowledgment of l33t-speak [ prev ] Meanwhile over on MeFi , someone was…
Karen Blixen had a farm in Aafrika; we have a farrm in the Irish Midlands. Insofar as we are farming, we are organic. We are not Certified Organic because we haven't found the energy to, or seen the benefits of, filling in the 12 page Form App21/15 from the Irish Organic Association or the 1 page Form ORG1/DAFM form from the DeptAg. All the successful Organic-at-scale farmers are chewing their…
We live quite remote, not Yukon remote, but enough that you don't want to run out of milk because driving to the nearest shop for more will double the cost per litre. Amenities like a cash-point, gas-station, or chinese-takeaway are much more remote. When we go visit Pat the Salt's old place in Tramore, it's different. The library, for one example, is so close you could hit it with a tennis-ball…
The years tick themselves off. Nine years ago, every Monday morning, I accompanied Pat the Salt, then 92y.o., to the Tramore Community Centre and Wheels-on-Wheels hub for sessions of The Heritage Club . The Big Room at the TCC looked out over a steep fall of trees and shrubs between Pond Road and Upper Branch Road. That woodland was making its +10-year transformation into the Lafcadio Hearn…