Yesterday I was guide for another two telescope visits. Unusually, they were afternoon visits. First I showed a sick boy and his mother around, and then a group of British amateur astronomers. The best bit was that after the amateurs finished seeing the Herschel, they were going to visit the MAGIC telescope. I hadn’t seen that one yet, so I tagged along. MAGIC stands for Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov…
Sunday night was the peak of the Persaid meteor shower, so the local astronomical amateurs were going to meet at a viewpoint ont he ridge of the island. I was keen to see the shooting stars and keen to get to know some more amateur astronomers, so I decided to go, even though it was an hour’s drive away. Then I remembered that I’d promised to take my son camping…
On Friday I showed another group of tourists around the William Herschel Telescope. Afterwards they were going on to GranTeCan, which is the huge telescope the Spanish are building at the Roque (see Thursday, July 26, 2007). I managed to tag along and finally see inside. I’ve seen a lot of telescopes, and I knew it was huge, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sheer size of the thing.This…
Although our garden is tiny, our balconies are large, and this year I decided to see if I could grow a little bit of organic veg in containers. For one thing, there’d be no food miles involved. My friends from Franceses gave me three pea plants. When we went on holiday, they were about a foot high. When we came back they were about four feet high, and caterpillars had…
My friends in Franceses needed some help translating at the Town Hall, so today we went. On the way there we saw this practice rescue. At least I assume it was a practice because that’s the coastguard cutter. I left Julio with Helen while Theresa drove me to the Town Hall. There we established that a) the official permission for them to build steps to the house entrance isn’t ready…
Life’s getting a little less frantic. Julio’s school term has ended and Farida’s better, so yesterday I took my son to see the friends at Franceses for the first time for almost a month. They’ve got a lot of re-wiring done, and they’re busy hacking up the floor to put in a damp-proof layer. While they were doing that, the weeds underneath the vines shot up, so after a lovely…