The 28th of December is Holy Innocents’ Day, which commemorates the massacre of the innocents by Herod in Matthew’s gospel (although according to Wikipedia, it’s probably not a historical event). In Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, it’s the Spanish equivalent of April Fool’s Day. For example, one year I told my husband that the police had been around asking whether he’d been jogging in the nude. Now my husband does go…
Tall Ships in Santa Cruz for Christmas
This year the tall ships will be meeting in the port of Santa Cruz de la Palma for Christmas again. It looks as though there will be fewer ships than usual, because of the bad weather we’ve had lately. But there’ll be the usual flea market from 9:30 to 6 pm, the opportunity to visit some of the ships from 10:00 to 12:30, and live music from 10:30 to 6…
The solar system in my living room
Last month I made a (roughly) scale model solar system ready for a group of school kids visiting the telescopes – and then the visit got cancelled by bad weather. Ah well, sooner or later it’ll get used. Here at last is a photo of it. The sun is far too small – it should be about 10 x larger. And then, anticlockwise from the sun, we have marbles for…
The Tsunami Risk
You may remember the fuss in 2001 when two geologists, Steven Ward and Simon Day, announced their theory that the west side of the island of La Palma would collapse one day, creating a mega-tsunami that would cross the entire Atlantic and still be anything up to 25 metres high when it hit New York, and indeed everything from Newfoundland in Canada to Recife in Brazil. These days, almost all…
Rainbows
We’ve had unusually wet weather for the last ten days. There’s nothing odd about the odd winter storm, although I swear they’re windier than they used to be. What is unusual is having three of them in ten days. So I’m sorry if you’re having a soggy holiday. The rain tends to blow in and out pretty quickly, so I suggest that you at least enjoy the rainbows.
My story’s up!
My story “Some Day My Prince Will Go” is up at Daily Science Fiction. Presumably it will rotate off the front page at the end of the day, but it should still be int he archives at http://dailysciencefiction.com/story/some-day-my-prince-will-go.