We’re giving our son’s bedroom a makeover. It’s had the same furniture, light-fitting, walls and curtains since we moved in. Since he was six at the time, and is now fourteen, obviously his tastes have changed since then. He doesn’t want a clown light-fitting any more! So in the past week, we’ve worked our way through his bookshelf, and given away two carrier bags of books he’s grown out of…
As usual, I seem to be drowning in small-but-urgent things to do. My friends in the north of the island have been adopted by an abandoned kitten. This is not much of a problem, except that a) they’d just booked a holiday and b) there’s no catching the kitten to take it to the cattery and c) the neighbours are away too. So it’s cancel the holiday (and they’re exhausted),…
Yesterday was a great day. In the morning I did my usual guiding job around Grantecan. It’s particularly nice to show people around at the weekend. Since there’s no engineering work going on, the duty engineer has time to do things like move the telescope. Yesterday, he took the brakes off in azimuth (the bit that goes round like a merry-go-round) and asked who wanted to move over 400 tonnes…
La Palma now has its own brewery, in Los Llanos, brewing Garimba beer. Garimba is Palmeran slang for a beer. It’s a very mild tasting beer, flavoured with lupins rather than hops, and I really liked it.
Los Cancajos beach has passed the Blue Flag standard for the tenth year running. I checked with Wikipedia. “Compliance with Blue Flag criteria requires adherence to strict water quality standards, safety standards, environmental education and information, the provision of services and general environmental management criteria, set by the Foundation for Environmental Education.” I’ve got used to having a lovely, clean beach on the doorstep. This is a reminder that I…
Remember those hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia? Parts of the media yelled for the top of their lungs that this “proved” climate change was all a hoax. The Independent Climate Change Email Review just reported: “We find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it,” it says. “We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station…