Seasonal ChillCome Late.

Today, for the first time since the previous Winter, I wore my Winter overcoat. Usually I bring that garment out of storage considerably earlier in the Autumn.

Pernicious Delays

The media frequently tell us about misdemeanors and acts of maladministration that are only investigated many years after they were first reported.

Complaints about maternity services in Shrewsbury seem to have been made at least eight years ago, but the problems have still not been completely addressed.

Perhaps we should investigate the training and selection of administrative staff, and also their employment contracts. Is it too hard to dismiss people ?

A reward for Antiquity

Last Saturday the butcher gave me a 10% discount for being ancient. While I doubted if  I deserved it, I didn't refuse - that would have been rude!!

A Floriforous November

Although we are now half way through November, there are still many flowers in the garden. Jasmine (white ordinary jasmine, not yet yellow Winter jasmine), campanula, gaillardia, fuchsia, zonal pelargoniums, dahlias, feverfew, cyclamen, and several others whose names escape me.  Five weeks tomorrow will be the shortest day so I hope for a Winter shorter than usual.

Election Weather

Will the weather affect the election result?

I think there may have been a tendency for good weather to favour the government, and bad weather the opposition. The Conservative's rather undeserved victory in 1959 followed the 'Indian Summer' of that October.

  Perhaps Mr.Johnson will be washed away by this Autumn's rain.

Quick Service

On Tuesday I went to the local post office to renew my passport. I supplied quite a small quantity of  information, surrendered my old passport and paid £90-90. (I wonder if the odd 90p buys food for the Home Office cat). Today, only three days later, my new passport arrived in the post.

My one regret is that, unlike the old one, this passport does not mention the European Union.

A Perverse Choice of Units

Earlier today a news broadcast included the claim that Britain has reserves of shale gas amounting to about thirteen billion cubic feet. That measurement is in several respects perverse.

The foot is an obsolete measure of length, and volume is an inconvenient measure for a quantity of gas.The volume of a gas depends on temperature and pressure, varying greatly with even quite modest changes in either, so any specification of volume should include a statement of temperature and pressure. The default values are 10⁵ pascals regarded as standard atmospheric pressure, and 0 degrees C, though it is unlikely that natural gas would be stored under those conditions.

Mass would be a more illuminating measure. A foot is about 0.3 metres so a cubic foot is about 27 litres, The molecular weight of methane is about 16 and gram molecular volume at standard temperature and pressure is about 22.4 litres, so a cubic foot of gas would contain about:
30*16/22.4 grams = about 21.4 grams.

For 13 billion cubic feet, multiply by 13 billion, and divide by a million to convert grams to tonnes, giving: 21.4*13000 = roughly 279 000 tonnes, not such a lot!

Forgotten Treasures

From time to time I go round the house, exploring each room in turn , looking in every cupboard, drawer and box to see what's in it. Each time I find something useful or interesting that I'd forgotten.

I'm in the middle of such an exploration now, and have already found my collection of spare shoe laces, and an old address book I stopped using about 40 years ago. The latter contains names I'd completely forgotten, including someone said to have died while laughing at the television news.

Unwelcome Plastic Bags

We are often bidden to avoid using plastic bags, and to pay for any we do use, yet plastic bags from charities often come through the letter box uninvited. We are bidden to fill them with unwanted clothing, but I guess that the great majority are just thrown away.

We are charged 5p for even small and very flimsy plastic bags for shopping. The charity bags are both larger and made of thicker material. I guess they use around 20 times as much material as the small supermarket bags. I suggest charities are charged one pound for every univited plastic bag they push through our letter boxes.

Charitable Parasites

Every week or two someone delivers a large plastic bag in which I'm bidden to put unwanted clothes. As I wear clothes until they disintegrate I never have a contribution, but I do note the large number of rather specialised charities begging for my discarded rags.

I think they are over specialised. There are many charities each devoted to a particular form of cancer. Finding out how to deal with cancer requires detailed knowledge of the genome and the immune system, so general research into those subjects should help the treatment of any form of cancer. Segregating researchers into separate compartments is likely to produce a wasteful duplication of efforts. It will also increase the number of administrators and publicists, the bureaucrats running the charities without making any direct contribution to the well being of those the charities are supposed to help.

Expensive String

I've just paid £3-95 for a pair of quite ordinary shoelaces.

I remember that in the mid 1950's I bought a new pair of shoes for not much more than that - about £4 10/-

I'm considering using ordinary string in future!

Planning a Family

When I was achild my parents liked to tell me how they'd bought the house we lived in just before they married. I was particularly delighted to hear how, taking possession of the house before there was any furniture, they'd celebrated by eating fish and chips sitting on the floor.

I remember that story when I hear talk of homeless families. If only people woukd plan as my parents did, there'd be no homeless families.