When the Crotchety Kid was just nine or ten years old one of his teachers was a woman not so young in years but with all the best attributes of youth in her manner. There was a timeless beauty in her face and the fresh warmth of her personality has never been matched in all the…Read more Cwlwm
Month: May 2018
Future Strings
Crotchety Man has been bingeing on prog rock recently so I thought it was time for something rather different. As luck would have it my Release Radar this week included an enchanting track called Listen to the Grass Grow by Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita. Now, I used a photo of Catrin Finch in an…Read more Future Strings
Far Skies Deep Time
When you look up into a clear night sky the more distant the star the farther back in time you are seeing it. This is a simple consequence of the finite speed of light but it has profound implications for astronomy. By studying far away galaxies we can look back almost to the dawn of…Read more Far Skies Deep Time
The Road of Bones
The lowest recorded temperature (-67.7 °C) in any permanently inhabited place on Earth was recorded at Oymyakon (Оймяко́н) in 1933 in eastern Siberia. In December and January the average daily temperature there is around -45 °C and the village lies deep within the permafrost region. Building roads in this frozen and mountainous part of the…Read more The Road of Bones
Proud Mary
Yesterday the sun was out, the sky was clear and the birds were singing. Today, the forecasters assure us, will be just as nice. And tomorrow is likely to be the warmest Spring Bank Holiday there has ever been. Feeling unusually full of life the Crotchety Couple set about weeding the garden and cleaning the…Read more Proud Mary
