No Work For Diana Today,

so a Sunday roast it is then,

 starting with a lamb kebab,

 just finishing the pre meal sherry,

 for the main course, roast chicken with all of the trimmings,

 with gravy for Diana,

 without for myself,

 'Cheers!',

 and for dessert a strawberry slice,

eat or drink? that is the question, in the afternoon we watched television, later in the evening a couple from Peaky Blinders and as the midnight hour approached we were off to bed.

The Shape Of Things To Come

if you live in Paris,

photograph crédit Alain Thébault et Anders Bringdal. LP/Guillaume Georges, the SeaBubbles as they are called, is a potentially new form of electric transportation, and the newest hope to beating the Parisian traffic, known as a “flying taxi”, the SeaBubbles resembles a vehicle straight out of a science fiction film, being oblong, glassy, and having the ability to glide across water without making a sound, the craft has a top speed of 20 miles per hour, as it rises nearly 30 inches above the water using wing-like structures known as 'hydrofoils' that are designed to reduce drag, 

inside, the vehicle holds up to four passengers, who face one another as if riding in a London taxi, according to Le Parisien, whose reporter snagged a ride inside the futuristic vehicle, designers say the taxi — which has been tested up and down the river Seine in the heart of Paris — can be hailed using a smartphone app and could be available for rides as early as next year, pending final licensing, it looks like great fun, I wonder who gets to drive it? the first passenger in I guess, or perhaps it has a simple set of instructions that if pressed will take you to your choice of jetty, if it is a success the craft could be coming to a city near you.

Staying At The North Pole,

to photograph the Northern Lights,

really appeals to me, you may remember in March 2018 we went to Finland to do just that, not very successfully it has to be said, it snowed every night except one, but we had a great time, so reading about this, the North Pole Igloos Hotel, interested me, a temporary hotel site that will open on April 2020, it will be made up of 10 heated domes where the guests can sleep in the center of the Arctic Ocean for one month, normally for people to survive the journey to the North Pole, they need to rough it in tents and bring all the equipment to be safe in the cold, frozen environment, now here is the good news, North Pole Igloos hotel will provide its guests with all the necessities: heated igloo with en suite toilet, on-site camp manager, Arctic wilderness guide, chef and security team, now all we have to do is find the £81,400 each to book the trip, photograph by Luxury Action.

Somewhere In This Photograph Of The Surface Of The Moon,

there is a very expensive piece of metal,

that piece of metal that carried India’s hopes of lunar science, this image was captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of NASA on September 17, as it went over the target landing site of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, that project's lander, dubbed Vikram, fell silent in the final minutes of its touchdown procedure on Sept. 6. The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which oversees the mission, spent two weeks trying to establish communications with the lander, ISRO has said it was able to spot the lander with the orbiter component of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, but the agency has not released those photographs, NASA wanted to help the effort, but LRO's angle on the scene was suboptimal during its first flyover of the targeted landing site after the attempt, if you are interested in finding the lander head over to Space.com to find where the missing moon lander is, photograph NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University, as an aside, in July India's finance ministry announced that it wished to increase ISRO's budget by 11 percent from $1.5bn to $1.75bn, I am glad to see that India can continue to go into space, despite this minor set back, I remember when space was all the rage in those exciting times of the Golden Age of space exploration, hopefully India will continue the quest it has in space.

With Halloween,

just around the corner,

here is a DIY project to make a Halloween snow globe, complete with flying bats, instructions courtesy of Sugar, Spice & Glitter, you can of course buy a Castle Dracula bat snow globe, but you have to buy 1,000 of them, or go the Austin Texas route, but for your own one of your own based on the instructions from Sugar, Spice & Glitter, I would make just a small change, instead of using a mason jar, go the extra mile and buy a glass dome, and one extra thing, be careful not to mix up your bat glitter with the edible bat sprinkles that are also available this time of year, happy batting!

There Was Another Happening,

on the green next to the church,

I had a quick walk through,

and then joined Diana in Marks and Spencers,

we thought we would do the shopping early,

as we wanted to buy a joint of lamb for our Sunday roast before they had sold out,

a new venture has opened next to M & S, bad news for us, there was only one joint of lamb left, and it was huge, far too big for us, so a chicken it is then,

on to the green,

these events appear to be held every 6 months or so,

the fig tree in the center of the green now surrounded by nasturtiums,

we were a little early,

so not many people here,

plus the fact that it had been pouring down with rain earlier did not help attendance,

the first of the singers took to the stage,

this stall has my vote!

lots of rides for the kids,

just what we wanted,

an ice cream,

anyone for a Brazilian? no I will not do the Brazilian joke!

the Three Hounds Beer Company, which started in Beckenham has gone from bottles to cans,

a few more visitors have now arrived to watch the show, then it was time for Diana to go to work, so with the shopping I made a move for home,

 and upstairs I went, to play with a couple of infrared photographs I had taken, above as it has been converted,

 and after I played with the colours,

 I changed the image to black and white,

 and gave it a vintage look,

 this is how the image comes out of the camera,

 then converted,

 and then played with,

 next black and white,

 I then made it a lot darker to give it a night time feel,

finishing with a vintage look, boring to pretty much everyone, but with Diana at work it gives me a hobby that I enjoy,

in the evening a sherry to go with my read and Caruso,

a wine with my evening meal,

a salmon salad, towards midnight Diana called so I wandered down to the bus stop and waited for her, arriving home, one from Peaky Blinders, OK to save

you looking it up, from a long time ago here is the Brazilian joke,

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."

"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.

Finally, the President looks up and says, “tell me again, exactly how many is a Brazilian?”

 and with that we were off to bed.

The Tallest Tree In The Amazon Has Been Found,

almost by accident!

photograph by Gorgens it all happened by chance, Eric Bastos Gorgens is a forestry engineering professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys, as he and colleagues studied data from satellites about the Amazon forest, something strange caught his eye, at first it was just a set of numbers on a screen that let the researchers know giants were growing in the Parú State Forest conservation area in the state of Pará, it took time and dedication to figure what the height measurements represented,

“It could have been a bird flying by, a tower, a sensor error,” says Gorgens, the lead author of a recent study about the trees published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. “So we started to look into what could have given us these numbers that were so far from standard. And as we started looking at the data more carefully, we realized they weren’t errors. They were, in fact, giant trees.”

so Gorgens and his team had to go find those trees, of the species Dinizia excelsa, that grew to 80 meters (260 feet) and beyond, the very tallest, at 88.5 meters (290 feet) was inaccessible, but a return trip is planned for next year, for more of this fascinating discovery have a look at this article in the Smithsonian. 

We All Know Of It,

but how much do we know about it?

it being the Panama Canal, which is an artificial 82 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, the canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade, most importantly it shortened the time it took for ships to cross South America without having to pass through the notoriously hazardous Cape Horn on the southernmost tip via the Drake Passage or Strait of Magellan, so how about a little Sunday after dinner quiz on the canal? check out the quiz on Inside Sources and see how well you do, for myself an appalling 5 out of 10, hopefully any Americans reading this will fair much better, image credit MrPanyGoff/Flickr; Wikimedia Commons.

I Have Always Dreamed Of Living On A Boat,

impractical I know,

but it did not stop me dreaming, and of course the main problem is size, so I was interested to hear that an aircraft carrier was up for sale from the Brazilian Navy, so it will certainly be big enough to live on board, I decided to look up a few facts about the carrier, France sold Foch to Brazil in 2000, and the renamed Sao Paulo carried out exercises and launched Brazil’s AF-1 Skyhawk attack planes from her flat, catapult-launch deck, similar to U.S. carriers and the Charles de Gaulle, France’s sole remaining fleet carrier, Brazil paid France $12 million for the carrier but sank $100 million more keeping her seaworthy, fires broke out aboard the vessel at least twice, once in 2004 and again 2012, the accidents forced costly repairs and kept the carrier in port for long periods of time, Sao Paulo was supposed to rejoin the fleet in 2013, but the accidents kept sidelining her. “By the end of 2016, Sao Paulo was still undergoing repairs and there were reports that it might take another decade to get the ship fully operational again,” Joe Trevithick noted at The War Zone, “By the time the Brazilian navy finally decided to just retire the ship in 2017, it was the world's oldest commissioned aircraft carrier,” Trevithick continued, “In the better part of two decades that the flattop had flown the Brazilian flag, she had spent just 206 days at sea.” so a bit unreliable then, and where do I get $1.275 million from as the opening bid? also where would I park it? no I think we will stick with the flat! but it has to be said, a snip considering what was paid for it, and the money spent on repairs! picture source: Brazilian Navy.

May The Fourth Be With You,

a terrible pun I know,

but if you are a Star Wars fan you will know that Disney launched Star Wars holiday three years ago, called Force Friday, that's the day that the new Star Wars toys and merchandise are unveiled, giving you enough time to decide what you want to ask Santa Claus to bring you, this year, Force Friday is October 4th, but you can see the new toys that will go on sale in October, because io9 has a rundown of them, chose fast as they are bound to sell out well before Christmas! image credits, Hasbro, Funko, Mattel.

In The Morning,

after Diana had left for work,

 the rain swept in, it really chucked it down, after it had stopped, there it was,

a rainbow,

I spent some of the day upstairs, playing with some of the photographs, this one of the flamingos in Birdland,

  I played with the colours,

then black and white,

finally trying for a vintage look,

 next, one from Scotland, the hydroelectric power station on the shores of Lock Lomond,

 I quite like this one,

I went a bit overboard with the colors,

 back to black and white,

I wanted to give this one an old and faded look,

I also returned to Bath in give a previous photograph a bit more colour, 

 whilst playing with these I listened to Enrico Caruso,

 a few of the CDs that I have,

which I put on my telephone and play back through the Bush Classic bluetooth speaker that I mention at the end of this post, for the price I have to say much better than the LG one that we have in the living room that cost 3 or 4 times as much, 

 in the evening I was out, passing one of the homes in the park,

 I was off to the club, to meet up with Steve, and wait for Diana to finish work,

 we meet at the bus stop by the club, and after saying goodbye to Steve we walked past the gate house,

 and past some of the homes in the park, then feet up for a night cap, one from Peaky Blinders and we we off to bed.