Vernal Equinox
March 20th saw the Vernal or Spring Equinox and the beginning of Spring! I didn’t check to see if we did actually get 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness, but I’m sure the experts are correct in their thinking! We have had some beautiful spring days this week. The sort of weather to start jobs in the garden like mowing the lawn and getting ahead of the weeds, which always grow no matter what the conditions! And after all, what is a weed but a plant growing in the wrong place!
8oWarmer
The sunny weather (as much as 8o warmer than the average for the time of year) is supposed to last over the weekend, and perusing the local weather site there looks like there’s no rain in prospect for the next ten days at least! Things are certainly getting serious! The ditches along the roadside have been dry for months.
Near Miss Day
I was a bit perturbed to see that yesterday was Near Miss Day! I had pottered about all day and not realised that I should have been celebrating still being ‘here’! Apparently in 1989 an asteroid the ‘size of a mountain’ narrowly missed Earth by a mere 500.000 miles, which in ‘space’ terms is equivalent to me passing someone on the street! Six hours earlier and we would have been the new ‘dinosaurs! A sobering thought indeed!
British Summer Time (BST)
This weekend brings the beginning of British Summer Time, when the powers that be decree that we must all put our clocks forward by one hour! All together, or it doesn't work!!! (One less hour of sleep!!) ‘Altering the clocks’ was the idea of a builder called William Willett in 1907 (the year my dear old dad was born!)! Mr Willett wanted to promote health and happiness (not sure how that works, just makes people more miserable losing an hour’s sleep!) and save the nation money on fuel bills! (Much like today really!) He wanted to move the time forward by 20 minutes on four consecutive Sundays in April and back again in September! Good grief, it’s bad enough doing it once! Anyway poor old Mr Willett didn’t live long enough to see his plans through to fruition as he died of the ‘flu’ in 1915 a year before the first British Summer Time (BST) was experienced! (Maybe if the Act had been established sooner it might have prolonged William’s life!!) During the Second World War Britain was on British Double Summer Time! (BDST) But, don’t ask me to explain that one!!
Thanks for your time!
The Bumpkin Rambler xx
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