Dear Readers, many of you have been following the tale of my Mum and Dad’s 60th Anniversary Party for the past year, with all its ups and downs. Regular visitors here will know that neither of them are in the best of health, and indeed just a fortnight ago, Mum was in hospital following a suspected heart attack, so it has been stressful for all of us. But on Thursday the day finally arrived. This is the scene in the Sealy Suite at the Crown Hotel in Blandford Forum just before all the people arrived to make it untidy.

You can get a message of congratulations if you’ve been married for 60 years, and so the postman was very impressed when the ‘by appointment’ envelope arrived on Wednesday. Mum noticed that there was no postage on it, so I pointed out that it’s not called the Royal Mail for nothing. Mum was absolutely delighted, and everyone got a chance to admire the card.

A local lady called Eva made the most spectacular pair of heart-shaped cakes, one coconut and one lemon, with individually-created sugar flowers on top. The real flowers included apricot roses and mum’s favourite, freesias.

And then everyone started to arrive – we had 49 guests, and everyone was in a celebratory mood. There was a palpable feeling of affection in the room which it was lovely to be part of. I had worries when Mum and Dad upped sticks 17 years ago, to leave London and live in Dorset, but I had underestimated how welcoming Milborne St Andrew was, and how adaptable and friendly my parents are. They became involved locally, but they never tried to take over, a mistake that people sometimes make when they move somewhere new. And now, it feels as if they really are part of a proper community. It makes me very happy.

Dad stood up to give a speech. He’d lost his reading glasses, which didn’t help when he came to read his notes. Then Mum joined in, and she’s a natural comedian. I honestly think she missed her vocation. And everyone cheered and clapped, and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t quite as Dad had intended, because people understood the spirit in which it was intended. And my brother made a speech celebrating those 60 years together, and everyone clapped and cheered again.

And then, we had the cutting of those beautiful cakes.

And the following day, Mum said it was the best evening she’d ever had, even better than her wedding. So it was worth all the sleepless nights and the playing with spreadsheets and the organising of menus.

I’d better make the best of the break, though. Mum and Dad are now talking about her 65th Wedding Anniversary party.

Dear Readers, this week I thought I’d share my train ride from Mum and Dad’s home in Dorset back to the Big Smoke in London. I’ve taken one picture at each station, through the window (because heaven help any one who gets off – there would have been many pictures of my train disappearing out of the platform with all my luggage on it). I start from Moreton (down in the bottom left hand corner) and end up at Waterloo.

Before I start, however, here is a brief interlude on the party planning for Mum and Dad’s 60th Wedding Anniversary in September. We now know pretty much who is coming, and people are starting to let me know their menu choices. We met with the events manager at the hotel who is very obliging, so now we have Deadlines and such. There is some debate over whether or not to have a champagne toast after the main course and before dessert, with Dad saying this is what normally happens at Weddings, not Anniversary parties, and Mum and I  saying that there is never a wrong time for a champagne toast. I suspect we shall have our own way in the end. The flowers are sorted (roses, freesias, whatever else is in season), the table decorations and layout are agreed and the harpist is booked. In short, I am planning it like a military operation, minus the amphibious landing craft and trebuchets, though I shall have these in reserve in case of any shenanigans.

And then, there is the  vexed question of presents. Mum and Dad maintain that they Don’t Need Anything and even if they did, it would be rude to ask. On the other hand, lots of people have asked me what they should buy for Mum and Dad. I maintain that if you don’t give people some hints, they will get what they think. So, we have (finally) agreed that I will let the guests know that their presence is present enough, but if they do want to get something, we’ll go for garden centre gift vouchers. That way, Mum and Dad will have something to look forward to after the party, when I suspect their spirits might slump a bit after all the excitement. The autumn is a great time to buy perennials and get them planted, and every time they look at the plants, they’ll be reminded of their special day. An outing to the garden centre, plus lunch, will be just the tonic required to restore optimism I hope.

Moreton

Anyhow, back to my train journey. Dad gave me a lift to Moreton station, the first time he’s felt able to drive there for over five years, so it just goes to show that even when someone is in their eighties they can still recover from illness – it’s not an inexorable, one-way decline. And as I was standing on the platform, I noticed this fluffy character. I love the antennae, and the ‘furry’ legs. And then it was time to throw myself onto the train and settle back for the two and a half hour ride with my sandwiches.

The journey from Moreton to Waterloo is wonderfully varied. The first part goes through farmland, with Jacob’s sheep grazing in the fields and deer nibbling at the bushes. The trackside vegetation is a mix of self-seeded sycamore, and buddleia. Lots and lots of buddleia.

Wool

The first station is Wool, presumably named for it’s sheep-farming heritage. Today, it is the closest stop to Bovington army camp and the world-renowned Tank Museum. More importantly,  it’s home to Monkey World, a sanctuary which, despite its name, mainly specialises in rescued chimps and orang-utans from the despicable tourist photography trade in Europe and Asia. Some of these creatures arrive at the sanctuary completely bald from stress, and the last member of their species that they saw was probably their mother. Recently, Monkey World rescued a large number of capuchin monkeys from a research centre in South America, and they also have many small monkeys who were previously kept as pets. I only wish my friend Robin had been here long enough to visit it, though we’d probably never have got her home again.

I think that the buddleia pictured above has something of the dirty old man about it, but maybe that’s more a reflection on the sad state of my psyche.

Onwards!

Wareham

Wareham is the next stop. It was probably founded by the Saxons, and is a great spot for anyone wanting to tour Dorset, with Studland Bay and the Purbeck Hills close to hand, and the Jurassic Coast (where Mary Anning found her fossil ichthyosaurus) close by. On a more sinister note, it was one of the spots where the notorious Judge Jeffries held his Bloody Assizes following the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, and five rebels were hung, drawn and quartered on the West Walls of the town. I had no idea that this barbaric practice was still going on in the seventeenth century.

And a note to for the poor traveller; Wareham is the only spot on this stretch of line that you can get a cab, in the event of your train misbehaving. As my journey to Dorset was delayed by over three hours (thank you, Woking signals) this can be extremely useful. The company I used was called Elysium Taxis, and although the ride did not remind me too much of the resting place of dead heroes, it was certainly extremely efficient and friendly.

Wareham station itself is a little bleak, but it’s always nice to see some interesting ‘weeds’ bursting forth, as seen above.

Holton Heath

Holton Heath is the next stop, and the only plant life visible was some ribwort plantain on the other side of the chain-link fence. I wonder why one plant has grown twice as tall as the others? Is it genetic, or is there some source of water or food here?

Holton Heath was the site of the Royal Navy Cordite Factory during both the First and  Second World Wars – cordite is a propellant used in guns, and replaced gunpowder. One of the key ingredients is acetone, and to make this requires a source of starch, usually grain. As grain ran short during 1917, local children were asked to gather horse chestnuts (conkers) as an alternative source. They were so ardent that eventually six enormous grain silos were filled with the chestnuts that the children had gathered.

However, such dangerous manufacturing lead to accidents, with the worst being in 1931, when an explosion occurred in a nitroglycerin preparation chamber, killing 10 and injuring 19. Three buildings were destroyed and a storage tank was ruptured, spilling sulphuric acid in to the area. The explosion, which occurred at 10.45 am, was heard 20 miles away and people working outdoors 2 miles away were knocked over by the blast wave. Houses situated on the main road approximately 1 mile from the blast suffered extensive damage.

These days, Holton Heath is a ghost town, with industrial units and razor wire. I have never once seen anyone get on or off the train at Holton Heath, and the wind whistles through the grass and the ribwort plantain.

Hamworthy

On we go to Hamworthy, another ‘ghost stop’ where tall, self-planted sycamore trees are heavy with their fruit. This was an Iron Age settlement, and is situated on a peninsula, making it ideal for ferries and cargo to France, Jersey and the isle of Wight. A rather elegant new bridge has opened recently, to work alongside the existing bridge, and ensure that traffic can always get from Poole town centre to the ferry port.

Poole

As you head to Poole station, you pass wetlands and sailing ponds with gigantic plastic swans on them, but at the station itself my spirits were barely lifted by some struggling groundsel and a few leaves of grass. There wasn’t even a seagull. The train meanders through the middle of town, and you can gaze out at some of the most expensive real estate in the world (on Sandbanks in Poole), and also see the mixture of holiday-makers and locals waiting patiently for your train to pass so that they can get on with their shopping.

Bournemouth

For the traveller, the fine Victorian station of Bournemouth is important because this is where the refreshments trolley boards. Sure enough, I had some sandwiches, but  this is where you can avail yourself of what passes for coffee on South West Trains. Plus, the driver changes over, so I had five minutes to survey the scene. They certainly don’t want any pigeons nesting here: I have rarely seen such prolific anti-pigeon measures, though I suspect that from the occasional feathers and droppings some such avian trespassers haven’t read the rules.

But how my heart lifted at the sight of a few weeds who had, miraculously, managed to find a root-hold. Life will always find a way, I see.

Christchurch

The next part of the ride is through the New Forest, which is neither New (it probably dates from about 12,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age) nor a Forest (being mostly heathland these days). However, it was William the Conqueror who called the area the Foresta Nova, and reserved it for hunting purposes.  It is one of the largest remaining tracts  of unenclosed land left in south-east England, and ponies, pigs and other domestic animals still have the right to roam here. It is a biodiversity hotspot, and I often see grazing roe and red deer from my train window. Several of the villages and towns on my route are in the New Forest, and there seems to be a new enthusiasm for making the stations pretty.

Here is a splendid tub at Christchurch station – the town has one of the oldest populations in England (with 30% of its residents being over 60). Maybe a preponderance of people with time on their hands makes for a pretty platform. However, they have strong competition from the folk just along the line at New Milton.

New Milton

New Milton dates back to the arrival of the railway in 1888. It, and the surrounding villages, were the centre of the seaborne smuggling trade, and a detachment of armed ‘Coast Guards’ were stationed here to try to stop them. These days, we think of the main job of the coast guard as being the rescue of folk who drift away on their lilos or of fishermen who get into trouble in heavy weather, but in those days they literally ‘guarded the coast’. Some of the offshore sea routes were actually named after the main smuggling families. I Imagine it was a time of intrigue and double-dealing. These days, it’s all a bit more sedate.

Brockenhurst

Brockenhurst is the most popular stop in the New Forest – you can hire a bike here, there are many small hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, and lots of walking trails start here. However, they need to pull their socks up with the floral decoration, as I would say that New Milton and Christchurch are currently in the lead. The town itself has a long military tradition, with a hospital for Indian and New Zealand soldiers wounded in the First World War. The woods around Brockenhurst were used for jungle training for soldiers destined for the Pacific during the Second World War. I imagine they weren’t much of a substitute for the environment that the soldiers were soon to face.

Southampton

I was at university at Southampton. It wasn’t a particularly happy time for me: I missed my home and family. Also, it was the first time that I realised that I was a different class from everyone around me: one of the ‘posh’ girls told me that ‘when I first heard you speak, I thought you were common, but actually you’re ok’. Gee, thanks. But it was nice to see happier students sitting at the station, although their floral decoration could definitely do with some work.

Southampton Airport Parkway

Strangely enough, though, the planting that I like most is at Southampton Airport Parkway. Someone has taken a tiny strip of ground behind the fence and in front of the boxes for the telephone exchange, and has turned it into a little spot of insect heaven. Technically, i suppose it isn’t even in the station, but hey.

Winchester.

Ah, Winchester. How prosperous. How pretty. How august. But what on earth is happening on your station platform? Surely there is room for a pot or two.

I must admit to having a dislike for Winchester, having been knocked into a bramble patch by a completely naked man whenIi was a student here back in the early eighties, but I am prepared to be converted. Just sort out some pollinator-friendly plants and I’ll reconsider, I promise.

Basingstoke

I rather like this planting at Basingstoke. I am wondering what on earth the fruit is? Could it be nectarines, or is it just some small, colourful apples? Help me out here, gardening friends.

Although we think of Basingstoke as a new town, it is probably on the site of an Anglo-Saxon village settled by ‘the people of Basa’, Basa being the tribal leader. The word ‘stoke’ probably derives from the word for a stockade.

Clapham Junction

And now, I’m eight minutes from Waterloo and, if all goes well, about forty minutes from East Finchley. Clapham Junction is the busiest station for trains (though not passengers) in the whole of Europe, with 200 trains passing through per hour. However, what it is not is plant friendly. There are some isolated buddleia plants, and a few sad weeds, who look as if they have been sprayed (this is often the case if the plants would impede the progress of the trains). However, maybe the seeds from the willowherb below will find more inviting ground – there are huge drifts of them all the way along the edge of the lines.

The Entry into Waterloo

It’s funny. You’d think I’d love the countryside, and yet my heart lifts at the sight of the building work on the way into Waterloo station and the little glimpses of the London Eye. I’d like to share a few of the final moments of the journey with you below. And then, I’m off. Home, a cup of tea and my husband await!

Photo Credits

Photo One (Bridge) – By Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18372969

Photo Two (wounded soldiers) – PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12300298

Photo Three (trainees in the woods) – By Oulds, D C (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer – http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//31/media-31047/large.jpgThis is photograph A 27308 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25076005

Dear Readers, two weeks isn’t very long, but how things can change! As I stagger off the train after my fortnight in Austria, laden down with sweaty laundry and in need of a cup of tea and a cuddle with the cat, my mood is much brightened by how splendid East Finchley station is looking.  I suspect that those good folk at the N2 Community Garden have been hard at work. A range of containers in pastel colours are chock-full of plants and buzzing with bees.

And there is even more fun to be had once you’re through the ticket barriers.

The banner is made of buttons, and I love the upcycling of the boots and the globe. It goes to show that, with a bit of imagination, many things can be transformed from useless to useful.

Well, once the laundry was on and the tea was drunk and the cat was cuddled, I headed off to see what else was going on. The little garden beside the station was looking particularly splendid.

I adore the seedheads on the alliums, they remind me of a firework display, but without all those annoying bangs.

My old friends the opium poppy seedheads are growing fat.

The Florence fennel is a huge draw for bees and hoverflies.

The marjoram is proving popular too.

Furthermore, some of the plants are making a bid for freedom and are advancing along the gutter towards the coffee stand. And who can blame them?

Across the road, outside the children’s nursery, the lavender is in full bloom, while the fine Victorian building that used to house the GLH taxi company now stands forlorn behind a plywood barricade, waiting for its imminent demolition.

I wrote in the Wednesday Weed this week about my discovery of a patch of lucerne on Park Hall Road, but I am still amazed today. Where on earth did it come from? It certainly gave me lots to think about.

But then, as I walk home, I look up and am for a moment extremely excited. What on earth is this?

Well, I once saw a red kite drifting over Durham Road, but I have never seen a condor in East Finchley, and obviously I haven’t seen one this time either. I am a little puzzled though.

My guess is that the kite is to deter pigeons, although I would have thought that the four-inch pins around the edge of the roof would have been deterrent enough. Still, this is an imaginative and humane solution, and it seems to be working, as the pigeons are all still hanging out on the roof of the Bald-Faced Stag. I’m not sure whether this fine bird would provide a lightning rod in the event of a thunderstorm, so perhaps if there are any physicists out there someone could tell me. In the meantime, the bird soars on, perhaps dreaming of the Andes and surveying the streets for a defunct llama to eat. I would hate to be the one to tell him that the best he can hope for around here is some Kentucky Fried Chicken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, sometimes death visits the garden. It’s inevitable, I suppose – the number of birds feeding there is a magnet for a predator. Usually I just find the evidence – the sad body of a blackbird with his head removed, a sea-foam of feathers under the hedge, and once two tiny limp dove’s feet. But on Sunday last week death came for a longer visit, in the form of a female sparrowhawk, who killed a collared dove with icy efficiency and then dismembered it on the garden path.

She stood on the corpse, plucking great mouthfuls of feathers and throwing them away with a jerk of the head. Occasionally, she’d lift her foot and scratch her beak to get rid of the fluff. Every few seconds, she’d look up and around with those manic yellow eyes, before getting back to work. Her talons, like black steel hooks, were deeply embedded in the breast of her prey, and the bare legs kept her a little above the gore.

After a few minutes she started to feed, ripping at the meat, all the time looking around. I really wanted her to turn, and eventually she did, so I could get a look at her chest feathers, barred in white and chocolate brown. Her tail feathers looked a little sad and ragged, but she was generally in good condition. And she was bold, too. At one point she heard the lady next door come outside to hang her washing up, and the bird looked around and froze. But after thirty seconds she went back to her meal.

As the sparrowhawk fed, the garden fell silent, except for the blue tits who are nesting next door. They were frantic, and their whirrs and peeps of alarm sounded like a soundtrack to the sparrowhawk’s tearing and rending. The great predators of the world are attended by an envelope of sound, that travels with them as they move about, like the trumpets of courtiers.

I felt bad about the dove. They come to the garden because I feed them, and this should be a safe place for them. But the sparrowhawk might be incubating eggs, or have nestlings, and needs to live too. Plus, although it matters not to the poor dead prey, this is a wild bird, not some domesticated cat entertaining itself. Sparrowhawks have been killing other birds for millenia. Maybe this is the kind of death that an animal can understand, unlike the many endings that we visit upon them, with our guns and poison and traps and laboratories, our slaughterhouses and factory farms and many forms of ‘entertainment’. It was at least an honest death, one animal to another, for simple reasons.

I went upstairs to change my camera battery, and when I came back the hawk was gone, and so was the dove: the sparrowhawk must have carried off its carcass to enjoy in a more peaceful spot. The feathers were still drifting and settling in the breeze of her departure. And in her place there was a hawk-shaped absence, a delay in the return to normality, as if the bird had carved a space in the universe, and the atoms were reluctant to rush back in. Not a single dove or pigeon came to the whitebeam tree for the rest of the day, but today they are on the seed feeder again, pragmatic as all wild animals are. If the hawk fed yesterday, maybe she won’t need to feed today.

I was asked to take part in ‘The London Grill’ on Cabbieblog, and I was delighted to contribute. This is a blog by a real London cabbie, and what he doesn’t know about London isn’t worth knowing. The blog is full of fascinating tales, intriguing facts and London trivia of the highest quality. Pop over and have a look….

http://www.cabbieblog.com/the-london-grill-bugwoman/

Dear Readers, it’s a grey, blustery day outside, but inside the house Mum and Dad  have just finished tucking into their  mince pies. I’ve been in the kitchen making an orange trifle (the trick is the Cointreau poured generously over torn up madeleines with navel orange segments, orange jelly, amaretto flavoured custard and whipped cream). The starlings are gathering in the whitebeam tree, but they’re nervous – they can see that the bird table is full of suet and worms, but they can also see that someone else is on the ground, eating the suet in the ground feeder.

This tabby has developed a taste for Buggy Nibbles, and appears as if from nowhere whenever I put them down.

Once the cat has moved on, another regular visitor appears.

This little chap has been at work collecting every single peanut and then burying them somewhere in the garden.

I have no idea if peanuts can germinate in UK temperatures, but if they can I will have a peanut forest when spring comes. And, although it’s out of focus, I rather like this picture. It turns the squirrel into a kind of grey furry snake.

A little flock of chaffinches are also clinging on to the branches of the cherry tree next door.

The patience of wild animals always moves me. So much is at stake every time they risk coming down to feed, and so they wait, bright-eyed, until the odds are in their favour. Some of these chaffinches are this year’s fledglings, so I imagine that they are watching and learning. If a small bird survives its first year, there is a good chance that it will survive to breed. Who would not wish these little ones luck?

Dear Readers, this time last year things were very different. As my regular readers will remember, Mum became very sick with sepsis while she and Dad were staying with me last Christmas, and although none of us realised it at the time, we came close to losing her. But today, as I write, Mum and Dad are dozing in their respective armchairs downstairs, safe from the elements, well-fed and warm. I cannot protect them from everything that may do them harm, just as they couldn’t always protect me when I was a child. But today, with the lights glowing on the Christmas  tree and the wind singing in the chimney, I am, just for a second, lit up myself with how lucky I am to still have them both with me, and to have the chance to care for them. It will not always be so, but, today, I am surrounded by those that I love.

Wishing a peaceful and happy festive season to all my readers, and hoping for a joyful, healthy and inspired 2017 for you all x

Dear Readers, my subject this week is not within my half-mile ‘territory’, but out in the darkness of space. However, it always moves me to think that when the moon is full here in East Finchley, it will also be full in Australia and Canada, in Russia and Japan. And this week, it has been a tiny bit closer to us all  than usual, turning it into a ‘supermoon’.

The moon is in an elliptical orbit around the earth, and its actual distance from us varies from 222,000 to 252,000 miles. When it is closest to us, and  combined with a full moon, the moon is up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than when it is furthest away. This latter condition is known as a ‘micromoon’, but you don’t hear much in the newspapers about that! If you have clear conditions, pop out to have a look at the moon while it’s still almost full, as the next full supermoon won’t be until 3rd December next year, and the moon won’t be as close to us as it currently is until 2034. For anyone who would like to track what’s ‘going on’ with the moon, I recommend the ‘moon phases’ page here. You can enter your city to get local information, although, as I said earlier, the moon is remarkably constant, showing the same face to us all.

When the moon first rose above the County Roads here in East Finchley it was a stately orange globe, caught in the branches of the rowan trees. However, it soon freed itself and sailed serenely on.

As is my wont, I grabbed an elderly lady passing with her shopping trolley.

‘Look at the moon!’ I yelled, pointing with a trembling finger.

The lady, to her credit, didn’t bat me off with a rolled newspaper.

‘Ah, that explains it’, she said. ‘I’ve been feeling as batty as a fruitcake all day’.

And indeed, many people believe that the moon affects their moods and their sleep patterns (the word ‘lunatic’ comes from this theory). As the pull of the moon’s tidal effect can be found in a simple puddle, it’s no wonder to me that human beings, who are mostly water after all, are also dragged and released as the moon orbits around our planet. Most scientific studies of the ‘lunar effect’ have shown no correlation between the phases of the moon and human behaviour per se, but there are studies that show that sleep quality is affected adversely by the full moon whether or not the participants can see it, or know about it. So, there are still mysteries here to be investigated.

As the moon rises, it loses its orange colour and turns white. This is because when the moon is close to the horizon, the sun’s light, which is reflected from the moon, has to pass through a lot of the earth’s atmosphere. As we know, light, although it appears white, is made up of red, blue and green light, and each colour has different wavelengths. The atmosphere ‘scatters’ the blue and green rays, making the moon appear red or orange (a similar effect occurs as the sun sinks below the horizon during a sunset). As the moon rises, its light doesn’t have to pass through such a thick ‘slice’ of the atmosphere, and so it appears silver or white.

The reflected light was so strong that it took quite a lot of fiddling around to get my camera set. At one point I was braced against the window sill in our loft and wondering how long an exposure I could risk.

What a strange and beautiful thing the moon is. It bears the scars of its volcanic past, and of the many, many meteorites that have hit it, and yet it seems serene as it sails on overhead. For anyone who would like to know where the Sea of Tranquillity, or (maybe more appropriately for 2016) the Sea of Crises is, I would like to share the graphic below, courtesy of Peter Freeman, with the photo of the moon by Glen Rivera. Full credit is at the end of this piece.

The various ‘seas’, or ‘mare’, were once thought to be full of water. In fact, they were formed by ancient lava streaming from the volcanoes that were active 3.5 billion years ago. The paler patches are known as the ‘highlands’. Then there are the impact craters, many of them named after astronomers. It is estimated that there were over 300,000 asteroid impacts resulting in craters more than 1km wide on the near side of the moon alone. Most of these occurred during the Late Heavy Bombardment period, about 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, a time when the planets of the inner solar system had formed but when there was still plenty of debris flying about. What a terrifying time this would have been, had there been anything sentient around to see it.

What, though, is on the other side of the moon, the secret face that we never see?

What an unfamiliar view this is. There are no seas of volcanic lava, no highlands, just a pockmarked jumble of craters. It’s thought that the nearside of the moon was the most volcanically active because of a concentration of heat-producing elements on this side. Although we never see this side of the moon, it isn’t actually ‘dark’ – it is illuminated by the sun once a day. For some unfathomable reason, this rather cheers me up. But there is one place on the moon that never receives sunlight.

The dark areas to the right of the centre of the photograph form part of the South Pole/Aitken crater, the largest, oldest and deepest crater on the moon, and one of the biggest impacts so far recorded in the whole solar system. Areas of the crater are in perpetual darkness, and the temperature at the bottom has been measured at -397 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest temperature so far recorded by any probe, and colder even than poor old Pluto.

The science of the moon fascinates me, and yet there is something about it that appeals to a much more instinctive side of my nature. On a business trip to Rotterdam many years ago, I was woken up by what I thought was a floodlight outside my hotel window. I got up, flung back the curtains and came face to face with the biggest, brightest moon that I’ve ever seen, before or since. Maybe it was the surprise, or something deeper, but I found myself sinking to me knees on the carpet, overwhelmed. The moonlight poured through the window and I felt as if I was bathing in it. I looked at my hands and arms, and they were silver. And I stayed there, silent, until the moon passed below the buildings beyond and disappeared, and went back to bed, and when I woke in the morning it felt like a dream, except that the curtains were still pulled open. The moon has inspired awe and reverence for as long as there have been creatures to feel such things. It felt strange but right to be honouring such a tradition.

Photo Credits

Photo One (map of the moon) – By Peter FreimanCmgleeBackground photograph by Gregory H. Revera – Remake of File:FullMoon2010.jpgBitmap from File:FullMoon2010.jpgOwn work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14580532

Photo Two – Far side of the moon – By NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University – http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/WAC_GL180 (see also http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14021), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14842928

Photo Three (south pole of the moon) – By NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University – http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/SP_Mosaic (see also http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13523), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31697327

All other photos and blog content free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!