The Thirteenth Month

I have often wondered why we have twelve months when we say four weekes is a month. If that were so we'd be starting our thirteenth month tomorrow and would probably called Undecember (latin for eleven is Undecim) . Here is an explanation , apparently the romans started with ten months but then tried to match it to the (just over) 12 lunar cycles in a year so a 13 month year would be out of sync with th elunare cycles.

The thing remind me of imperial weights and money systems  (12 pennies to a shilling , 5 shillings to a crown , then there's half crowns , twenty shillings in a pound and twenty one shillings in a guinea. Then sixteen ounces to a pound, fourteen pounds to a stone etc , then you have twelve inches to a foot , three feet to a yard , six feet to a fathom etc.

Then you have tennis scoring which is weird as hell and the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket for curtailed matches and all the weird scoring possibilities with light stopping play and more.

Metric is a far more sensible measurement system , although people still have problems with our swith to decimalisation fifty years back.

So this is my first post of the month and think I'm going to go with "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen because of the lunar cycles that prompted this post in th efirst place.

Didn't Feel Lonely Til I Thought Of You

Yesterday I got home before six pm but had to put the lights on . The house was in darkness as the the lights come on around seven. Admittedly it was cloudy and rainy and the rain was coming down hard, but even so it was still a surprise to me. This morning I have to get off to the Post Office for another Discogs sale , it is strange as CD sales seem to go in spurts the stop and then come on again.

Morning Moon

This morning the sky looks blue and almost cloudless and the moon looked very clear in the sky so I leapt out and took a picture.

Unfortunately when I use the 50x Optical Zoom I can't keep the damned thing steady so a halfway decent picture is a plus. The one to the right is one that came out OK.

It's a thing with eyes and cameras, the camera can never capture the detail that the eye sees, although sometime it manages to capture things that the eye can't possibly see. A very odd conundrum that I don't have any intention of working out at the moment.

Yesterday I was listening to a Best of Kevin Ayers compilation , one of his bands (The Whole World) featured Mike Oldfield on guitar and was struck how, like with most artists, the early stuff is the most interesting and adventurous, although I did move onto my favourite album of his "The confessions of Doctor Dream" which I never tire of , featuring the excellent (no departed) Ollie Halsall on guitar, who's advice of  practicing with heavy gauge strings and play with light gauge I took , and in a very hot venue my guitar kept going out of tune, and I had to retune as I played. Afterward I was complimented on my on the the fly tuning / playing.

So in memory of Mr Halsall and Kevin Ayers both now gone , one of my favourites "Didn't Feel Lonely Til I Thought Of You", I found a live take for you to enjoy, with some excellent guitar duelling.

Red

I missed the Lunar eclipse and can't understand why it's listed as a "Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse" , yes because it's red "Blood" but why include the word "Wolf" in there? It seems a pointless addition like when mobile and broadband companies describe speeds of Super Ultra Mega Fast, it's either fast or not. TV manufacturers and broadcasters do the same with picture quality with Ultra and Super HD. Pointless extra adjectives.

There were some amazing red skies this morning, examples on my instagram channel here. I don't know if that was caused by the Lunar Eclipse.There are lots of explanationa on line on how the moon was turned red by the eclipse and that should keep you occupied for quite a while if that is to your particular taste.

This post is unusual in that it has no musical content, though you can always go for Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" or Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" as vaguely related, but I just got a bit of video from the Guardian to see what happened, and I am sure that is far more relevant.

2 x 12 x Magna Carta

Quite amazingly this week I have had two twelve hour plus sleeps, one managing to sleep through the alarm the day after finishing work. I obviously needed so rest and recuperation. A good friend remarked that I always forget something when I go on holiday, and this time I did again, although it was just various cooking things, olive oil and the like.

This week I've noticed some odd coincidences , I was reading a book about space and the fact you could buy an acre of land on the moon for about $20 then logged on to Facebook to find my daughter Kirsty had bought an acre of Moon for £10!

Now That's What I Call A Document

After a drive down in thick fog and tea at The White Horse it was bed for me last night, but I'm up now with options of a "Christmas Fayre" in the local Church Hall and visits to local centres. I still can't believe after years of coming to Ampleforth that Helmsley doesn't have a Chemist! The White Horse is a fantastic welcoming pub, all the staff and regulars are friendly and the food is excellent, and at the the moment it's very festively decorated although there will be no Christmas songs til December. Quite right too.

Just noticed it's 800 years since the Magna Carta was signed, though think this needs reinforcing given the state of current governments. Here are Helmsley's details on the Magna Carta page.

Although this post was more about me sleeping a lot, it has morphed into stuff about history and The Magna Carta and the most contemporary music that came to mind is the Jay Zed album so I've included Crown from that album, which is quite good if a bit sweary.Have a brilliant day everyone, I'm enjoying my holiday.

Breakfast With Wernher Von Braun

WVB

 

I saw the name Wernher Von Braun this morning and it got me thinking.

The first was it reminded me of the wonderful track "Breakfast With Wernher Von Braun" from the Stackridge album Mr Mick , which I've had to do a slideshow for and hope it stays on Youtube. It is a great piece and I love Stackridge , though as yet I still have never seen them, though given the opportunity I will definitely go  to on of their gigs.


The other thing is that , as far as I know , Wernher Von Braun  is thought of quite rightly, as a leading light in space exploration and rocket technology although a lot of his most famous work (rightly or wrongly) was for the Nazi War machine in the form of the V1 and V2 rockets (David Bowie's V2 Schneider from Heroes was written in Berlin obviously inspired by Von Braun's work). So sometimes some good can come out of patently bad situations.

If there hadn't been a war would Von Braun have been able to do his initial work , and later go to America and help them in the space race and eventually put Man on the Moon. Who knows.

But really it is a lesson that we should all be aware of, that we should continually look for good and inspiration , even when things aren't going our way, and that way good things will occur. Bad things may still happen but if you can focus on something that makes you happy then that's a moment when you will feel good as opposed to feeling down.

I don't know really what I'm writing about in this post but hope it's given you a little food for thought. Have a brilliant Sunday everyone wherever you are in the world.