An Irish interlude - the travelling

My wife's mother is not very well so we decided to leave our car in Ireland for a few months while she went back and forth to visit. It was a cunning plan to save the ghastly expense of either hiring cars every two weeks or ferrying the car over each trip.

On her last visit she left the car parked by the roadside outside Knock airport.

But eight weeks later she had not been back to visit - her mother was now very comfortable in a home and chatted to almost daily on the phone.

I decided I had to go and rescue the car - would it still be there? in one piece? would it start? would the tires be flat? would the wheels still turn? would it be up to its axles or worse in the bog?

Andrew offered to come with me for his first visit to Ireland and I jumped at the offer so after a number of last minute bookings and shenanigans off we went.

Oh dear, oh dear!

First with Ryan Air - I had planned to do online check-in - there I sat at midnight on Friday and lo and behold - you have to have passport details to check-in online. The web site hadn't warned me when booking, nor in the confirmation email and I didn't have Andrew's details and at midnight, very sensibly he was in bed and asleep, unlike me, so he wasn't answering his phone. I abandoned the attempt.

Now at Liverpool John Lennon airport - after queuing at the check-in desk we are sent off to queue at the ticket desk. There I discover that I at least, in possession of my own passport, could have checked in online on Friday night. That wasn't mentioned at all on the check-in pages. "We cannot take complaints here about Ryan Air - we don't work for them" the cashier says sitting in a booth clearly labelled "Ryan Air". There must be a way in which one can play that in reverse, i.e. to my advantage. Any ideas? how to label something or someone one way and yet be another thing when you get jobsworths like that. After stumping up two times £8 we go back to check-in and get our boarding cards.

Next step - security: Ha!

Here I got off lightly though I cannot say as much for my Suunto watch with built in electronic compass. The security metal detector didn't do that a lot of good. And I didn't empty any of my pockets out so I walked through the thing with all bells ringing.

"Stand here sir (and let me give you a very undignified patting down). What's this? didn't he ask you to empty your pockets, tut, tut...". So we empty them all out, not a trivial task as there are seven pockets in my walking trousers alone, and contents go into another plastic tray handed up to the other end of the conveyor. Mercifully I still had my belt on.

So now I have three items coming through the conveyor - carry-on bag, coat and walking boots in a tray and another tray with wallet, purse, smart phone etc trailing way behind. As we all know, this is a nerve racking time, watching out for the wallet and phone to get through the scanner in case someone else walks off with them. When they are significantly separated from your other possessions this is a real problem.

I managed it all right - with particular relief that the man with x-ray vision had decided that my collection of tin-whistles in my carry-on bag were not dangerous weapons!

But where was Andrew? The toothpaste police had got him! Off with his head! But he fought on to have his deodorant retained - and won that one. Not a liquid you see, but solid crystal!

Birthday thanks

Thanks very much for the birthday greetings or card or present (you know who you are!).

I went to stay with Dad for my birthday. I had wanted to go walking in Scotland but the weather was forecasted to be awful (and indeed it was). Anyway I discovered some lovely walks around Wimblington in the fens. One day I saw a kingfisher for the second time ever, the first was in Glasgow city centre in 1998 around about my 50th birthday, will there be another one for my 70th? they are such a beautiful shiny turquoise colour.

And that set the tone for the whole holiday: big open blue skies, lots of sun, water, stubble fields, clamps of onions and sugar beet, fluffy clouds, sunbathing on the banks of Vermuden's Drain (picture above, click on a picture to see it properly), enormous haystacks (there one is! look, down below, holding this post up!) and playing and practising the whistle as I walked along. It all made for a perfect five days. The only downside was my mother – she doesn’t know who I am and hardly knows who Dad is. He is getting old too - and it is probably unsafe for him to drive any more.

Ruth got me a special American Parks "Every Whistle" for my birthday – it has a volume control and works very well with quite a pleasant tone. So now my early morning practise sessions don’t involve a walk up to the Beacon. That may not be such a good thing - I really need the exercise.

Earlier, in September, I went over to Ireland for a weekend to help Ceppy. While there Ceppy’s expert jam making sister Eithne took me to the Strokestown Show where she was the “Jam, Marmalade, Honey, Eggs and Butter judge”. She introduced me as a jam connoisseur from England there to help her – what fun tasting 32 odd pots of jam and marmalade! On that sweet note I shall end.

All the green is an illusion

Gabby sent me an email with this cunning optical illusion. Click on the picture to see it animated in a window of its own. Then, without blinking or moving your eye, stare intently at the cross-hairs for as long as you can. If you are like most of us after a few seconds you will start to see a ghostly green-dot moving around the circle. After much longer you should start to see the pink-dots begin to fade away - eventually melting into the grey background. If you let your eyes drift away from the cross-hairs for even an instant then that illusion will be lost!

If you don't stare at the dot but instead follow it around with your eyes it stays pink all the time.

There are no green dots at all in the animation - all the green is an illusion.

Don't be cruel and send the picture to your friends with a covering note such as "Beware! someone has modified your computer so it can tell where you are looking. The dots change colour when they see you are not paying attention!" OK? You don't have any friends that would fall for that? Right.

An explanation, and a few more cunning illusions will follow in a week or so...

And did you follow the dot around with your eyes? Ha! Caught you. There is no moving dot. The animation just blanks out the pink ones in turn. You can see that if you make it stop. With Internet Explorer you just press the Esc key while you are watching the dots and it will freeze. Start it again by pressing F5.

And... did you notice, as I just did, if you stop the animation with the Esc key and just stare at the cross hairs the pink dots fade away. The fading has nothing to do with the movement.

Regency Rejigged at Southport

Do you like set dancing? contra, English country, folk dancing or whatever you call it? I do, and one particular style, Playford, from the 17th century is very enjoyable to watch. The dancers seem to move in and out like waves in water. It's good to watch and even better to perform - a sort of rythmically "springy" walking.

Some friends joined a group called Regency Rejigged last year and set out to do it properly with period dress. Here is their first public outing in Southport on Sunday 27th.

Clare tells me that authentic dresses were pastel coloured for the young ladies and dark colours for the older (or was it married?) ones.

The second part of their exhibition was on the plaza outside the Arts Centre on Lord Street. Here's half a minute or so dancing "Hyde Park":

Denise is playing the recorder. I'm standing there holding an umbrella over her because of the rain - I wish I could play well enough to join in.

Here's another short piece dancing "Sellenger's Round":

this time Denise is playing the accordion - as she does at the Aughton Folk Dance Club that she and Norman run. I'm still umbrella man - that accounts for the shaky one handed camera work. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

One wonderful thing about Playford dancing, or even modern Playford style dances, is the ravishing music. In my limited experience of dancing Playford as a beginner there is a strong risk of drifting off on it and losing one's place! Read about and listen to some recordings with samples at Country Dance Society. One of Sunday's dances was Lady William's Delight

On Friday its off to Lemmings Reprieve I go - for some social English country dancing of my own. Does that make sense? I mean dancing as opposed to watching dancing.

Maharishi has passed away

Maharishi passed away on Tuesday 5th February 2008 just after 6pm GMT.

This is one of my favourite photographs of him, taken at Bangor in 1968 by a fellow TM teacher, Lee Moor who was on the course there.