Baby see camera?

Baby see camera?, originally uploaded by Kong_.

Had another wonderful time at Kew today. Funny - so many people concentrate on the planes (Kew being under the Heathrow flight path) but for me the great metal just adds to the drama, especially on a cloudy day like today, when the beasts shot forth from gloom with a hopeful radar winking.

"Pichincha" by Kongsized

I never know what to call my tracks.  It's the sounds that count.  But for what it's worth, this one's named after a volcano in Ecuador.

Pichincha by kongsized

Peter Logan - bits of metal bits

We went to Fulham Palace this morning. As well as a restaurant, coffee shop and BBQ marquee, and currently a bit of earthwork, they have there a sculpture trail by Peter Logan.


Peter Logan sculpture, originally uploaded by Kong_.

I think it was only meant to be there for a year. The sculptures are mounted on stumps amongst the wreckage of a hurricane gone by but, on the face of it, bits of ladders and stuff welded together aren't the most exciting thing. And the photo doesn't do it any favours. But there's something beautiful in their silent and frictionless motion, twirling in the whispering wind.

We had a coffee with all the other parents, and Leo stole someone else's ball, chased a frisbee, put three cups in the bin, climbed a wreckless rose frame, and twice took our hands to lead us across the lawn for a look through the gate into a secret garden.

A fixture card from a banded pile

When I was much younger. news of the football fixtures would snake round the fans slowly, tasting the air with a leisurely tongue. It really didn't matter that much who you started the season against, or who you played last. You went along and bought the programme and found out about your opponents on the day.

But no longer. The 2011/12 fixtures were released today at 0900 and, without any effort on my part -as I'd forgotten that today was The Day - the full list was emailed to me by a mate at 0926. Palace had been promoting an 'exclusive' find-out-first premium SMS service but really, haven't those days gone? No sooner are the fixtures announced than they're on websites, Twitter, Facebook, texted to contacts, salivated over on blogs, emailed round...

When I was much younger my dad used to give me a coin and send me off down the road to ask Mr Patel to peel off a fixture list from his banded pile. It was made of thin card, folded, wallet-sized, and available from the counters of newsagents all over South London. Mr Patel also ran a VHS rental club from which I hired the full-length Thriller video.

I wondered today whether the newspapers of the time published the fixtures themselves, because why else would dad ask me to buy this treasured card? Perhaps it was because the sports pages were much, much smaller then - no room on a single back page for pundits and pictures and gossip and fixtures and tactics and boardrooms and finances. Perhaps it was because football wasn't the media darling it is today, so the papers reported it grudgingly - I grew up in the time when football was a hooligan sport, with Chelsea smilers, terraces, fencing and ID cards.

But maybe it was just so I could feel brave and proud and excited and trusted at going round the shop with his money to buy something that mattered to him.

Softball: RNID 45 Royal Geographical Society 20

Victory, victory, the sweet sweet smell of victory! What an enjoyable game, and my first win in THREE SEASONS!!! Great to see Fi and Hawkeye again - it's been too long.

Everyone played well; Semhar had to bat twice cos we only had three girls, we found a good short-stop in the shape of the Bull, and Martin, Hawkeye and especially Andy battered the ball out of sight. We scored 31 in our second innings and managed to avoid our usual third-innings collapse.

The Royal Geographical Society managed not only to navigate their way round the bases (boom boom) but were also superb opponents, even in defeat - friendly, generous and sensible. The toxic whiff from last week has blown away.

Next week: Alzheimers UK.

Harmonographs

They've got some fantastic images produced by a harmonograph in the Science Museum's mathematics section. They're a bit like spirograph patterns, but they're produced using a set of pendulums. A harmonograph looks easy enough to make.

The harmonograph is to me a very 'whole brain' device, using physics to produce extraordinary geometric shapes which describe the very heart of growth patterns in nature, and which can then be mathematically described.

There are lots of interesting harmonograph images on the internet, including this one:

This harmonograph pattern was photographed by Conor Lawless and originally appears in his Flickr photostream

The maths section also has a set of John Napier's bones, which are just one of his contributions to the simplification of maths. The 'bones' are an abacus-style set of multiplication tables, which massively simplify the multiplication and division of large numbers.

We all love the Science Museum!

Piled high like a cricket umpire

One of the things about kids is that, no matter how cute or gorgeous they are, they aren't complete without piles of stuff. When Leo was young this meant thermometers, medicines, detergents, babygros, nappies, muslins, skin-soothing lotions, bottles, teats, fluids, powders and measuring equipment - but these days it's just piles and piles and piles of food. He eats more at lunchtime than I do - little boxes of snacks, breadsticks, crackers, grapes, veggies, sandwiches, his drink, a muesli bar, banana, apple...

Couple the weight of all this grub with the fact of me invariably having to 'hang on to' our toddler backpack, Leo's bag, Leo's monkey harness, Rach's oystercard, Rach's phone, Rach's purse, Rach's psyche, my bag, my camera, any suitcases or wheelie bags that our guests need lugging, and any excess clothing that I or she may have been foolish enough to wear, and I've become the Dickie Bird of fatherhood, accumulating jumpers, hats and bags in a sweaty pile whilst those around me have fun jumping and throwing balls and catching and stuff.

As a lad watching test cricket on TV, I seem to remember the umpires ending sessions piled high with players' clothing, as a cold 11am at Old Trafford gave way to an unexpectedly hot Lancashire lunchtime. On reflection it's clear that the bulge around David Shepherd's midriff wasn't entirely a consequence of him 'layering up', but it was a fact of the game back then - you got hot, you took off your jumper and you gave it to the ump; and if you were a fast bowler charging in from the boundary you probably gave him your hat to wear, too, at least during your spell.

These days it's much rarer to see the umpires dressed up like hot snowmen. Advances in clothing technology have resulted in players wearing skin-hugging thermal micro-layers beneath their kit, 'cool when it's hot, hot when it's cool'-type fabric. The fact that they're generally a 'base layer' means that they're rather delicate to remove in public, and as such we're unlikely to be one day reminiscing about the time Chris Gayle handed Billy Bowden his sweaty lycra knickers mid-session.

If only the same could be said of Leo 'Take. Nappy. Off?' King.

Softball: RNID 10 The Brooke 29

RNID lost their first game of the season tonight.

I've been playing softball for my charity for four seasons now, ever since I was asked to play by the awfully nice Simon Hawkins. At the time I hadn't played team sport for about twenty years, and had only memories of being picked next-to-last for the class team on account of my technical inability, gangly discoordination, and thick spectacles.

Anyway, three seasons on, having sustained a little injury or two - like the photo, left, from 2008 - and with a bit of piss and vinegar in my sails, I've developed into an ace fielder, a decent batter and a sometime pitcher. As vice-captain I now have to help organise and cajole the team, arrange fixtures, and cope with the weather, which this season has been particularly tough: our first two league fixtures were called off due to wet weather. This hasn't happened in consecutive weeks since I started playing.

Anyway, finally, our season started tonight. I missed the game because it was Rach's birthday, and I was doing the partnerly thing, which would usually be a great omen for the side - in 2009 AND 2010, when I was sick and on holiday respectively, the team won.

But tonight bucked that trend; we lost 29-10 to The Brooke, and unfortunately it sounded like a fairly unenjoyable game.

Game two is up next Tuesday.

Auckland vs London pt3: Rain

It's raining in London, and has been for about five hours.

This otherwise unremarkable fact is given new life by a much more remarkable fact: it's been the driest Spring in the South East of England for over a century. Information like this usually prompts people to bleat 'climate change' in the same way that, come April, they start optimistically parroting the media's 'Barbecue Summer!!!' predictions, and then trot out another line come the first hint of cloud: 'that's it, we've had our Summer!!!'.

The regular reader of this blog will understand that I have no truck with such nonsense. Here instead, and continuing my now-sporadic series of comparisons of the weather in London and Auckland, are the facts about rainfall, accompanied by this posh chart:




Auckland (in blue) is WET!!  Wetter than I could have imagined.  There's so much blue on that chart, it's like a tsunami of rain gushing mightily over the meek cracked earth of London.  I almost feel sorry for London's tiny red defences as it struggles to cope and starts baling furiously with a saucepan.

One of the clichés about Blighty is that it rains a lot (...another cliché being that English people talk about nothing but the weather...), but this little gem of research betrays that as being poppycock and balderdash.  London is much drier than Auckland, all year round.  At certain times of the year it's three times as dry.  I should imagine this Spring is drier in London by many multiples.

So, we've found out so far that Auckland is (1) sunnier, (2) hotter and now (3) wetter. London is so middle-of-the-road, it's embarrassing.  I won't even mention the fact that Auckland is (4) funkily volcanic.

I need to ditch my tweed coat and get a wetsuit with a sunroof.