Sunday 14 November 2010

Sunday 14th November 2010

School Reunions, are they a good thing or a bad thing???

I went to a school reunion last night, it was a twenty-five year reunion so I sort of guessed that a lot of people would have changed in the quarter century since we were at school.

It was held in the local football club clubhouse and was due to start at seven o'clock.
Well I didn't want to get there too early, so I went to the pub and watched a bit of the footy on the tele.
That was quite good as Liverpool got beat 2-0.

Anyway, at about eight I made my way to the football club and couldn't believe it when I walked in and saw only one person I recognised, and he had lost a hell of a lot of weight so I could have been mistaken had he not made a comment about my shoes being the same as my old school shoes.

I suppose they were in a way, except that my old school shoes were black and had laces on the sides whilst the ones I was wearing last night were blue with laces on the top (like most shoes do).

As the night went on and more and more people arrived it was interesting to see that some appeared to have aged well and some not so well. Some had aged pretty damn badly as it goes, but then some people can't be as lucky as others I suppose.
Some people were looking good and some not so.

I began to realise that, although I thought I recognised a lot of the people's faces I couldn't actually remember of any of their names.
Funnily enough, no one semed to recognise me either, which led to some very interesting chats, including one with a girl who 'reminded' me that we went to college on the same bus together 24 years ago. Strangely, I didn't remember this.

As the night went on and more and more alcohol was consumed, so more and more people seemed to remember who I was, but as I wasn't drinking my memory wasn't getting better as the evening went by.

It wasn't until the 'do' was nearly over that the first person I saw when I arrived, and the only person I really remembered, asked me why I hadn't gone to our own school reunion as he was only at this one, for the other school, because of his wife.............

Friday 12 November 2010

Friday 12th November

Wind is a funny thing really.
You can feel it and you can see the effects of it, but you can't see it.

Wind is a kind of energy, which is something that other scientists seem to have taken years to realise.
This is the reason we are only now seeing wind turbines sprouting up everywhere, because so-called scientists have realised that the wind can be harnessed, like a horse, and converted into electricity.
Don't ask me how that bit is done, when I invented the wind turbine and erected the first one on my garden about thirty five years ago, I got Dave the Sparky to wire it up.
It's great, the way Dave wired it up means that even when there is no wind it still keeps a-turning.

Anyway, the earliest form of wind power came from kites.

Kite have the ability to convert wind power into electricity and pass it throught the kite holders body and into the ground where it can be shared.

I found this out one evening in October when I was flying my HQ Infinity Lightwind and it got a bit close to some overhead power cables.
A funny thing happened, the wind speed seemed to increase as the kite hit the cables and the surge of electricity was remarkable.

Formula One designers know all about converting wind into energy.
It is a well known fact amongst the F1 fraternity that the teams that spent the most time in the wind tunnel were the teams that did the best.
This isn't because they get more testing done, oh no, it is because the longer the car stays in the wind tunnel the more energy goes into it and therefore it will go faster.

If you are driving in your car at 100mph, is the car full of wind, as the air in the car will be travelling at 100mph as well.
The weatherman on Sky said last night that 'Severe' winds of 80mph would be experienced over the UK overnight.
Well when I am in my car and I am travelling at 100mph then I am experiencing faster winds than your 'severe' winds matey and I don't get blown over.

And before you clever ones say that the wind in the car is not wind because it is a sealed container, well I have a convertible and the roof does not work so I have to drive everywhere with it down.

People often say that the oceans tides are governed by the phases of the moon.
This is poppycock, it is the wind that governs the tides.
When it is windier the tides go in and out faster, but I'll cover this when I write about Oceans and the Moon.