Still cold…

It has been particularly cold in Adelaide this winter. I like seasons, but it is high time for spring to come now, I reckon.

Despite all the hysterical hype from the climate alarmists, it is quite a bit colder these days that it was during the medieval warm period, which was quite a bit colder than the Roman warm period, which in turn was quite a bit colder than the Minoan warm period. That, at any rate, is the evidence of the Greenland Ice Sheet as reconstructed by Alley (2000) from GISP2 ice core data, shown here in blue:

None of this a surprise; these were periods when civilisation was particularly thriving – we all do better in nice weather.  Interestingly, the red line shows

All I want is a house somewhere…

I have bought a number of houses in my life, generally the process has been quite fun. This time – much less so.
What I want is a house on an acre or so that is not hemmed in by other houses, and which is not unspeakably ugly. It would not matter if it was a bit too small provided that there is some available space around it to extend it. I’m not been too fussy about where it is, as long as it is within striking distance of Adelaide.
Can I find it? Not so far, at any rate. And time is running out, with the settlement date

News

News.

Daytime Song

The French are not all bad, of course. I have still much affection for poor Hector Berlioz. Who in turn was something of an Anglophile. He added a manuscript quote from King Lear on the title page of The Symphonie fantastique:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

They kill us for their sport.

We know what you mean, Hector, we know what you mean.

Unusually for an orchestral composer, Hector’s personal instrument was not the piano, but the guitar. My beloved Bosendorfer, which I bought with the money I inherited from my mother when she died, is gone now: I had given it to my wife, never imagining that she would one day leave. But I still have my lute and my guitars.

Sometimes, I tune my guitars sometimes to lute tuning, such that the great mean (what is normally the G string of a guitar), is tuned down a semitone. Hence the song I wrote the other day, Daytime Song, which could not readily played in guitar tuning.

Goodbye to all that

Facebook has started sending me photographs of my wife’s lover cosying up to my wife. Ex wife.

No, I do not want that.

So I have deactivated my Facebook account.

Goodbye,

Some Blasted Heath (others will doubtless do likewise)

There has been a good deal in the news this week about allegations of child molestation by Sir Edward Heath.

It is impossible to know for sure if these allegations have any substance. There is an element of improbability about the whole thing; he was self-evidently such a prig and a prude that it is difficult to imagine him getting up to anything particularly salacious.And anyway, at the relevant time, the entourage around him would have made it virtually impossible for him to engage in anything particularly nefarious.

Since he is dead, Sir Edward is entirely unable to defend himself. Since the police have