Grit in the Gears

I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.

Friday, 27 November 2009

In My Own Time...

Happy Solstice.....

Today is the winter solstice.
Today, at 17:47 GMT, the northern pole of the axis of the earth's rotation is pointed the furthest away from the sun. I apologise for the clumsy nature of my explanation. If you google winter solstice, I'm sure you'll find articulate astronomommerists explaining it better.

It was a festival, signifying the point of the year when the days no longer became shorter, and instead start to lengthen, it's truly the end of one year, start of another, depite the fact that our calendar's a bit out of synch. The Christian church mysteriously chose to hold its major festivals at the same time as the pagans held theirs, the choice of the 25th december to celebrate Jesus' birth is not underpinned by any date evidence in the bible.
(As far as I can determine, the bible scholars pin his birth to mid-september 2 B.C.)