Use By....

This morning I had, in the fridge, a small amount of milk left in a 1.1 litre plastic container it was supplied in. It was labelled 'Use By 2 Jan'.  I've been using it until today and it smelt okay but then I've just had a dose of not being able to smell anything. So I disposed of it down the sink. That's not good because milk is quite a pollutant.

I was eating my banana and muesli quite happily with the fresh milk when I was informed on the news that the supermarket chain Morrisons is to replace the  'Use By' date on milk with a 'Best Before' date.

Doubtless other supermarkets will all follow suit. I hope so. In any case I will now continue to rely on the smell test.

This has made me think about milk in glass bottles and delivery of milk to the doorstep both of which were common when I was a child. Perhaps another post in due course. 

In the meantime I hanker for the days when the bluetits used to peck through the milk bottle top and drink the cream floating at the top.

SID 18 Busy Skies

Gaz, C and B are on their was home. As I write this they are above the Indian Ocean just over half way between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. It is one of the wonders of modern science that I can open my phone and find out where a plane is on a live map. Anyone who often picks up people from planes knows how unreliable airport sites are with their arrival and departure information. However, if I can see that a flight is in the middle of The Minch on it's way to Stornoway then I know exactly when to leave home so that I will be at the airport at the correct time.

So I shall track their progress across the globe until they land in Glasgow and are safe and sound on Scottish soil. 

When I took the screenshot to the right they were half way across the Australian outback. Their plane is the little red one with the route shown. 

However what really struck me was that with every airline apparently closed down what are all these planes doing in the sky? 

Lots of them will be cargo planes but lots will not. I thought the numbers flying over China and the Far East in particular was particularly interesting . I know from Marcheline that the skies over the US are almost empty. Which made me realise that if there are that many planes when the skies are 'empty' how many are there usually. Actually looking at the pictures now (10:04) London airport looks quite busy and the Frankfurt to Los Angeles flight is somewhere above me. It suddenly brought it home to me that if this is the 'empty skies' level of aircraft pollution what is the 'normal' level. Somehow my academic knowledge had not computed with my perceived knowledge. In short there is one helluva lot of planes up there and, therefore, one helluva lot of pollution.

Another Place

In September Yorkshire Pudding ventured into the alien territory of the Red Rose and one of the results was a rather moving poem  about the Antony Gormley figures at Crosby beach. 

I spent a lot of my youthly social life in Crosby. Amongst other friends was a friend with whom I had a particular affinity who lived with his parents in one of the splendid villas which now look out over the Gormley sculptures:

It was some years since I had been there but my brother and sister-in-law were keen to go earlier in the week. It was a spur of the moment decision when we were in Birkenhead near the Mersey Tunnel and we didn't think to check on the state of the tide.

The sculpture entitled 'Another Place' consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometres of the foreshore, stretching almost one kilometre out to sea. I saw it when the tide was out and it was amazing although I don't think all the original figures were visible even then and they certainly weren't this visit. Having said that there are more in the photo below than one can see at first glance although I had the advantage of the original photo and a digital loupe.

What saddened me though was the huge amount of detritus lining the water mark: