Travelling Again

Tomorrow I shall be wending my way South again.  This time though I shall not be traveling via Los Angeles or Hong Kong but via Dubai and Australia.  I've been quite lucky given the chaos that transatlantic air travel is in as a result of Superstorm Sandy.  My loyalty to Air New Zealand has been interrupted by the fact that ANZ wanted almost twice as much as Emirates to get me from Scotland to New Zealand.  So tomorrow I shall fly to Glasgow

  

After a night spent with my friend Anna I shall set of for Napier on a different route to usual.

Hopefully I shall blog again before I leave.  If I don't then it will be Saturday before I arrive in Napier and have the opportunity to return to Blogland.

The Last Week

'Last' as in previous not as in this is, or that was, the last week (of our existence).  

Living my life as I do in two halves I have always found the last week or so of each life quite difficult.  It's not so much the packing because I usually only have a small amount of stuff to transport between my worlds.  I came back from NZ last time with a suitcase weighing 14k plus my 6k cabin bag. When I went to Italy this summer I had three cases (plus my laptop backpack etc) and all the other odds and ends.  There are so many other things to be taken care of from making sure the house, car and garden are set up for the winter and all the paperwork is done to saying goodbyes.

So the last week was sort of planned in my mind.  What I had not expected was last Monday and Tuesday being such wonderful days that I spent most of them in the garden doing, you guessed, gardening and outside house maintenance.   The rest of the week was a mixed bag though.

Upper Bayble across the valley from me - a valley filled with mist on a still and frosty morning

 and in a different light

From the kitchen window

No wind - that doesn't happen very often

Dew and spiders

The spider must have been dizzy when it had finished that untidy lot

The next day the weather started closing in

and the squalls came through running South down The Minch

and the snow showers came in squalls

followed by some sun

and then more squalls

and even more

Then the week ended.

Daylight Saving Time

CJ posted an interesting perspective on Daylight Saving Time - DST (which in Britain we call British Summer Time - BST) here.  That and the comments that had been published when I read the post together with the spooky fact that my central heating time clock re-set itself automatically (it was presumably taking its cue from the German radio-controlled clock that I have in the kitchen, made me think.  And, as my friends know, that is some achievement.

Why do we still persist with DST?  Who is 'we'?  I found the answer to the latter question (shown in the map) quite interesting.  I hadn't realised (until I read Meike's (Librarian) comment on CJ's post that Russia with it's 9 time zones didn't observe DST.  China doesn't either but I've never quite understood how China works things out given that it only has one official time even though it covers a massive five geographic time zones.

Why was DST introduced in Europe?  According to Wiki Summer Time was first introduced in some countries during the First World War, then largely abandoned with some exceptions, mostly during the Second World War, until the 1960s and 70s when the energy crisis prompted a wide scale re-introduction. The practice has been fully coordinated across the continent since 1996.

In the UK the arguments seem to revolve around children going to school and road safety.  That's purely a perception on my part  by the way I've done no research on the subject.  In many ways though the energy crisis would still be a relevant factor if it was relevant back in the 70s.

Here on Lewis BST makes relatively little difference because at midsummer we have sunrise around 0300 GMT and sunset around 2130 GMT but it's light(ish) all night anyway.

Anyway then I started thinking about New Zealand where I have heard a lot of discussion over recent years and where there are some wonderfully odd things as a result.

New Zealand time, including DST, is used by several Antarctic bases that are supplied from New Zealand. This results in the oddity that the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station sets its clocks an hour further ahead during the southern summer, when the sun is constantly above the horizon, than in the southern winter, when the sun is constantly below the horizon. The extreme geographic position of the base means that no possible adjustment of the daily activity cycle can have any effect on the amount of sunlight received during those activities. However, the arrangement presumably makes real time communications with New Zealand more practical, particularly in dealing with offices.

The New Zealand dependencies of Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue do not maintain DST. They are located on the other side of the International Date Line and differ between 22 and 24 hours from New Zealand proper.

The Time Has Come

I spent yesterday sorting out insurances, finances and all the other stuff which those of my generation still refer to as paperwork but which involves relatively little paperwork these days.  This day and age it means spending the day on the computer setting up, altering, and generally juggling with websites and then ringing help lines to confirm things (usually your identity).  I've also discovered that having set up various accounts for various things one then has to print off forms, complete them and then post them off "so that we have a real signature".  Eh?  I thought the purpose of having to do it all on line was.....oh, never mind.  So I have a little pile of letters for the post this morning to show for a whole days spent on the computer and phone.  C'est la vie.  Ce qui est, je crois, meilleure que l'alternative.

However there was a real highlight to the day.

Earlier in the month I had a young male Sparrowhawk in the garden - The Hunter Hunted.  So  when I looked up from making a cup of coffee yesterday afternoon I was delighted to see a pair of raptors flying across the crofts between me and the sea.  The camera was two feet from my hand and within seconds was switched on and pointed through the kitchen window.  I managed three shots before they had flown out of range.  One of them was usable for identification:

I was puzzled, however, because my initial reaction  was they were Kestrels but I couldn't recall seeing a Kestrel here before.  So I consulted an expert, Steve Duffield of Western Isles Wildlife whom I'd previously in touch with about.........WHAT!!  (exclamation marks not ?s on purpose).  I'd been in touch with him about a Kestrel which I'd positively identified and blogged about in July in a post   pithily entitled Kestrel on Lewis.

I definitely need a rest.  Either that or.....no, I don't want to think about it.