When I left the house for the gym this morning, it was overcast and gloomy. When I arrived at the gym the sky was blue and the sun was beaming over everything. By the time I left the gym the clouds had returned. This weather changing continued for most of the morning.
The Met Bureau was predicting stormy weather after lunch so Mirinda decided to take the girls for an early walk. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Emma doesn’t insist on her usual post lunch walk. The fact that it was pouring with rain from about 1pm also didn’t seem to concern her.
Eventually the rain drifted off though not before keeping up the drenching for quite a few hours. It’s odd that on a day of torrential rain, NASA launched a solar satellite at the sun to measure solar activity.
The satellite, partly funded by the UK, has a remarkable sunscreen. It is made from something called bone char. Bone char is made from the ground up bones of cows. It makes an excellent heat resistant shield. The bone char used by the satellite was made by Irish company, Enbio.
While that is amazing, more amazing is its other uses.
It used to be used in the refining of sugar. It was also used by 18th and 19th century soldiers to treat the leather in their uniforms. Petroleum jelly is made with bone char refining the crude oil. More can be learned about bone char by visiting Wikipedia.
What I want to know is who was the first person to work out you could refine sugar with crushed cow bones. It’s not the first thing that springs to mind.
The bones which made up the remains of last night’s dinner, while not being very effective as a Factor 30, were soon bubbling away in the slow cooker. This is to make Persian chicken flavoured bone broth and not to protect us from the rays of the sun.
Prick of the Week
Noticed in Castle Street this morning, a food delivery truck.
Not immediately obvious from the photo is the fact that he is parked across a dropped kerb. While this inconveniences anyone in a wheelchair or with a stroller or shopping trolley, he has excelled himself by also inconveniencing anyone wishing to catch the bus.
Anyone waiting at the bus stop would not be able to see it, let alone signal the driver. Not to mention the fact that the bus would have to stop in the middle of the road.
In order to gain maximum points, the driver has managed to block a 4×4 which is parked just beyond the dropped kerb in a legal parking space. He is also ensuring that two way traffic is quite difficult for anything wider than a mini.
He’s making a delivery to Bill’s, which is marked by the orange awnings to the left of the photo. I wonder why he didn’t just pull up and double park outside the restaurant but I guess that would have spoiled his 100% Prickishness.
