Hey Blog! For a few weeks, I’ve been crafting and making every day I can, both in an attempt to increase my productivity and as one of my favourite things to do.

I have always been very much on the production side of things. Admittedly I sometimes tend more towards destruction – I once took an axe to some perfectly serviceable pieces of wood to make them look more, well, axe-cut and rustic; and at other times have dug very deep holes, possibly as a mine shaft or a dinosaur excavation. But whenever I’m not doing that, I like making – whatever it may be. I have told you of my wood turning exploits, and that I do sewing, and baking, and watching “The Great British” of these things, but these have not been all brought together under a collective subject on HEIAS before.

This seems a good point to mention that I am very interested in heritage crafts, and indeed all crafts; and this may one day be a career choice or at least a permanent hobby. However, at present I have a pride that everything I create, be it copies of the Rings of Power or a crochet stick, is entirely hand-made and done using simple tools without specialist equipment, yet are things of beauty and fine make. What I make on the lathe is slightly more advanced as it requires a carefully designed machine, and the pokers I made at High Peak Junction (Home Ed at the Forge, 6^th Jan 2024*) are even more specialist. Most unfortunately, I do not have a readily available forge at home, the correct PPE for dealing with close to 1000°C temperatures, nor the iron/steel to use, so I cannot replicate this craft.

Heritage Crafts (https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk) have a list of over 250 recognised crafts they support, and many of those are on the Red List – endangered crafts which need more people participating to pass on the skills. I do not know yet which of these I would most like to pursue – if any – but it’s good to know there are people who are preserving this valuable cultural, productional, and fast-vanishing knowledge.

Last week I did 5 different types of making, one on each day – not counting weekends – and here they are:

Monday. Knitting. This is a birthday present, so I can’t say any more here, but it’s half finished now and looks fantastic! It has also been a good reminder of knitting, as I had almost forgotten a few of the techniques – but the muscle memory survives even when the conscious memory does not. When this project is finished I will need to make a point to find another to work on.

Tuesday. Crochet. Still doing the squares, and it is looking like the full blanket may take several years to complete at this rate – sorry! I need to keep going and get a lot more squares done.

Wednesday: Wood turning. This time I made a needle case out of some of the yew wood we have. It isn’t the best ever needle case I’ve made, but was a good practice – it is very difficult to get the thickness right!

Thursday: Baking. My most practiced recipe – shortbread biscuits. They are blimin’ lovely if I do say so myself. I’m doing baking as my skills section for DofE, so this shows how I started – and now I just need to improve. What’s for pudding next week? Any suggestions?

Friday: Chain Mail. I know what you’re thinking – “But Kit, you just said you don’t have a forge. How can you make chain mail without one; unless you have the chain rings all made already – and even then you still need particular tools for riveting together?” Well, yes. It’s not particularly strong, since it’s made of aluminium – this is ring pull chain mail. While it might not stop arrows fired from the longbow I’m making down in the garage, this does look the part and is beautifully shiny. A huge thanks to my friends, one for suggesting the idea and another for providing some additional ring pulls. Now I just have to work out a method of soldering them shut to make it even more secure…

There are many crafts that I haven’t even heard of, and I’m sure I will have a go at many of them. I feel like I dabble in them all – a “Jack of all trades, master of none” situation – but, as the proverb closes “though oftentimes better than master of one!”

* – this also has a short paragraph on my making up to that point so you can ‘compare and contrast’ how far I have come

Hey Blog! Last week I took the train on four out of the five days, so that’s what I’ve written about this week!

“Platform 1, for the Home Ed in a Shed Railway Journey to Understanding Train Travel. This service is currently on time, calling at…”

At the start of this journey into the railway, we must go back to the very beginning. The first trains were steam trains, running on a steam engine, in the industrial revolution. This engine used the pressure of boiled steam to push a shaft that turned the wheels, and while they didn’t go as fast as modern trains, they were faster than anything at the time – or HS2 nowadays! At approximately 30mph, this was a new and exiting mode of travel, and though there were accidents, on the whole it was safer, more efficient, and a lot faster – even if it was incredibly polluting, as it was coal-powered, but then they didn’t know that then. A railway craze developed – as it had with the canals, perhaps a century before, steam travel expanded and thousands of miles of track were laid. But unlike the canals, these have outlasted time and automobiles, and are still used today.

In the present day, train travel has come a long way. We have bullet trains in Japan – developed using bioengineering, with the shape of the kingfisher’s beak inspiring the shape of the front of the train to reduce noise pollution. There are Eurostar trains underneath the English Channel – admittedly not the widest stretch of water, but still an immense achievement, since the tunnel met perfectly in the middle. There are Subway, Underground, and Metro trains underneath cities – impressive that there are all these lines, none of which interfere with foundations, underneath thousands of people who walk unthinking over them. Some places have trains which go up mountainsides, some have trains on great viaducts which cross valleys, we have trains under and over the earth, sea and sky.

I live on a little branch line, which once was a major line of the Midland Railway Co. but is no more. The closest station to me was one of only three triangular stations in the country – stations where there are three platforms in a triangle which can go three different ways. In some ways it is slightly annoying that the fast trains do not run through on to Shefield any more as then we could go a lot more places without having to change, but it is nice that it is quiet. Beyond the end of the line are the trails where trains use to run, but now are for walking and biking, not the Iron Horse. We used to take the train almost every day, but through covid and then after we got used to walking places and took a long time to go back to the train. However, we are almost back to normal levels now, so that’s good. Special train journeys we have made include taking the Eurostar to Paris, the Sleeper to Orkney, besides going to London, York, Shefield and other cities, which happens about once a month. I like taking the train, and it is certainly a very pleasant method of transportation – hopefully we will continue to be able to travel for a long time!

“Platform 1, for the Home Ed in a Shed Railway Journey to Understanding Train Travel. This service is delayed, and now expected to depart at…”

Yes, I know!

Rail travel has inspired many a poem or novel: This is the Night Mail is one of my favourite poems, with fantastic rhythm and amusing yet totally believable imagery, and of course the perfect romantic send-off involves a handkerchief waving from a train window as the couple are separated until the rendezvous sometime in the denouement. I have just contributed some little lines to this (pun on rail lines) which I hope you enjoy, and when you next take the train, think of how much this form of travel has influenced the world.

Chugatobuum, Chugatobuum, Chugatobuum, Chugatobuum…

Hey Blog! To start 2025, I’m going to give you another book review.

This post’s book is a bit older than most of the ones I have reviewed recently, and is by poet laureate and author John Masefield. Not only was he a brilliant poet (his poem Sea Fever is one of my favourites) he was also a good children’s author in the relatively young genre of fantasy. This was a rather new idea in fiction at the time – when it was written, Tolkien would not have changed the world of literature with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and while the Victorian era had had a trial with fantasy via Alice in Wonderland, it was not a well-established genre. Masefield wrote two children’s books, The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, the former a tale of treasure hunting, witchcraft, the power of memory and the mysterious Midnight Folk; the latter a book of darker magic, kidnapping and a box of incredible and unexhausted powers. It is the latter that I will review, as it is set in the week before Christmas, and Christmas plays an important part in the plot. While this year that time is past, opening the Box can allow you to travel through the past (and possibly the future – see the last post!), so I don’t think it matters.

Another good story starts on a train. Well, don’t they all?! In this case, Kay Harker is traveling home for the holidays, and makes the acquaintance of both the wandering magician and performer, Cole Hawlings, and the two unsettling curates with mind-reading powers, surprisingly lucky card tricks and successful pocket-picking abilities. After producing a ticket when Kay has lost his, and then disembarking the train at the same station as Kay, Cole gives him a task – to warn the Lady with the Ring that the Wolves are Running once again (Note – this feels very much like the warning that the Dark, the Dark is Rising!). After passing the message on, and coming home, Kay invites Cole to do a short (but magnificent!) performance, after which the strange couple from the train arrive to find him, this time with a third man, Abner Brown, a dark wizard from The Midnight Folk who seeks Cole, power, and treasure. It seems Cole has broken through their ring and plans to escape “with the goods on him”, and is carrying something of great importance. Moreover, he is being assisted by the Lady and Herne the Hunter, the three of them all bearing rings with “the longways cross in gold and garnets”. No sooner have Abner and his cronies arrived than Cole pulls off a trick by which he can step into a painting, escaping them once again (wouldn’t I just love to be able to do things like that!). Then, that night, Cole summons Kay to King Arthur’s Camp hill to entrust him with the thing Abner wants: the Box of Delights, crafted by Master Arnold and in the guardianship of Cole to protect till Arnold comes back out of the old time. Kay is sent back home by the Box with the task to keep it safe from all, but above all from Abner’s gang. Can he keep it safe over Christmas?!

It is certainly a brilliant story. I got it in a stocking several years ago, devoured it, and loved it, and it still lives on the bookcase under my bed. I don’t think anything is quite like it; the idea of a group of people trying to smuggle a powerful magical object through a net of people looking for it has been used, as has the ability to shrink, fly, and see through time; but this goes further, building a world of Christmas, various folklore, friendly mice and rats, and through it all two rival powers seeking to gain a seemingly unremarkable but in fact wonderous box. Oh, and it also has a bunch of gangsters dressed as clergymen, all headed by a wizard; and a group consisting of an old showman, a half-stag-half-man, and an old woman who lives in an oak tree, who are aided by a boy unaware of all the box can do – I would love to know how Masefield came up with this! Besides the story in itself, it has been an inspiration for many, so its reach has spread through literature. One day I need to write a thesis on how children’s fiction literature is inspired by earlier novels and all goes back to some source, probably King Arthur. And then I’m trying to work out how all these books fit with one another, into one multi-faceted literatureverse. But however you respond to The Box of Delights, it is a very good Christmasy, magical, and cleverly written book, as relevant now as when it was written: although some of the more old-fashioned bits may not be present in the modern time, the thought of wolves remaining in hidden hills and an entire cathedral choir being scrobbled in a bus are just as interesting now!

The BBC made a series of the book some time in the 70s or 80s; we found it the other night and have been watching it. Although some of the lines from the book are rearranged, it is very good as it hasn’t left any of the plot out so far (we’re on the third episode) and I like the visual effects; more reachable than modern films and yet realistic. There are still several episodes to go so I will have to get round to watching them at some point.

While writing this post, I realised I had been interested by the gold and garnet rings when I first read the book, before I even started on The Hobbit. I even made some copies with the shiny paper. Interesting, because when I did get into Tolkien, I used real copper wire and coloured glass pebbles to make some of the rings of power. I generally make something from the stories I read, e.g. a carved staff, a clubhouse (the shed, even though I have had no club meetings there yet), a box of spy gear, and several wands, so it’s not surprising that The Box of Delights received the same respect. What could be next, I wonder?

Hey Blog! As it’s the end of the year, and it seems as if this year has gone even faster than the one before, I started thinking about time – and therefore, it is ‘time’ to share it with you!

Most people do not consciously think too much about time. Animals likewise – apart from knowing when to get up, when to go places, when to eat and drink, or when to go to sleep again, it’s unlikely that animals bother too much consciously considering time. Some animals do need to use time seasonally, of course: mating, migrating, and hibernating, or in humans, cultivating; all are seasonal activities which we need to know the time for. But while almost every animal has an inbuilt body-clock, or sometimes multiple clocks, these are mostly below the level where we can consciously rely on them. Humans are probably the only animal which records time externally, and the best example to start with is a clock.

A clock doesn’t actually measure the flow of time – nothing can. All we can measure is how something else is affected by the passage of time. In the case of a battery-powered clock we are using the stored energy in the batteries to turn a second, minute and hour hand, and because the clock’s own mechanism regulates how much energy is released at once, we can set the hands to move at a constant rate which means that, if each hour is the same length, we can measure how much time has passed. If I took your clock off the wall and manually moved the hour hand forwards one hour, it doesn’t mean that the very time of day has changed – only the time recorded by that clock. Even if I hacked the supercomputers, changed the time on every single time-keeping device in the world, I still wouldn’t have changed time – though I might have wreaked havoc world-wide as deadlines, emails, meetings and birthday parties would have been moved ahead according to the clock!

While I can’t literally alter time, I can record its passage in many ways. For instance, grandfather clocks, which have to be wound up, use a complex system of levers, bars and weights to move the hands and prevent the winding weight from falling instantly. Alternatively, quartz clocks are run on the interaction between electrical impulses and quartz crystals. The quartz sends a constant-rate impulse when you put a charge through it, which means we can measure how much is released and how fast and thus run time off that. Ancient Egyptian water clocks had a small hole which the water drained from, and how much drained in a single night meant you could fill it up once a day and determine the time after that from markings on the walls. Candle clocks use a set length of candle and a known length of time it takes to burn, combined with markings on the side like water clocks by which you can read how long it has been burning and thus the time. In theory, you could measure time by any means whereby a constant rate of change has occurred over a long period combined with a scale to mark its passage.

You will probably have noticed in that last paragraph that time is, quite simply, a rate of how long it takes to do things. As I read in a book once, “What is time but motion?” Taking time as a measure of motion, or any process, you could record time by how long it takes for me to write this blog, but since sometimes it takes forty minutes to finish a post and sometimes takes three hours, I don’t think it’s a very consistent scale!

Time can, as we have seen, be measured by different scales. However, these differ drastically depending on the time we want to reference. Oddly, light years are not a measure of time but of distance, because they are how far light can travel in a year. That is, one Earth year – a Mercury year is shorter than a Mercury day, for instance – but a Mercury day is longer than an Earth day. However, this doesn’t even cover how space and time interact. The esteemed Albert Einstein was an expert at this, and he formulated the two Theories of Relativity. Special relativity is, to put it extremely simply, that the laws of physics always apply; that the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same; and the formula E=mc², which means that essentially, mass and energy are the same thing. However, General Relativity is the theory that space and time are intertwined in a universal blanket known as spacetime, which the existence of mass bends to create gravity. Thus, if objects can be spatially affected by gravity, they can also be affected timewise. The discovery of the whole spacetime continuum is an incredible feat of theorising, reasoning, and endless calculations. And it also offers time travel scientists both a possible line of inquiry and a good thing to use to explain everything (like archaeologists and “ritual”!).

Speaking of time travel… this is a very strange field of research. No one has yet proven it is possible – but absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. It is speculated that were you to circle a black hole, you would see yourself going round on the other side, in the past (or maybe in the future) – because the immense gravity of the black hole has warped the time element so much that you could see yourself in the past (or the future). I once personally formulated a theory that if you go faster than the speed of light you go either backwards or forwards through time – but this is impossible, since the speed of light in a vacuum is the fastest thing that can ever be. One clue that someone has developed a time machine is that time travel is illegal in China. Yes, there is a law which means you could go to jail if you used time travel. Admittedly this is unlikely to ever be implemented, but then again…

Authors have also used this as a major plot device. While I have never watched Doctor Who (in fact, the list of movies and TV shows I have watched is very low overall; I primarily devote time to history/wildlife documentaries) I have read The Dark Is Rising and a few similar books. What I have gleaned from this is: time travel is a more complex plot device than you might think. To do it properly and believably (at least to me), I would have to conform to the rules of physics or else blur it over with a lot of sparkly effects. And that is not even incorporating whether going back in time means you can change the past, thus changing the future (the present); or creating a parallel, alternate world; or whether you can’t go back at all, just forwards. Just don’t mess with tales of the fairies – if they whisk you away, you may return in a hundred years after being away only a few minutes. A bit like me with books, only much, much more severe!

I will leave you with two paradoxes. Firstly:

A young man discovers a time machine. He uses it to visit the past, and see his grandparents who he never met. Unfortunately, a tragic series of accidents means he manages to kill his grandfather simply by appearing in the past. By killing him, his parent cannot be born, and thus he cannot be. Therefore, he cannot go back in time and kill his grandfather. Therefore, his grandfather does not die, has a child and subsequent grandchild who finds a time machine, and so on…

A young woman discovers a time machine. She goes back in time and manages to crash the machine, and is stuck in the past. She meets a young man, and they go on to get married and have a child. This child looks just like her… then she realises that events are happening just as they were when she was a girl, before she went back to the past. That’s when her daughter disappears, in a time machine, to go back to the past, to become her. So where did she come from? Which time is real?

Ultimately, if time travel is real, it would mean there is no past, no present and no future. As once written on a sundial, “Time is, time was, time is not.”

• Editor (Mum)’s note: It would be a lot simpler if you just said, “Time travel. It’s very complicated. Happy new year!”

Which brings me to my conclusion. I hope you had a good 2024 and will have an excellent Happy New Year of 2025!

Hey Blog! Apologies for not posting for the last few weeks, it’s been busy this year though I really should have made more time for Home Ed in a Shed. However, earlier in December, I visited Kenilworth castle, and the week before that was the archaeology Christmas Party session, and so together those two are the inspiration for what I’ll be talking about today!

Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) is something I have written about a lot; archaeology is one of my big interests. Every year, there is a Christmas party, which is mostly fun and games with a few bits of learning mixed in. It has an optional dress code where some of the members come in a historical costume, which has made for a peculiar gathering which looks like a whole load of time-travellers have appeared in the same room together – everyone from the Stone Age to the Second World War – and is a brilliantly fun event. Some people don’t come from the past, but there is usually a small collection of history. Some of my past costumes have been Viking, Tudor, Anglo-Saxon, but this year I decided to get together with a friend who goes and make a joint costume. It all began with our surnames.

Mine is Bailey – probably a derogative of bailiff, one of the officials who served a lord of the manor and his knights. This friend’s surname is Wilmott – I do not know it’s etymology, but the last half – mott – provided a silly joke that we were mott and bailey (you know, like the early Norman style of castle called a motte and bailey) and perhaps we should go as a castle. She liked the idea, and so we arranged a day to meet up and create some gigantic cardboard hats!

I called on my resident senior structural engineer (AKA Dad – he is quite knowledgeable on stuff like this) and put forward my castle designs. Unlike real castles, their primary purpose was not to be strong enough to stand up to a battering ram, big enough to hold an entire community during a time of war, or almost indestructible so an attacking army couldn’t break the walls. They did, however, need to fulfil one function of castles – to look impressive! My original idea was to make them from big disks of cardboard, fill papier-mache around in places, then put a lollipop fence and houses on the top, as well as having a large keep embedded in the taller, motte hat. And that’s more or less how it was made!

We ditched the lollipops for cardboard for reasons of weight – having half a tonne of wood balanced on your head is never a particularly good example to set at a children’s group! – and used paint rather than model railway resin on the duck pond, as it was easier and cheaper to do. I marked stones on the donjon or keep with Sharpie, and we finished off the two separate hats with a reinforced cardboard bridge balanced in place once we had both put the hats on. It did look amazing and we had quite a laugh – and I’m currently thinking about what we’re going to go as next year!

A week or so after the party, I met up with family at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. This is a very famous castle – it is one that King John invested in and then ceded to the barons under the Magna Carta; it is where the Hundred Years War’s second phase started, which led to Henry V’s victory at Agincourt (see King Henry V, scene III); where Robert Dudley tried to persuade Elizabeth I to marry him (he failed); it was held by royalists and slighted by parliamentarians in the civil war (which is an AWFUL waste of a castle!!!); and was a home for hundreds of people from its building in the 1100s to its current existence in the present day. Now it is an English Heritage castle, which means it is in good hands and is being looked after, after centuries of looking after other people within its walls. I certainly recommend it – you can still go up inside the castle proper, and some of the rooms still exist! The gatehouse was little damaged, so it has remained a residence till the last century, and is now a museum, the gardens are beautiful (even if it was winter and so there was not much when we visited), and the views are stunning. Also, it has an excellent little café in the bailey, so be sure to try some of the cake!

Merry Christmas!!!

Hey Blog! On Friday morning, I received a book of Christmas carol sheet music in my advent calendar, which inspired me to write about these festive tunes!

Who doesn’t love a carol? Well, Scrooge obviously, but apart from him? Sitting down after a huge Christmas dinner letting the pudding go down, with carols on in the background and being able to sing along is a wonderful feeling to experience. They are a staple of modern Christmas traditions, and have existed for hundreds of years. The idea of singing to show celebration is an idea as old as human beings, and all cultures have songs for festivities, but the journey of the modern Christmas carol is a more identifiable story.

‘Carol’ actually means a type of dance. ‘Carol’ the type of song began as the tune you danced a carol to, and over time with blurring etymology, the same word was used for both and then only the tune. Some carols, like The Holly and the Ivy are ancient indeed, so old no one can remember who wrote them or when – and very probably this was before Christmas was even celebrated. Others, such as Hark the Herald Angels Sing, are comparatively modern, written in the 1800s. And in the future, perhaps very modern songs, for instance Last Christmas I gave you my Heart could also feature on this timeless list. Actually, wait, it already does…

The carols people hear today are generally recorded versions, or perhaps you hear them at church or a Christmas concert. The tradition of carol singers is dying out – which unfortunately kind of invalidates the second verse of We wish you a Merry Christmas – and unless you are a singer or learn an instrument most people don’t participate in making the music of carols. I am lucky and have a piano, which, when Christmas is in the air (even though I’m not walking in it) or it’s a silent night, I can just start to play. And if you listen and find your mind drifting away in a manger or reminiscing about once when you went to royal David’s city, or look out the window and see, amid the winter snow that there’s a robin on the bird table, and then the clock will strike ding dong, merrily on high to say it’s time to go to bed, and of course the only thing to say is “God rest ye merry gentlemen!” before snuggling under the covers. But then of course you’ll wake up and realise that it’s come upon a midnight clear and it’s actually boxing day by now!

Christmas carols are important because they bring families and friends together. Just like I believe Santa not to be one person but the idea of the Christmas spirit of giving, Christmas is made up of community and enjoyment – all positive things, and if a melody can help – then turn on the carols!

Hey Blog! On Wednesday I went to York to see a film, so I’ll tell you about that this week!

The film was called If only I could hibernate – an appropriate title for this time of year when we all are slowing down and getting ready for winter. If only I could hibernate – but then we’d miss Christmas. Big problem. However, if you are living in the poorer parts of Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia, and it’s -40° as the norm, and you have no heating, then the advantages of hibernating are even more obvious. This is the situation the family in the film are in – living in a traditional style ger, without coal for the fire, and little food, with a genius brother who keeps winning physics competitions but is forced to drop out of lessons to provide fuel and food for the family. A rather brilliant setting for a film but a sad position for a family to be in – thankfully this is a film not a true story! The film focuses on the conflict of family life – to stay in the city and get an education, but get little money and be exposed to air pollution; or to go to the countryside, where you might get a job but be unable to learn at an institution where you can get the best quality education.

The film was entirely in Mongol, which is a language I unfortunately don’t speak, so I had to use the subtitles. I was intending to learn a few words during the film, but I had forgotten them by the time we came out of the cinema. Mum is luckier and can speak some basic Mongol – enough to get around – and apparently remembers it enough to understand what the film was saying in places. I might have to check if it’s available on Duolingo…  [Ed./ Mum: Sadly not.]

The thing which attracted us to this particular film, among the film festival ongoing at the moment, was the fact that it is set in Mongolia – the country my parents met in, in fact, even though they were both there from the UK. Mongolia has a unique culture – it is sandwiched between Russia and China, and is mostly steppe landscape. It also has a long history, dating back to Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire which covered all Asia from China to Turkey, from Siberia to India. The Mongols were the greatest army in the world at the time, and had they carried on into Europe, it is likely the world would speak Mongol. There was, however, one small problem – they don’t do well with boats, as proved in the attempted invasion of Japan. This is probably the only time they actually suffered a bad defeat. However, the Mongol Empire was short-lived – after a brief succession of Great Khans, the massive empire acquired by Genghis dwindled and was incorporated into China, the Indian Mughals, and some smaller kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. However the legacy is clear – a common Indian surname is Khan, from the Mongol chiefs; Yuan, the dynasty Kublai Khan founded in China, is still the Chinese currency; and the poem In Xanadu did Kublai Khan by Coleridge is a potent memory of the idea of the majesty of the “Far East”.

I won’t tell you the outcome, that would spoil the excitement – however, I will say it does not fully resolve, so there might be another some day. In the meantime, I must say баяртай! *

*Said bayartai, meaning goodbye!

Hey Blog! This week it snowed for the first time this winter, and therefore I thought I’d talk about why it sometimes snows and sometimes is 40° – this is a brief summary of the seasons!

Unless you are currently straddling the equator in which case you have two seasons at once (technically speaking…), one on each side, or living in London, at which point you reputedly experience four seasons in one day; you probably have a general idea of the seasons. Either Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, or else Wet and Dry – depending on whether you live in the tropics or in temperate zones. Because I live in England, I usually experience the former, so I’ll tell you about that.

The whole business with seasons is all about Earth’s tilt. This is an odd cosmic fact – the Earth is not level, right way up, or spinning flat like a top, it is in fact slightly tilted, spinning steadily but at an odd angle. If you mark a ball on opposite sides and hold it on these dots at an angle, then move around it, you will see that the top half and bottom half get closer and then further away, depending on the angle you are to the tilt. This is exactly what happens with Earth – parts of the planet get alternately closer and farther away – but the difference in distance is not the primary factor. Instead, it is light.

You might think light is not too hot, not enough to cause the seasons, surely; but this is not just an LED bulb in the ceiling. This is cosmic radiation, made from fusing hydrogen into helium and heavier elements in the heart of a star – our sun – and releasing enormous amounts of energy through nuclear fusion, a process which relies on a number of Scientific Laws. This energy is released as radiation – the electromagnetic spectrum, which is basically all the wavelengths of light, even those we can’t see. While most of the harmful, high-power radiation is blocked by our wonderful atmosphere, the rest shines upon our planet and powers the world.

This light, combined with the tilt, combined with the atmosphere, means during summer, when part of the earth is pointing towards the sun, the light hits it full on. Passing through a thinner layer of atmosphere means that the wave still heats Earth when it reaches it; but on the other side, where the atmosphere is thicker, the light takes longer to pass and looses more energy, meaning the earth is cooler there. This means while it’s summer in one hemisphere, it’s winter in the other, and when it’s spring in one, it’s autumn in the other. But what about the poles? Because they are so far north and south, they have such a thick atmosphere separating them and the sun, so they are always cold. Even worse, the sun is hidden behind the rest of the earth for half the year, meaning once winter comes, the poles will not see the sun for six months. Correspondingly, the other pole will not see the sun set for those six months!

While this explains the seasons, it doesn’t explain the weather. This is more tricky. Weather is ultimately based on the wind, and that is caused by two things – heat and Earth’s spin. Because Earth is always spinning, it causes a disturbance around it in the atmosphere. This is called the Coriolis Force, and is what causes hurricanes. It is rumoured to be what causes honey to twizzle and the water to go down the toilet in a spiral – however, this is incorrect, because there simply isn’t enough time or material for the Coriolis Force to take effect in these instances. Heat, on the other hand, is once more caused by the sun – the driving engine for Earth’s systems – and is related to pressure. Once a body of air has got hot, it rises, thus allowing cold air to come and take its place. This inflow is the other cause of wind. Such a lot for weather forecasters to take into account! Subtle changes such as these are what cause both snow and heatwaves, which just shows how fine the balance truly is!

Seasonal change means that people and animals around the world experience different weather and climate at different times of the year, which means they follow the seasonal cycle. Some people see this cycle as a reflection of life, others as a reflection of time. I see it as just how nature is, naturally, and we shouldn’t mess with it – putting too many chemicals into the air and changing the climate will ruin this balance, on which everything depends, so if there is one lesson to learn from nature, it is not to change the balance that has worked for millions of years – nature has tested and retested, and is far stronger than mankind. Respect nature!

Currently, the Northen Hemisphere is going into winter, which means it’s time to get the woolly jumpers out and put on an extra pair of socks. Oh, and drink lots of hot chocolate, stoke up the fire, and get ready for Christmas or whichever midwinter festival you choose to celebrate. Have fun!

Hey Blog! This last Sunday was Remembrance Day, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell you what it is and what it’s about.

The story starts some time in 1918. World War I is raging; countless battles have been fought, and millions lie dead in Europe. The blockade on Axis Germany by the Allied Powers (the UK, France, and the USA, which was recently brought into the war) is holding, and there are growing calls for an end to the violence. Riots start; hyperinflation goes crazy, and the soldiers on the Front are angry for fighting a hopeless war. Eventually, some military chiefs decide to intervene, and, without the Kaiser (German equivalent to King, derived from Roman Caesar), settle an end – to stop fighting at 11, 11, 11. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. This armistice and subsequent treaties which hoped to put a stop to violence, calling it “the war to end all wars”, brought to an end a four-year conflict which had spread from one assassination to a global, full-scale, devastating and deadly war. Ultimately, this did not succeed, and within the framework of the treaties set up after the war were the seeds of an even greater conflict, where a new enemy – fascism – would cause the greatest war in history. But WWI’s end was still a blessing for the world, which was reeling from the cost, in all aspects of life and society, of the Great War.

In memory of the armistice, Armistice Day was set up, an annual repeat of the first one in 1918 when all celebrated the end of the war. This evolved into a day of remembrance for all conflicts, past and present, and specifically for those who died during them. Traditionally, the Last Post is played, poems are read, and the two minute silence is held, signalling respect for those who fell. Poppies are worn – this comes from two poems which mention poppies, which were common flowers along the
Western Front; but in France people apparently wear cornflowers!

The ceremony closest to me is attended by local dignities, representatives of the military, youth organisations like Cadets, Scouts, and Guides, and the public. I go to it as part of Explorers, which is the best place to stand because you get to see everything as you’re both close to the middle and tall, and then the older sections, me included, march round to the church for a service. After that it’s a short march round the town and back to the Memorial Gardens, after which the congregated attendees dissipate back home. It’s a very poignant time, which is important to remember – this is the only knowledge we have, and my generation will likely be the last which can talk to those with living memory of the world wars, and should it be forgotten there is nothing which will remind us to prevent another. Lest We Forget.

Hey Blog! Last post was about me leading the Beavers’ archaeology session, and this one is also about the same initiative – the Derbyshire Scout Archaeology Badge. But the one I attended last Saturday, I attended as a participant, not a leader. It was with the Youth Committee, which meets twice a year, and at this one we were testing some activities for the upcoming experimental archaeology camp which is happening next summer. So I thought I’d tell you what it was all about!

Experimental archaeology is a particular branch of archaeology where instead of looking backwards from the front end of history to try and find the evidence of what people did in the past, we look forwards from the back of history to try and work out how they did the things they did. For instance, Mr. Future Archaeologist could look at a modern tyre track and go, “Hmmm! They had these round things with patterns on them which they used to transport goods and people! Perhaps the different tyre pattens stood for different tribes! I must make a study of the distribution of tyre tracks, pass me the laser scanner please.” But his colleague might say, “No, prof, these are tyre tracks. They used a substance called rubber to make them, and I haven’t quite worked out the method of production yet. But they didn’t have tribes by the time these were used.” The first would be a field archaeologist, the second an experimental archaeologist. The difference is that the experimental archaeologist experiments to create the historical technique, rather than finding evidence. Next year’s camp will be a chance for us to practice thinking outside the box and rediscover past skills, one of which we had a chance to try on Saturday. This is rope making.

People in the past didn’t have the things which we use to make our lives simpler and more leisurely. Instead of using hot glue, welding, dovetail joints or sticky tape to put things together, they could use a form of glue (made of bones and fish scales, mixed with resin and other substances – sticky, and probably very smelly), or they could tie things together with string (made of sinew, guts, leather, nettle, or tree bark). We know they used these things as we have found the evidence, for example a several thousand year old imprint of a piece of string, which had been dropped on the floor and trodden on, inlaying its trace in the clay for someone in a time beyond their understanding to observe in a cave and realise its significance. We also have their midden heaps, which show they were catching fish with fishing lines as well as traps and spears.

I have told you about my love of knots before. Check my archive for a post on this. I suspect the prehistoric rope makers most likely knew more knots than we do today, and for more purposes – if we had to catch our own dinner, we might know more on this subject! However, it’s rather difficult to make the string to tie the knots with, if you don’t know how it’s done. If you looked at a piece of paracord or yarn, you might realise it’s made of other, finer, threads, but what if you can’t make any thread at all? If you looked under a microscope, you might see tiny fibres running down the fine threads, and if you looked closer still, you might see the individual strands of cellulose molecules which form them. However, you still might not be able to work out how it’s done. To start with, you need a plant.

Nettle, Lime (not the fruit-producing tree, the British kind), Willow, or Wych Elm work well. To start with, take the bark off the trees, and scrape the papery outer bark and the darker green pith off. For nettle, smash the woody bits of the stem and, by cracking and peeling, remove them. For either plant, you should be left with a strip of tough, pale green or yellow sinuous substance, which you bend in the middle, and twist both sides clockwise, a little at a time. The two strands will twist together, forming a single, two-ply thread of various thickness depending on the width of the individual ply. Keep twisting, carefully, and if one end runs out, add a second piece of prepared bark like a splice to make the tread longer. With practice, very fine cord, a millimetre in thickness, can be achieved – this is at least as strong as a comparable cord of modern make, besides lasting for several years of use. It’s quite a handy skill to have, and next time I am stuck with no hope of rescue, a need for a piece of sturdy string, a patch of nettles, and a long time to make things with, I know exactly what to do!

There are other fields of archaeology (pun intended) but experimentation is one of my favourites, as it allows you to reinvent the wheel, almost – except that you didn’t know how the wheel was made in the first place. Actually, how did they invent the wheel, I wonder?!