With all the rain and weather warnings currently afflcicting everyday life in Britain, it was a pleasant suprise to see a blue sky out the window this morning. Of course this isn't summer and a clear sky means chilly weather. My breath was easily visible. Not to worry, the sun will warm things up in due course.

Days like this sometimes have something extra. There's a splendid view of the Moon this morning, a splotchy ball of of putty grey that you normally associate with the night-time. It's a fascinating rock. These days it's 250,000 miles away or so. When it first formed, as a result of Earth's cataclysmic glancing blow with planetoid Thea, it was as close as 15,000 miles away. 15,000!.. It would filled the sky and the gravity effects must have been alarming. By day the moon is a mundane curiosity. By night a beguiling ball of silvery light, a source of romance, superstition, mental illness, womens problems, and other strange transformations into bloodthirsty creatures.

There's an interesting tale that involves the moon. Back in the days of 'British Prohibition' in the eighteenth century, Swindon was only a small market town on an isolated hill with four toll roads leading in and out. The Downs to the south were used by booze-smugglers to hide their illegal barrels. It seems one night customs men came across a bunch of men in the countryside, smugglers who had left a barrel concealed in a pond and intended to recover it for delivery. When asked what they were about, the sly smugglers responded that they were attempting to drag the big cheese out of the water, referring to the moon's reflection in the water. Thinking this was a bunch of ignorant country yokels, the customs man chuckled at their apparent idiocy and left them to it. Liquor smugglers in the West Country were called 'Moonrakers' thereafter. To this day, tunnels under the streets of Old Town dug by these men have been uncovered.

Recovery of the Week

Honda are back in production at Swindon, just in case you haven't (by some strange fluke or phase of the Moon) noticed the news coverage. Actually it is good news because car manufacture is so important to our local economy. But isn't that indicative of a larger problem? The increasingly anti-car stance of the worlds governments might be okay for the enviroment and for saving the lives of kids who like running across roads without looking, but it's done absolutely nothing for peoples affluence. Money makes the world go round but it's the internal combustion engine that drives it.