August
2010
FEATURES
So you think you know Southwold?
Last month, we asked you this question, and identify a feature visible from the pavement situated in the town.
The answer is. . . the Trinity House Coat of Arms, which is located on the Lighthouse facing the entrance gate in Stradbroke Road.
This month, where in the town is this intriguing fish?
The answer will be given in the September edition of The Southwold Organ.
Thanks as before to Brian Burrage for supplying the photo.
View to the North
It has been a generally dry and hot period since I last wrote, with one exceptional day when the rain gauge registered that over an inch had fallen in a relatively short space of time. More of the cliff has fallen up towards Easton Bavents; this is probably a combination of the high seas and the torrential rain that we experienced on that one day. Some of the properties up there are coming perilously close to the cliff edge and it is only a matter of time before we see their demise unless sea defences are built. Where a garden shed has fallen, it is possible to see a gate post with a letterbox. I am not sure that any postman would risk using it now, as it is right on the cliff edge.
I read in the local press about the possible felling of the poplars near the corner of North Road and St Edmund’s Road. Why, when there is a problem raised about trees, is there a ‘knee jerk’ reaction: ‘cut them down’? They have withstood many gales where others have fallen; surely some skilled pruning would be far better so that the haven that they create for a range of wildlife is preserved? When the cuckoo was around, for the previous few years, they were a perfect place for him to survey the reed beds. (I have only heard the cuckoo once on North Road this year; this ties in with the national picture where there has been a 40% decline in numbers.) I have seen a hobby in the branches and woodpeckers are often to be seen searching for insects. There are fewer swallows and sand martins about, but I am pleased to say that I have seen the marsh harrier, barn owl and five little egrets. An interesting visitor to the garden, which I have not seen in Southwold before, was a hummingbird hawk moth.
I have been promised a viewing of another collection of local postcards, which I will try and copy and put on the website. I am pleased to see that here has been a lot of interest in these. I did manage to find an old card which was posted in Southwold in 1904. It does not have a title and so I am not sure if it is in Southwold or not. If anyone knows I would be grateful for any information.
I would welcome any information anyone has, including old photographs, of the area to the north of North Road or any suggestions for the website.
Halcyon
halcyon@southwold-northroad.com
www.southwold-northroad.com
The 53rd in our series of articles
specially written for The Organ by astrophysicist Professor
Michael Rowan-Robinson.
Don’t miss the Perseids
August is the month to see one of the best of the meteor showers, the Perseids. A meteor or shooting star is a speck of dust travelling at great speed through the earth’s atmosphere and becoming red-hot and incandescent in the process, and leaving behind a trail of hot gas. The dust grains are pretty small, perhaps a hundredth of a millimetre in size, and they would be likely to be silicates or some form of carbon, so essentially sand or soot.
Meteor showers happen when the earth, in its orbit round the sun, runs into a cloud of dust. All night, you can see streaks of light across the sky, perhaps one every few minutes. The Perseids will peak at 9 pm on 12th August, at a rate of 80 meteors per hour, but you can see them almost as well any time of the night and for a week or so either side of 12th August. This year is exceptionally favourable to see them because the new moon, when the sky is at its darkest, falls on 10th August. If you watch for some time and see several meteors, you may spot that they seem to originate from near the Milky Way, towards the northwest, in the constellation of Perseus (hence the name).
What is the origin of these dust clouds? In fact, they mark out the tracks of comets through the solar system. Comets originate in the outer reaches of the solar system and plunge in towards the sun, generally on elliptical orbits. As they pass, they leave behind a trail of dust debris. Some of these orbits happen to cross the earth’s orbit and then we can get the phenomenon of a meteor shower. The Perseid meteors are associated with Comet Swift-Tuttle, which returns every 130 years, but there are over a dozen prominent meteor showers visible through the year. These cometary debris trails have been imaged by infrared space missions like IRAS and Spitzer. Cometary dust represents part of the fuel for the zodiacal dust cloud, responsible for the phenomenon of the zodiacal light, a faint haze seen along the zodiac at dawn or dusk, especially from Mediterranean latitudes. However most of the zodiacal dust is probably supplied by collisions between asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
So if there is a clear sky at sunset between, say, 5th and 19th August, make sure you go outside later in the evening when it’s dark. Pick a spot away from the street lights and allow yourself about 20 minutes for your eyes to become adapted for night vision. You should see several shooting stars. The bright object towards the east after midnight will be Jupiter. Venus is also prominent in the west just after sunset. If you do see shooting stars, they are telling you about our dusty Solar System. They are debris from a comet that itself represents material left over from the era 4.5 billion years ago when the planets formed.
Stars’n Tides now has an e-mail address for you to send comments and queries: starsntides@southwoldorgan.com.
Past Stars’n Tides articles can be found at http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~mrr/starsntides/
© Michael Rowan-Robinson 2010
Whilst the summer sees six-figure bonuses for Network Rail bosses, the rest of us will have to make do with six stamps with photos of trains on them. If you’re a train enthusiast and a philatelist, then you’ll be bounding out of bed and forming an orderly queue outside of the Post Office on 19th August. If you’re not keen on trains, stamps or black-and-white pictures, you may wish to have a lie in or a leisurely breakfast instead.
The stamps commemorate the 50th anniversary of the building of the last steam locomotive, which, to be honest with you, seems to me to be a pretty tenuous reason to issue a set of stamps. If they’ve come up with that, why not have a set commemorating 82 years since the closure of the Southwold Railway next April?
Travelling First Class is the streamlined Coronation of the London Midland and Scottish Railway pictured standing at the platform of Euston station in 1938. Streamlining was very popular in the ‘30s but was ditched in the ‘40s to save on maintenance. No doubt the train company bosses at the time benefited from an appropriate bonus. In contrast to the sleek Coronation, the other First-Class locomotive is the Evening Star, designed to pull heavy freight trains and pictured at Midsomer Norton in 1962.
For the overseas philatelists, there are four stamps. Two at 67p feature the GWR King William IV near Teignmouth in 1935 and the LNER’s Royal Lancer from the same A1 group as The Flying Scotsman. This is the only one of the set that really looks like it’s getting there and appears to be moving along at fair old pace. At 97p, you can buy the exotically named Sir Mador de la Porte from the King Arthur class, or the rather less exotic Engine No 2 from a type usually known as ‘Jeeps’, which were highly successful engines used to pull both long passenger trains and goods.
Being photographs which are all over 50 years old, the stamps are, of course, all in black and white. So, yet again, when customers ask the question, ‘Do you have any nice stamps?,’ we’re going to be struggling to give the right answer. For some reason, we were due to get a set of stage musicals stamps now, but these have been swapped for the trains which were due out next year. So, in a strange twist, the show will be late, but the trains have come early. The topsy-turvy world of philatelists has no boundaries.
Guy Mitchell, Spots
It's
the Wine
Talking
by Leslie
J Brinton of 'In the Pink' 01986 872579
Last month, we trooped down to New Zealand in this column to check out a buttery Chardonnay and a grassy Sauvignon blanc.
Very rewarding at the prices: but I do like to revisit the classics as well and so I propose this month from France for your delight a super Chardonnay: Pouilly-Vinzelles 2008, a white Burgundy from Domaine Thibert. Here you are not just drinking the label, the flavours are seductively good too, and the bottle is good value for a special occasion at £13.99. And for a grassy and very fruity Sauvignon blanc, we’ll pop over to Sancerre, where the Waitrose wine experts have consulted with esteemed vignerons Joseph Mellot, and instead of ruining a perfectly good product (as I would have forecast!) have in fact tweaked it for the better.
Both bottles are available at Waitrose and the Sancerre is called La Franchotte 2009: £11.99.
If you are popping out to a bar for a drink of wine, you may well like me despair at the large glass sizes now offered: 175cl is common and is jolly big; 250cl is a third of a bottle!
I was pleased indeed at Southwold’s Kings Head to find on their simple blackboard wine list that several of their wines can be ordered in a 125cl size. Well done!
Better still it was the first Sunday in the month, when Rhythm ‘n’ Reeds usually play some relaxed and cheerful jazz from 8 pm. . . (ring 01502 724517 to check).
Towards the end of the evening, they loped into a perfectly poised ‘Satin Doll’, sheer bliss, and my glass was no longer half empty, it was half full.
Leslie J Brinton
Seen in Southwold
The latest piquancy from Marion and co at Southwold Books! Speaking for many, I suspect. . .
