A TRIP TO THE BANK

I had it all planned so perfectly; A leisurely breakfast then off to the monthly Treacle Market in Macclesfield to buy the makings of a picnic lunch, before heading off to Jodrell Bank to spend an afternoon thinking about the stars and the wider cosmos and then a picnic in the grounds before heading back home, and, after that, maybe popping out to a local restaurant for an intimate meal for two and a general sense of a birthday happily spent and, hopefully, enjoyed.

Instead, the day dawned stormily and showed little sign of letting up, with the kind of howling winds and lashing rains that made venturing out look less than appealing and more than a tad chilly a prospect. Still, I made the morning cuppa, lit the candles on the cakes, presented the presents, and a pleasant enough breakfast was had, but the winds and the rains showed no signs of letting up, and then I went and insisted that it would be a shame to spend a birthday just sitting indoors and watching the telly.

What do I know, eh?

Instead of sitting in a relatively cosy living room, battening down the hatches and seeing off the storm, I dragged us over to a freezing market square (although we did manage to buy a rather lovely cake stand made from recycled plates), drove us to where a radio telescope was standing on an open plain with nothing to stop the icy blasts from making us cold to the core, failed to find the pub that had been recommended by a friend until such time as its car park was chock-full of Audis with no room at the inn, and then headed home via one of my more circuitous routes (i.e. hopelessly lost in Cheshire) with none of my suggestions of alternative eateries really appealing to either of us all that much. By that stage all we wanted was to be back home in the warm and dry.

Well done me. Once again I find a way to ruin everything.

Birthdays can be funny old things, as I’ve never really paid much heed to my own and so it’s been a long, hard journey towards appreciating that other people do find them to be quite “significant” days in their lives, and so now I do at least try to make the effort so that they are enjoyable “special” days. That I fail at this is, of course, down to my many shortcomings, but it is, at least, better to try than not to.

Last year, of course, it was all so very different. Last year the sun shone and we spent a glorious day in the gardens at Chatsworth which were jolly peaceful and there was even a band playing...

Apparently this was not because of any birthday celebration on our behalf, however. Oh no. We were never considered to be all that special. The band was there because last year, on that very same day, there was apparently some kind of a “Royal Wedding” and so the weather satellites had probably been primed by the “powers that be” to make sure that those two people, who I still struggle to identify whenever they happen to pop up on my telepod, didn’t have any rain fall on their parade.

Ah well, better luck next year…

Still, Jodrell Bank itself was definitely worth the trip. The dish itself remains an impressive piece of engineering, and, of course, what it actually does is pretty impressive, too. Then you find out that it was partially recycled from a machine of war and you start to feel impressed all over again, as well as that slight tingling sensation when you realise that from certain angles it does resemble a Martian War Machine…

What has been achieved recently in turning the area into a “Discovery Centre”, along with the almost obligatory café and little shop, isn’t half bad either, and if it can encourage people to think about the stars in the sky and our place amongst them, or just interest them in the pursuit of knowledge, then that’s hardly a bad thing. Granted, I did suspect that one or two of the parents walking around that day had rather over-estimated the levels of genius of their own precious darlings and one or two of the children might have been just slightly too young to appreciate the subtleties of the science being displayed, but getting them young is really what it’s all about, I suppose, so I shouldn’t really complain.

After all, sometimes the levels of knowledge amongst some of the adults can let you down, too. One parent, when reminded (again) that the whole site was a “Mobile Phone Off Zone” (which is another rather good reason to go there in my book…), suggested it might be because it would interfere with any passing aircraft.

Hmmm... Captain Science, we still have a long way to go…

In the “Discovery Centre” itself, however, my theory about the age of the visiting teeny-weenies did get severely tested. One decided to make the “Black Hole” his own magic castle and repel all borders, so he struck me as a definite “Ming the Merciless” in the making. Another seemed unable to understand that if you roll the balls around the rim of the black hole, the gravity well effect where it spins around and around for about thirty seconds is far more entertaining than just chucking the balls down the hole, but then he was a tiny person, so, perhaps it was me who was really missing out on all the fun.

Again…

Actually that ball thing was brilliant. I really should get myself one of those. I could watch it for hours. I also liked the “Whispering Dishes” outside in the grounds, too. Two parabolic dishes pointing at each other but quite some distance apart but, when you talk softly into the ring at the centre, you can be heard by someone standing at the other dish as if they were right next to you.

Simple science, but quite breath-taking when you think about it.

Despite the fact that it was a shocking old day weather-wise, it wasn’t a complete washout. We did enjoy being at Jodrell Bank and have vowed to return on a sunnier day and try again for that picnic lunch. I might even check the route a bit better in advance next time too…

I was also able to get some interesting pictures of the dish itself sitting in its “rest” position, presumably because of the high winds. After all, if you put a bloody great metallic sail in the way of a 60 m.p.h. gust, well, you don’t have to be a scientist to work out the consequences of doing so...

Then again, maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe I should have asked the person with the “passing aircraft” theory what she reckoned about it... You never know, it might have cheered me up on the long drive home.