In the Dark

Here we are then, Christmas Day. I thought I’d do a quick yule blog before (late) breakfast. I can’t possibly compete with my post of yesterday featuring Miggledy Higgins, so I’ll keep it brief. Let me just wish you all a Merry Christmas, Nadolig Llawen, Nollaig Shona, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël, Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad, Feliç Nadal, etc.

I’m not in Barcelona at the moment but I thought you might enjoy this old traditional carol from Catalonia called Fum, fum, fum.

And in the words of a traditional Irish toast:

Go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís!

(“May we all live to see this time next year”)

So here I am, packed and ready to travel across Paris to Gare De Lyon for the train back to Barcelona. It’s rather cold in Paris this morning, about 2°C in fact.

It’s quite a long trip, back the way I came  without the stopover in Montpellier, but I have a window seat and plenty of things to do, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Au revoir, Paris!

Update: I arrived exactly on time in Barcelona after a pleasantly uneventful journey back. It’s almost 15° warmer in Barcelona than in grey Paris! Now I need to stretch my legs and do some shopping!

Following on from the fogeydom displayed in my previous post, I wonder how many of my readers ever use bookmarks? I do. In fact, I have a collection that goes back at least 20 years (part of which is shown above).

(I don’t remember how I got the Harry Potter one, as I haven’t read any of those books…)

I can’t believe that some people still haven’t updated to Windows 11. I’m already on Windows 95!

(I bought that laptop about 30 years ago, and it still works!)

The Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere takes place later today, Wednesday 21st June 2022, at 15.58 Irish Time (14.58 UTC) or 16.58 local time here in Copenhagen.

Among other things, this means that today is the longest day of the year around these parts. Incidentally, the latitude of Copenhagen is 55.6761° N, which is a little bit South of Edinburgh. I had thought it was further North, but I was wrong.

According to this website, the interval between sunrise and sunset in Copenhagen today will be 17 hours 32  minutes and 18 seconds. which is 5 seconds longer than yesterday while tomorrow will be two whole seconds shorter than that.

It’s all downhill from now on.

In the Northern hemisphere, days will get shorter from tomorrow until the Winter Solstice in December, although this does not mean that sunset will necessarily happen earlier on 22nd than it does tomorrow. In fact it is a little later. Nor does it mean that sunrise will happen later tomorrow; in fact it is a little earlier.

This arises because there is a difference between mean solar time (measured by clocks) and apparent solar time (defined by the position of the Sun in the sky), so that a solar day does not always last exactly 24 hours. A description of apparent and mean time was given by Nevil Maskelyne in the Nautical Almanac for 1767:

Apparent Time is that deduced immediately from the Sun, whether from the Observation of his passing the Meridian, or from his observed Rising or Setting. This Time is different from that shewn by Clocks and Watches well regulated at Land, which is called equated or mean Time.

The discrepancy between mean time and apparent time arises because of the Earth’s axial tilt and the fact that it travels around the Sun in an elliptical orbit in which its orbital speed varies with time of year (being faster at perihelion than at aphelion).

Anyway, here’s a  picture of four sixty-somethings – myself, John Peacock, Per Lilje and Ofer Lahav – on our way to dinner last night (including a toast to the memory of Nick Kaiser)

Picture courtesy of Ofer Lahav

The building in the background is Københavns Domhus (the Copenhagen Court House). The restaurant we went to, Puk, is highly recommended.

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