The rain continues. The good side of this for Norwegians is that the utility companies won’t be able to charge more money for water or for our hydro-electric power, this year. Not unless they can think up a really good excuse, anyway. Normally, every autumn, they say there’s no water left and so the price is going up. We never do run out, though. It’s more photogenic rain than I encountered when I lived in Hamburg, where it was just awfully depressing, or London, where it was lighter but still too frequent for my taste.
Now here’s an odd effect that Dyveke saw from the garden and took a picture of the other day: a rainbow on the ground. It must be a patch of mist that by chance was hit by sunlight. Usually we only see rainbows on the other side of the house, behind the camera, and they’re in mid air. In short I can’t explain this, but it was a nice bye-product of the current weather.
The other morning I saw a fox in the garden outside the kitchen. As you can see, it was sniffing around our summer bathtub. We never normally see foxes, though we do hear them crying out at night to one another. This was quite early, about five in the morning, when I was making some tea.
But later in the day, round about lunchtime, it came back to the same spot. It quickly saw there were people around, and ran away. We haven’t seen it since. I’m pleased we haven’t got the hens anymore, but I’m nouveau-fox enough to get a kick out of seeing one. Why now, suddenly?
A Bad Guide 
Oh, you have a Brother Fox now!… Congratulations!
The “pedestrian” rainbow is beautiful.
Of course, rain at (or in?) the country is always better than any city rain. Here in B.A. is dark, cold and raining. And, right now, I have to jump into my car and confront lots of other cars at the crowded streets of Belgrano (my neighbour), =( I’m sure I would much more enjoy your rainy day
A rainbow always appears as a circular arc: a portion of a circle. The center of the circle is necessarily diametrically opposite the sun. Imagine a line drawn from the sun to you, continued on the other side of you. Imagine all the lines that form a certain fixed angle with that line. (I don’t know what angle, how many degrees, but it’s a definite number dictated by the way light bounces around in a water droplet.) These lines form a circle in your visual field. In order to see a rainbow, you need that along some portion of that circle there are water droplets in the air being illuminated by the sun.
If the sun is at the horizon and southwest of you, then any rainbow that you might see will have to be centered at the point on the horizon northeast of you. You might see a semicircular arc from one point on the horizon (left of northeast) to another (right of northeast), or you might just see a part of that arc.
If the sun is a bit above the horizon then the rainbow will be centered on a point a bit below the horizon.
The rainbow you saw had its center well below the horizon. Therefore the sun (behind you) must have been fairly high in the sky. I suppose that this kind of rainbow is relatively uncommon, because if there is a lot of cloud cover then this requires the sun to finds a hole in the clouds, as opposed to shining under the layer of clouds from a position near the horizon.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be true that almost all rainbows occur around sunset or sunrise, or in far northern or southern places on days when the sun never gets very high.
I seem to recall that my mother’s parents, when young, had a magic moment of standing on a misty mountaintop and seeing a more or less circular rainbow. With their shadows visible in the middle of it? Is that possible? I should ask my mother about that.
Yes, I’ve seen it, I might even have taken a photo; of a rainbow like that. Not quite circular, as I recall; but a bit like the halo on an icon, with our shadows in the centre.
And a fox! I love them. (And we hear them a lot when we are in London- fighting.) But at home it is a rare privilege to see a fox.
I am even envying you your rain, Mr Crown. I know it is much needed at home; and even up here in the French mountains there hasn’t been any rain…yet. The paint dries in the students’ pens before they can get the stroke on the paper…
Good-morning!
Yes, Brother Fox. Thanks for reminding me. I don’t know if I’ll see him again, though. I wonder if he liked the cherries. Or maybe he likes the birds that like the cherries.
It’s very satisfying to hear that it’s cold dark and raining in BA, though we may have a different idea of what we mean by ‘cold’.
That was very kind of you to go to the trouble of explaining the rainbow. It helps. The other thing about this one is that we’re looking down on it, it’s as if we’re just seeing the top, but you still get a range of different colours, if not the full seven ROYGBIV. You would expect that when you looked down on a rainbow you would only see the upper colour, but no.
Can you explain a double rainbow all the way?
Good morning, I didn’t know that you can hear fox fights in London. How central? I’m going there soon, I must listen.
And what kind of paint do they use with pens? Isn’t it ink? What’s the difference, anyway?
South London. The most impressive was when our friend lived in Wimbledon (one floor of huge old house with badger-ridden grounds, &c. Gone now.) Two foxes fighting over a dead seagull. Right outside. But now we recognise the sound. New Malden, for example.
We are doing “Anglaise” script (called “Copperplate” by many anglophone calligraphers). We are using gouache mixed with gum arabic & water; and also metallic “pigments” (actually particulate colour for use in industrial fabric printing) similarly mixed with gum arabic and water. But these pens are pointy instead of broad-edged and that makes it easier for the paint to dry almost between filling them and getting them over the paper. And if you overcompensate and mix in more water, you get a big BLOT.
What fun!
You appear to have got up early and to be full of curiosity this morning!
I, too, want to know, Julia, HOW cold is it in your present winter?
And now, off to work, smiling and hoping for rainbows and bee-eaters.
I’ve never seen an earth-bound rainbow.
Foxes keep my daughter awake at night in (north) London. My father in law used to have a fox that lived in his back garden in (south) London. Mangey old thing. Finish the joke yourselves.
You’re right, it’s nor THAT cold. The other day we were freezing and it was 0ºC / –5ºC but this is rare. Today is aprox. 10ºC. But it’s ugly outside: rainy, humid … not to mention all our political issues!
We’ve seen lovely rainbows at the Iguazú Falls, but I think I’ve already show them to you…
We have foxes regualrly passing through our south-east London garden. One winter, when it was snowing, there was a fox in the middle of the lawn jumping up vigorously to try to catch the snowflakes. Of course, didn’t have acamera to hand…
In France now, we see young hares and rabbits in the garden, and have the very occasional visit by a red squirrel – there are large forests nearby so I really don’t know why the come to ouor one tree – perhaps because of bird seed we put out.
BTW, AJP, iI’s bye-product, says the grouch.
…whose typing in poor…
(Oh heavens !) …is poor …
Are there bee-eaters? I’m going to a similar southern outskirt (Ham Common) so they probably have foxes.
I can’t compete with the Iguazú Falls, Julia. I see it’s 18ºC here and not actually raining at the moment.
“bye-product” get “about 47,900” hits and “by-product” gets 51 million hits, but I accept that “bi-product” doesn’t make much sense.
One winter, when it was snowing, there was a fox in the middle of the lawn jumping up vigorously to try to catch the snowflakes.
How lovely.
Bee-eaters are birds. At home we have the “chestnut” ones and here in Isère there are the green-headed ones. Both STUNNING whn you get to see them (especially if you are on the fourth floor here, and see them from ABOVE. (Sorry – pressed for time. Shouting instead of bolding.) Somewhere you can find a recording of their “song” online; but you must imagine dozens of them at once saying blrlrlrllriiip blrlrlrllrip, or something. It MEANS “summer” to me. Or even “desert”. I first learnt what I was hearing form Frère Basile Pasquiet…Oooh. Maybe that sound is my proustian madeleine.
I cannot hope for foxes here (have never seen one…) but bee-eaters I can hope for. SOMEWHERE I have a little movie. Later, when I have a moment, I’ll try to find it and put it somewhere you all can see it, and hear it.
Back to work.
Yes, funnily enough I’d just found them on Wikipedia so I’ve put in a link.
Biprodukt is Norwegian. You’re going native.
Biprodukt is Norwegian.
For honey.
(One of the oldest puns alive.)
Crown, once upon a time we were discussing a dialogue between Mr Pitt (the Younger) and Mr Fox. I don’t remember where, but I seem to remember that you praised Mr Fox, didn’t you? I’ve recently been made aware that there is one William Fox-Pitt that rides horses, which I found quite funny. He even has a website about himself: http://www.foxpitteventing.co.uk/
Haha, I must remember to tell the Norwegians that one.
Once in the Pentland Hills I saw a fox waiting to jump on a lamb, one paw up the air while it was immobile, staring. It ran away when it saw me coming.
I have a comment that seems to have run away.
Me, too. I wrote a long and almost too informative comment about rainbows, and it disappeared into the void, or abyme.
Descartes-haters: Descartes is the one who figured out how rainbows occur (said my father, who tends to know about such things).
Foxes: I used to live in a remote area in British Columbia where going to town meant a trip of almost two hours, crossing forests where a lot of animals lived. One day after sunset I was coming back to the village and my car broke down. I just had enough time to pull over to the side of the road (a narrow dirt road). I knew that sooner or later another car would appear, with people from the village, so I just waited. After a while, a young fox came out of the bushes on the other side of the road and stopped, looking at me. I remained motionless, watching him. The fox took a few steps and sat. I started to speak to him in a soft voice. He took a few more steps, sat again, then did the same thing a few minutes later, getting closer every time. When the fox was about half way across the road, another fox appaeared. This fox was larger and more decisive. After apparently gauging the situation it ran around the first fox, which did not move, then it approached the first fox again but brushed past him with its body, as if to say “come along!”, and the two took off together. This was a nice way to pass the time waiting for the next car. (I was eventually rescued and my car was towed back to the village).
Ø, your comment is the second one, the one after Julia’s, unless you wrote two about rainbows. I would welcome another, I enjoyed the first one a lot.
Siganus, once again I had to retrieve yours from the spam pile. I don’t understand why this happens. I’m very sorry. Anyway, it’s on display now.
Sig, I wouldn’t trust that Fox-Pitt guy with my daughter, he looks like a lounge lizard to me. Very tall, and in appearance quite a contrast to the wonderfully dissolute Charles James Fox.
I suppose that as well as Fox & Pitt, he’s related distantly to Mr Pitt-Rivers, who founded the famous* Pitt-Rivers Museum of archeology and anthropology in Oxford.
*only famous if you like that sort of thing, probably. Not famous like Father Christmas, Versailles or Michael Jackson.
What a great story, m-l. Most of the time we just zoom past all these things that are happening in the forest. I have a link to that subject in my next post.
I didn’t know that Descartes explained rainbows, but I believe it. He was a curious man in both senses.
Who’s Michael Jackson?
I did write another long expository bit about rainbows, feeling that it was threatening to turn into a long series that would never end until I had made myself perfectly clear (consciously but hopelessly emulating m-l, who is always clear) but when I went back and edited it a bit before posting I somehow lost the ability to post it.
Maybe I’ll try again later. Right now real life has some claims on me.
I loved the breaking-down-car-young-fox story. Unexpected encounters with the animal world can be incredibly moving.
“Unexpected encounters with the animal world can be incredibly moving.” And quite delicious.
I wouldn’t trust that Fox-Pitt guy with my daughter > We seem to agree on this point. As a song says, “t’as le look, coco”. I wonder how Dick Francis would used someone like this in one of his novels.
Marie-Lucie, from my secondary school days I still remember Descartes’ laws dealing with the refraction of light when it goes from one medium to another: n1 × sin i1 = n2 × sin i2 That’s what happens in the drops of water in a rainbow, but I didn’t know René Decartes was the first to give a proper scientific explanation for that phenomenon.
Dearieme, Michael Jackson was an American general, wasn’t he? (Maybe the one who gave America its independence?)
AJP, my last comment is buried at the foot of the rainbow…
Sig, I’ve extracted it. I’ve made the spam control as relaxed as possible, but after today don’t write anything too time-consuming for a couple of weeks – I won’t be able to retrieve things. Did Dick Francis die? Did Mrs Dick Francis die? She was the one who secretly wrote the books, I think.
I’m reading & enjoying Wolf Hall at the moment.
I’m sure you mean Mrs Bacon.
Who is Mrs Bacon? Mrs Francis Bacon Sr?
And quite delicious.
If dearieme met a baby fox, he would kill it with his bare hands and eat it.
I have no doubt that he made up the excellent word slire.
It reminds me of the word slurry, which my wife makes very good use of, sometimes in surprising ways.
I recommend the WiPe article on rainbows. I have not read it all the way through, but I learned some things.
On the history of the explanation: It seems that, although Descartes advanced the subject, others were there before him, with a couple of Persians circa 1300 perhaps deserving as much credit as anyone.
The law of refraction that is named after Descartes is usually called Snell’s Law in English-speaking countries. WiPe says that Descartes found it later than Snell but independently.
A rainbow’s location–its existence, you could say–depends on three things: the observer’s location, the location of a cloud of water droplets, and the position of the sun in the sky. This was impressed on me very strongly by a passage in Alan Watts’s The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are, which a teacher recommended to me at an impressionable age.
I would love to write a brief and comprehensible account of how Snell’s Law accounts for rainbows, but this is still not the moment.
“I have no doubt that he made up the excellent word slire.”
Au bleedin’ contraire, old fruit: playground Scots.
Concrete slurry? Watermelon slurry? There’s another dessert called slurry, I think.
We did Snell’s Law. Under Snellius, it also says it was actually discovered even earlier by an Arab, in Baghdad, Ibn Sahl, in 984.
We ought to be quite fluent in playground Scots by now.
There’ll be a test on Monday.
Talking of the Pentland Hills, do you know the Little Sparta garden created by Ian Hamilton Finlay, late artist and gardener? Some of his work on paper is very funny.
Au bleedin’ contraire, old fruit: playground Scots.
Could it be the same word as slair? This was not easy to find, I’ll have you know. But I suppose when you went out to play in the mud you had more important things to think about than spelling.
Crown, that’s great to know about Ibn Sahl.
Ø, that’s quite a find: it could be related. I never heard the noun used of people, or in any meaning except a slippery path made usually on ice or snow. And as a verb, meaning to skate/slide along such a path. So we’d “gang sliring on the dubs” i.e. go sliding on [a particular set of interconnected] (frozen) large puddles. I see that “slair” is connected to Cleveland, Cumberland, and other parts of N England. Cumbrians are, broadly speaking, OK: they don’t whine on and on like Yorkshiremen, or congratulate themselves all the time like Geordies (or, come to that, Yorkshiremen). Their sausages are particularly fine. Really very fine. Mind you, much of their county is a bit bleak. In our wee corner of the world, it was the Scottish bit that was fertile, the English that was mountainous, stony, rain-swept. Still, it made a wonderful view across the firth, did Cumberland.
I’ve worked and lived in Cleveland: I shall draw a veil over my views of that area, save to say that the nearby Whitby, and the N York moors, are commendable.
I’ve though of an exception: Melvyn Bragg is a Cumbrian and has remarkable powers of self-congratulation.
Crown, we’ve been to Little Sparta – a wee oasis in a bleak area (word of the day: bleak) and bought one of his jokey productions which is on the wall of our hall still. We also bought two copies of a fine print of a sailing boat: one for us and one for my father. We have both of them now, alas.
Isn’t the web wunderbar? Here is the very picture of which we have two prints. Nice wee joke, isn’t it?
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-finlay-the-little-seamstress-collaboration-with-richard-demarco-p07018
Oh, well done. Here, look at this one, the topiary aircraft carrier.
So I click on a link to The Little Seamstress and find a note by the kenspeckle Scottish artworld character Rickie Demarco: “He and I had met because of our shared love of Scottish fishing boats and their harbours. He had admired a lithograph I had made as a student of fishing boats berthed at low tide in Fisherrow Harbour and a handmade book I wrote, designed and published on the history of Scottish Fishing Boats.
It now seems inevitable that he invited me to collaborate with him to make screen prints such as ‘The Little Seamstress’ which depicts a small sailing boat on a straight course across a calm sea. It is drawing a line, in the form of its wake reminiscent of the handiwork of a seamstress.”
Aye, that’s all very well, but who was born at Fisherrow? My mother, that’s who. Spooky!
Goodness gracious me. Observe Lot 51.
It would seem that I owe you a drink, Crown.
http://www.lyonandturnbull.com/asp/searchresults.asp?pg=1&ps=25&st=D&sale_no=341&subs_value=++3&index=view
That one doesn’t open. I think you mean this:
http://www.lyonandturnbull.com/asp/searchresults.asp#a_153185
Mine’s a large glass of port.
Both open for me but then I’m on my wife’s iMac. So there.
I’m on my iMac too. Congratulations on your art deals.
I’m not sure what the Seamstress joke is. Is it something about tacking? That’s the only sailing term I know.
Oh it’s just that her wake looks like a sown seam.
The art wasn’t bought as a deal, just for pleasure. Partly because I used to sail as a boy, partly just because we liked the look of it. And Dad had been a keen sailer too and was a difficult man to buy a present for. As I am now, I suppose. (I’ve only just received one of my presents for last Christmas!)
Snap! I was just given my Christmas present this week (iPod).
The Little Seamstress : dearieme, I think you mean “sewn seam”. I would probably not have noticed it without the name of the boat and your comment, but the wake does look like a line of “straight stitch” (over and under about equally, like this : _ _ _ _ _), done with a thick thread such as a type of embroidery thread, or using two threads to the same needle, perhaps for basting, both possibilities causing the artist to use two lines at a time.
This stitch is the easiest one to make, so that’s the one a little girl would be taught, and she would not be able to do it with perfect regularity. It is not a very strong stitch, so apart from some type of embroidery it is mostly used when basting (sewing a very loose seam, usually by hand, with thick but weak thread or a contrasting colour to that of the cloth, in order to easily adjust the fit when trying on the garment, before sewing the definitive seam by hand or machine with a better quality of thread of the appropriate colour, using a stronger stitch, before finally removing the basting threads).
When I tried to reproduce the look of a line of straight stitch, the over and under spaces were about the same length, but unfortunately that did not show properly once posted.
correction: thread OF a contrasting colour
dearieme, I think you mean “sewn seam”.
How right you are.
Dearieme: Among the other pictures shown under The Seamstress is a grid of black lines called Land/Sea. It remings me very much of a Polynesiam artifact I saw at the show by the British artists Grayson Perry at the British Museum. He was allowed to display objects he found in the BM’s stores and add some of his own work inspired by them – which I didn’t like, but I loved the artifacts.
The lattice of thin sticks was the major navigation tool of the Polynesians in the Pacific. The way it was bound and interconnected represented islands, currents, winds etc. Just before the last knowledge of how it worked died out, a man was found who was able to record that for scientists.
Detailed explanation and picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands_stick_chart
Thank you, Canehan. I have bookmarked that in my file called “mankind” – which I admit contains a rather miscellaneous collection. But this is also a wonderful excuse to mention one of the best books I’ve bought in the last twenty years: Geoffrey Irwin “The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific”, CUP, 1992. It really puts the Polynesians’ exploits into perspective – they were extraordinary. I don’t think they carried goats with them though.
And Micronesians too, of course.
Today, since I was passing, I went around the National Portrait Gallery in London. It’s well worth a trip, I thought, especially the Tudor portraits and the big photographic portraits also for the restaurant on the top floor that has a view of Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament. Tomorrow I’m going to do the National Gallery. I haven’t been there for thirty-odd years. I also went to Heal’s – what a great shop that is (a furniture & furnishing fabrics and rugs and kitchenware department store) – and some secondhand bookshops in Charing Cross Road.
It’s so easy to lose sight of the Micronesians.
I’m delighted to know of the concept of “our summer bathtub”. If I had the privacy I’d want one too.
A fenced-in outdoor shower, where all you can see is the sky (but you can still hear outdoor noises), is also very enjoyable in warm weather.
It’s so easy to lose sight of the Micronesians.
Thank you for that, Trond. I’d somehow missed it while I was away. But if you don’t watch out I’ll tell my non-rhotic Fukahwi tribe joke again.
Well, if you insist. They are a tribe of pygmies who dance around in the long grass crying “We’re the Fukahwi! We’re the Fukahwi!”.
I’d somehow missed it while I was away.
Yeah, it’s so easy to … Oh well.
“We’re the Fukahwi! We’re the Fukahwi!”
A lost tribe of pygmies, I suppose.
Lost, maybe, but not in space.