Amiss: a missile landed; it left a seven-metre crater. Apart from the war going on, not much has changed. It’s 14 degrees Celsius in the lab so some reagents freeze, and we need to adapt to power cuts. With the next shelling, the power cuts are less predictable. Is this a reflection of Britain not knowing what it is anymore? It was so much easier when I was born. We knew what our role in the world was and had huge pride in what we had achieved. That, coupled with Wales’ truly awful rugby record this year, makes me wonder whether a very prolonged cruise in my boat might be more pleasurable.
We hope to keep having a warm winter until March, because I don’t know what we’ll do if it was minus 20 degrees Celsius for a week or two. Men still can’t leave Ukraine. I sit under the stairs with my son at home. I work with high pressure reactors, jokingly called bombs. Jenny is still on the church Parish council, though she will step down next year. Flower Club is still important to her. I have had a good year with orchids, particularly with Cymbidiums as they require different conditions. One is grown in the greenhouse and the other in our conservatory. The Dendrochilliums produce beautiful chains of flower at least once a year and my Brassias never fail me.
Chirping: the frequency of a pulse changes as a function of time. Two images produced from one object seems like magic. How surreal a big city looks with close to zero streetlights on it. It’s worrying when the air raid siren starts during work. Jenny’s memory is poor, but we continue happy, and it has not stopped us sailing. Neither has my arthritis, which is a bit worse, so we both continue with full and happy lives. My arthritis did cause me to move to a SUV from my saloon car. It was getting too difficult to get in and out, particularly in car parks.
There are fewer blackouts on Saturdays, which is nice, like a window into a normal life. There are no spare parts, nobody listened when we asked the West for help with equipment. We need to use helium pipelines made of PVC tubes. When the temperature is low, the tubes shrink, and the helium just leaks. The boat gave us a problem this summer. It developed a series of electrical problems which completely disrupted our holiday. We corrected the electrical problems, but this winter I hope to improve the electrical system quite a bit. I’ve also started taking up the floor and revarnishing the floor panels. The removal of the varnish has to be done in my garden, so fine weather is needed.
I videoed a bolide fireball brighter than the full moon. It had a fusion crust, bluish-purple iridescence, and I know it was a fragment of meteorite, which only exists naturally in minute traces. We look forward to Christmas and the new year. We do the same thing every year but still enjoy it; we hope you have an enjoyable Christmas and New Year.
Mélisande Fitzsimons
Art: Rupert Loydell
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