The temperature went down to 7C overnight, rising to 12C art the end of the morning. A cool and cloudy bank holiday Monday in the week that the 80th anniversary of VE day is celebrated across Europe. I slept quite well and got up for breakfast at eight. Housework after breakfast, interrupted by needing to recharge the vacuum cleaner battery. The spare backup battery died a few months ago, we haven't tried to replace it yet. When I checked my Fitbit phone app google demanded that I log in again, having never logged out in the first place. It rejected my two stage password credentials several times and then switched to asking for my passkey code, which it accepted the third try. Very annoying but also time consuming. Maybe it's just because the network is slow due to congestion somewhere in cyber space.
I've noticed in recent days reports on the cascading power failure of the Iberian peninsula power grid that mention a blackout lasting seconds occurring in the previous weeks without crashing the network, and a similar occurrence in Britain too. Hostile hackers are for the time being ruled out. One thing I haven't yet heard mention of is the possible impact of 'solar weather' on earth. In certain circumstances
This past six months there has been an upsurge of nights when the aurora borealis is visible further south than usual. Geomagnetic storms due to the impact of solar radiation on earth's magnetic field can produce power surges and trigger outages. Could there have been some unforeseen, perhaps random interaction to trigger such big failures? So far I've not come across any discussion about this.
Clare cooked a veggie pasta dish for lunch. We watched some of the VE day 80th anniversary military parade in London on iPlayer and presided over the King and three generations of the Royal Family. Very impressive indeed with lots of appropriate emphasis on remaining veterans, all close to 100 years old now. A real thanksgiving celebration for the self sacrifice in defeating Nazism made by men and women of that generation who were young at the time.
Our neighbour Rob asked if we could look after his front door key and hand it to a young man who was going to be cat-sitting for him, from this afternoon. I agreed, as Clare was staying in and watching the VE day broadcast. I went for a walk in Thompson's Park for an hour and recorded some birdsong with the Merlin app which identified half a dozen different birds in the trees by the bench I was sitting on. Mary our neighbour was also walking in the park, stopped and chatted for a while. While we were talking Clare called and asked if I could return so she could then go out. When I got back she was in the middle of a flute lesson and hadn't got ready to go out. She'd forgotten to look at her diary! I then stayed in to await the cat sitter, who was supposed to be arriving to collect it after work. The best laid plans of mice and men, I thought.
I stayed in so Clare could go out, waiting until the cat sitter collected the keys, three hours late, then I went out to complete my walking for the day. By the time I returned, Clare had come back, had an early supper and was getting ready to go to choir practice. I had supper on my own, then recorded next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection and edited it. Then I watched a couple more episodes of 'The Good Doctor' until it was time for bed.
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