Now. You're all anxious for an update, so I'm sure you'll be interested, if not suitably elated, to know that they have finally taken the Christmas Tree down.
Yes, China is growing cotton on the Moon. Sure, the US President bought three hundred hamburgers (for some reason), and of course, the fabric of the UK might change forever today, but hey, the Engineers have packed up the tinsel and stuffed the Christmas Tree back into the book cupboard. That's where the real news is at, people.
Sooo. 15th of January. Is that really all it is? The tree's only ten days late for the box - yet this month has already seemed to drag on interminably. It feels like that thing's been up for months. It feels like January's been going on for weeks.
I reckon that's how the year's designed: long, long January, short Feb, then the rest of it races away like a hamster in a go-kart. Let's blame the Romans. Julius Caesar. Or Pope Gregory, who presumably got a bit fed up with it being too warm in March and made up the calendar system so he could still go out in September without a coat on.
Thinking of calendar-changes-made-to-match-the-imperfect-journey-of-the-Earth-around-the-Sun, I discovered today that Earth's magnetic poles are moving!
Well. I didn't discover it; I can't claim that. That was some geologists working on the World Magnetic Model - I just read about it in Nature. And apparently, it happens all the time - in fact, roughly every 750,000 years, the poles actually flip over! This time Magnetic North is just casually drifting toward Siberia, thanks to weakening core fields somewhere under Canada.
"Is there anything to worry about?" boomed the article. It turns out there isn't, not really. Only you might have to go somewhere else to see the Northern Lights. And perhaps not Caversham, as my Dad once suggested.
I'd be alright with that; it would brighten up the long January nights anyway. It would have properly confused Pope Gregory though.
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