Life Observed

Looking for all the world like Onions , these are in fact Daffodil bulbs . These were spotted these while we were wandering around the garden centre.  I quite liked the smooth cream colour and the broken brown skins. No Onions, I mean Daffodils, were rearranged in the making of this picture. They really do look like onions to a non gardener like me.  Here's the strange thing: You can eat onion bulbs but not their flowers. You can eat Daffodil flowers but not their bulbs. It's a strange world, isn't it?

I am told that our local council are experimenting with a new type of tarmac road surface. It is supposed to last longer and make West Berkshire a safer place. Some years ago they built the Newbury bypass and experimented with a new tarmac composition that was supposed to be quieter. It seems the search is always on for a better road surface.  Well, I have an excellent suggestion: Cover the roads in ice . It isn't that difficult. While the old surface is being removed and the refrigeration installed, you could put optical fibre and we would have twenty first century IT infrastructure at the same time.   Here's a typical experimental surface. Click for larger view. Here are the advantages: Ice covered roads are easier to see in the dark. They don't need to shed water, in fact they capture it. This helps prevent flooding and makes the roads largely self maintaining. Being smooth, the surface doesn't wear away so easily so they last longer, and they ...

Italy is full of old stuff. They have so much old stuff they take it for granted.  This rather splendid cast iron pump has had a modern galvanised tap stuffed in it's mouth. I wonder if you could get away with that in Oxford or Stratford on Avon... Up in the hills they are at it as well. This wall fountain has also been "converted".

What is the point of this? It is a handbrake on a farm trailer. Yes, I suppose it has to be fitted by Euro law or some health and safety rule. You know what will happen. If you actually use it on a slope the trailer will roll away anyway. If you come back in a week it will have rusted on and the wheels will be locked. They fit them. No-one uses them.  At least it is somewhere to hang the hydraulic pipe...

This is a new one on me. It's a fresh pizza machine spotted at the bus station in Sorrento.  Fresh pizza: It mixes the flour in front of you. It adds the tomato and your selected topping. The process can be seen through the window on the left. It cooks it there and then and it serves it out of the flap on the right. How cool is that? I wonder if it works?

Ah, Italy. Land of the Moped . This trusty if unstable two wheeled design icon can be seen transporting families of three and four on a daily basis. Children hold the windscreen or the handlebars, and their grip is all that keeps them on the machine. Maybe it is an early lesson in personal responsibility.   In a rare concession to safety, I note that the driver is now obliged to wear a helmet, something I don't remember from our visit to Firenze in 2000. Italian roads are an exciting mixture of Coaches, Cars, Mopeds and Pedestrians. They paint white lines and dots on the roads in Italy, but quite what function these markings serve I cannot detect. They also put up signs to show that narrow pathways are not for wheeled traffic. These signs seem to be merely advisory, and are generally open for debate. If you are a pedestrian in Italy, my advice is: Look both ways all the time, and perhaps consider staying at home. 

As part of our Rome in six hours trip, we toured the Vatican Museum. The Sistene chapel was splendid, but packed with us tourists and generally spoiled as a result.  I would like to see the place on my own, but I guess you have to be the Pope to have that privilege. Anyway, elsewhere I came across this enormous item. What is it? An Inquisition Thumbscrew? Next to it was an even more scary implement.  The mind boggles as to the original use of this item.  Maybe it part of the specialised Recanting Astronomer Kit ?