Today

[j.sabourn]

Is the longest day in Australia , so is therefore the shortest in the uk. Hope you all managed to get home before dark. We’ll give the sun a good kick tomorrow and send it back to you , so you can now start counting the days when you are back in summer weather . Cheers JS

[Keith Tindell]

Cannot wait John, this gloom is a real bummer

[Graham Shaw]

Is the longest day in Australia , so is therefore the shortest in the uk.. Cheers JS

So how does that work then John-?

Oh dear,wait, there'll be words from our past studies here surfacing again ; equinoxes,solstices (don't try saying those if you lisp),aphelion,perihelion-,apogee,perigee-but don't get those two mixed up with apology or squeegee-unless you're really sorry to the bosun for pinching one of his deck scrubbers without permission.Ha Ha !

[j.sabourn]

With all this talk of climate change the experts should be interrupting this conversation or maybe they are too busy trying to learn something about their theories of doom and gloom. The sun reached its furthest southerly declination yesterday which is approximately 23.5 degrees , what the actual minutes etc. are only a one well versed in such would know. However in my mind any fluctuations from the normal should show any anomalies in the orbital path of the earth around he sun , which would to my tiny mind would start a warning klaxon for all to hear. Lack of such sounds leads me to have doubts about those carrying the boards carrying the message , the end is nigh. Cheers JS
Ref. #3 you’ve missed out Soogee Graham , were you a Soda man or grew up with Teepol ? One can usually tell the era of a seaman by his hands , all knarled and hard skinned can accuse him of using too much soda, ( not in his drink) as will prefer that straight probably. Hands as soft as a baby’s bum then Definetley a teepol man .Cheers JS

[happy daze john in oz]

Of course wanting to be different in Oz we start each season on the first day of the month, March, June, September, December.
The rest of the world use the longest, shortest and equinox days to begin.

The problem goes back to 1788 when the first fleet arrived, Royal Navy ships.
The story is that the Admiralty in it's wisdom decided on those dates way back in the late 1600's.
They wanted all ships of the line top be on the same wave length, as the actual date can vary between 21st and 22nd of month.
So they brought the system here.

News today the earth is spinning faster than ever before, some 4 million years ago it took about 420 days, now it is only 365.2.
If it gets much faster we may all fall off.