Against All Odds

The Martinborough Music Festival “Class of ’21”. Photo Pete Monk.

The Martinborough Music Festival was performed in October, despite being reorganised three times. “It was a bit of a rollercoaster with “Will it happen, Won’t it happen?” moments,” said Brendan Smyth and Sharon Cuzens, two of the organising team for the festival. “But our whole team was determined to make it work.

“Each time the date changed, we lost quarter of our audience. The original players we had hoped to highlight were from Australia. With Melbourne and Sydney in Lockdown that was not going to be. We lost a pianist, a cellist and three viola players. Fortunately, Wilma Smith managed to escape on the last flight out of Melbourne.”

Vicki Jones, and Wilma succeeded in finding other musicians of equal calibre. Michael Houston replaced Laurence Matheson. Alexandra Partridge cellist, and Zephyr Wills viola, two younger players, supported Andrew Joyce cellist, Gillian Ansell viola, Bridget Douglas on the flute, Wilma, and Monique Lapins on violins.

With over 200 other events cancelled or rescheduled, iTICKET worked patiently to manage our changes. To keep the numbers up we decided to arrange four concerts. Two afternoon repeat performances were held. With the restrictions reducing attendees from 200 to 150 per concert the audience could be socially distanced, yet not miss out. Masks were mandatory and everyone obliged. … Continue Reading

Under The Martinborough Stars

Photo courtesy Warren Cameron.

Some people see a face, a man, while others a woman holding a tree. I see a rabbit with long ears and a fluffy tail. I am of course talking about the Moon. This episode is all about our nearest celestial neighbour, one which without it, the earth would be a very different place indeed.

The Moon is our constant companion. We forget sometimes how important and vital the Moon is to our life on Earth. We sometimes take the Moon for granted but it can still surprise us. When the Apollo astronauts brought back moon rocks from their mission, scientists were intrigued to find that the rocks were very similar to the rocks found on Earth.

To understand where the Moon came from and why the rocks are similar, we need to go back in time about 4.5 billion years.

Back then, the Earth had just formed, it was a ball of molten rock, hot and squishy. Rocks were constantly flying around the solar system then, much more than today. A huge rock, around the same size of Mars called Theia came smashing into the Earth. This rock collided with our planet and chunks of the molten earth flew out, eventually sticking together and forming a large rock. This rock eventually became the Moon. … Continue Reading

There’s always worse

If you think NZ politics is sometimes a bit chaotic, consider this: 

Sweden’s first female prime minister, the Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, has resigned less than 12 hours into the job when her coalition collapsed, plunging the country into further political uncertainty.

Andersson said a decision by the Green party, the junior party in the coalition, to quit had forced her to resign. She added that she had told the speaker of parliament she hoped to be appointed prime minster again as the head of a single-party government.

“I have asked the speaker to be relieved of my duties as prime minister,” Andersson told a news conference. “I am ready to be prime minister in a single-party, Social Democrat government.”

         In a turbulent sequence of events, Andersson had earlier in the day become the first woman elected to the post of prime minister in Sweden after clinching a last-minute deal with the Left party to raise pensions in exchange for its backing in Wednesday’s vote.

The fatal blow came when the Greens’ leader, Per Bolund, said his party could not tolerate the opposition’s “historic budget, drafted for the first time with the far right”, and quit the government. Among other things, the Greens said a planned tax cut on petrol would lead to higher emissions.

That left Andersson, who had taken over as prime minister from Stefan Löfven, as head of a minority coalition backed by the Left and Centre parties, with no option but to hand in her resignation.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse report

Sunscreens don’t mix

UK and US researchers warn not to mix sunscreens. They tested five non mineral based sunscreens and found that when applied over zinc oxide based ones the UVA protection factor was quickly reduced. The team suggested that people should be careful to avoid mixing Zinc oxide with other  sun screens 

This could happen when after swimming or being in the sun for a longish period a new layer from somebody else’s sunscreen was applied. Or when applying sunscreen over a makeup containing an SPF .