It tells the story of the D-Day landings and the allies re-taking mainland europe from the Germans at the end of the second world war. It's extremeley ambitious and an all round great piece of work. If you like a classic war movie, and if you've got a wet Sunday afternoon to spare - I can't think of many better ways of spending it, than watching this. But that's not the reason for this post's title.
On this day, the earth's "circle of illumination" will be from the Arctic Circle on the far side of the earth (in relation to the sun) to the Antarctic Circle on the near side of the earth. The equator receives twelve hours of daylight, there's 24 hours of daylight at the North Pole and areas north of 66°30' N, and there's 24 hours of darkness at the South Pole and areas south of 66°30' S.All very interesting is a geographical and physicistical sort of way, but again this is not the reason for this post's title.
June 20-21 is start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere but simultaneously the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. It's also the longest day of sunlight for places in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest day for cities south of the equator.
However, June 20-21 is not the day when the sun rises earliest in the morning nor when it sets latest at night. The date of earliest sunrise or sunset varies from location to location.
So, to put you out of your misery... well, at least to get to the point via a round about sort of educational mess.... The longest day in this context is referring to the work that the Winnie (the badman) and I have been putting in over the last few days. Neither of us have had what you might consider a day off in the usual sense of the word and infact we both have been working some extraordeinary hours in the pursuit of completion of the task we have at hand.
On Friday we made what we both felt was significant progress by getting the monster approved for european consumption. No mean feat when you consider the trouble the EU have been having with cucumbers of late, let alone the sort of fare that we're peddaling. Sadly though, this is no time to be sitting back on our laurels of achievement and eating peeled grapes. Far from it. There is still much to do.
We need our cousins from the New World to agree to our terms, we need to scrub and polish and shine our product, we need to try out some, what-if, what-buts and what-wherefors, as well as some this, that and the others. And then, after all that's done (assuming it can be done of course), we'll have to go round all our European friends again and collect their autographs.
But before any of that - our most pressing problem is a gap. It's a rather large gap too. It's not the sort of gap that Winnie and I might have created by not bolting somethig together properly. It's more the sort of gap you might get between say England and Australia.... well, perhaps England and Belgium might be nearer the (deutsch-)mark / Euro / Pound / Dollar etc etc....
Whatever happens, it's going to be yet another long, long day....
This post originally appeared here: Posterous
Comments
Post a Comment