I’m no doubt showing my age here but I have very clear memories of standing out on the Department’s external testing area (a.k.a. the coffee balcony) and observing, with many others, the 97% partial solar eclipse over Reading on the 11th August 1999. Eyes are good at adapting to diminished light so the partial eclipse […]

As a novice but increasingly obsessed gardener, I’ve been really interested in how our #wetdrought has been shaping the green space all around us. Certainly all those additional water butts haven’t been put to good use just yet. In addition to the contrast in rainfall between March and April there was also a big change […]

“April doet wat hij wil” is a common saying in Dutch, meaning: “April does whatever it wants”, and suggesting that the weather in April couldn’t care less about any hosepipe ban. Indeed, even though we are in drought, we saw the wettest April on record in the UK. Interestingly, in their news release on April […]