More water

Remember my recent video about water? Well, how many phases of water are there? If you answer three (liquid, gas, and solid) you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice. Remember the supercooling from yesterday? Well, it turns out that no matter what you do, at -38 °C even the purest supercooled water spontaneously turns into ice (with a little audible "bang" no less). But what happens if you continue to lower the temperature? Well, at -120 °C something strange starts to happen: the water becomes ultraviscous, or thick like molasses. And below -135 °C, it becomes "glassy water," a solid with no crystal structure.

Negative Vibes

More than a million homeowners will fall into negative equity as the housing market slump intensifies, the Bank of England has warned. The continuing decline in house prices means that one in ten mortgage holders - 1.2 million people - are likely find themselves trapped in a home worth less than the loan they took out to pay for it.
Around 500,000 homeowners are already in negative equity following a drop in house prices of almost 15 per cent from last summer's peak, the Bank's figures indicate. However, it is the further falls in prices to come that will push another 700,000 of Britain's 11.7 million mortgage holders into negative territory.
At least I know I’n not alone. Fat consolation though that may be.

It’s a small world...

It’s a small world...

Some time ago I blogged about making contact with one of my old friends and it never seems to amaze me that the Internet makes people so easy to find.


While scanning in one of my old albums I came across some photos of Clémentine Lamothe, a student from France who stayed with us on a trip to England in 1994. She was only here for a couple of weeks but seemed to become a member of the family in no time and we still swap Christmas greetings.

Since then she has married Christophe Dolain and has two children – Hugo and Louis. The latter was born this September and is “so cute” according to Clémentine who kindly sent us a card announcing his arrival.


Because I’m much happier on the computer than with a pen nowadays, I thought I’d check out the web to see if I could find her on-line. All I had to do was put her name in Google and up came a few sites pointing to her work activities and a reference to her on a genealogy site.


A trip to Facebook enabled me to find her brother and a quick e-mail to him was texted on to Clementine...

It’s a small world...

Bernie Voshy

If any old folk out there get fed up of their relatives fighting about their potential inheritance here's the way to deal with them.

Grumpy Blog

While reorganising my furniture I was reminded that I hadn’t visited Grumpy Blog for a few weeks. I do so like his Blog. Whether you agree with his point of view or not he picks some wonderful topics... like 16 year old Missy Quinn and her £100,000 wedding.