Monday 21 June

Told you I wouldn't be around that much. Went to visit my sister, who leaves 75 miles away near Amsterdam, by train yesterday. She's a good cook, and has a house with cats, so plenty of fun to be had. Didn't get back until about 11pm last night. This morning, it's brighter and not as cool as yesterday, which saw the mercury hunkered down at 13C. Today should see us back up to 19C, which is closer to the seasonal norm of 21C / 70F for this part of the world.

Today is also the Summer Solstice, and the Druids will have been heralding the rising of the Sun above the Heel Stone at Stonehenge in southern England. There will also have been a posse of druid worshippers over at Callanish in the Isle of Lewis, marking the same event a bit earlier in the morning. The only problem is that the Callanish Stone Circle is a lunar monument, and has no bearing on anything solar. But who am I to steal their thunder.

Hurricane season is underway, and although there is nothing in the Atlantic (apart from five tropical waves), the Pacific has its first hurricane on the go: Celia. This one is nearly 400 miles south of Acapulco, and poses no threat to land. One of the Atlantic tropical waves has pushed some tropical heat into the southeast of the US, giving our friend Sam (Docklines) a touch of heatstroke. Sam has not posted on his blog for a year and a half, but is present on Facebook.