Sea Bass fillets on a Lobster Bisque Risotto

 

A Sail Loft - Southwold gastronomy treat. Excellent cooking and a substantial plate in a great location.

Flaring Spots on the Sun's Photosphere

 

Not sure whether the bright spot at the end of the arrow is a solar flare or a facular/leaf‑like penumbral grain cluster, a small Ellerman bomb–type event, or processing/artifact from channel mis‑registration. Anyway, I was quite excited and fingers crossed it was any other than a processing artifact!

The above image was captured using specialist equipment and by an experienced solar astro-photographer.

DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN OR POINT YOUR CAMERA AT THE SUN AS THIS WILL DAMAGE YOUR EYESIGHT AND OR DAMAGE YOUR CAMERA.

Big Skies and Fries

 

Suffolk Skies and Truffle Fries

Suffolk is famous for it's wide and 'Big Skies'

For being seen through John Constable's eyes

For Peter Grimes, War Requiem and Young Persons Guide

For Nuclear Power Plant and Bird Sanctuary hide

For rendered and thatched cottages, pretty in pink

For fish and chips suppers and Adnams to drink

For samphire and shellfish and posh Southwold pies

For moules at the Sail Loft with tasty truffle fries.

George Roberts July 2026

The Small White Butterfly

 

Flutter by beautiful Butterfly

Spreading your seed

On plant and weed

On a day overwhelmed by political shite

I am happy to watch in random flight 

The delicate and ephemeral Cabbage White.

George Roberts. July 2026

Get Tanked up with Syd Carp. No 7

 

Boeseman’s Rainbowfish ( two top right) are vibrant and active tropical fish that add a burst of color to any aquarium. With their stunning appearance and lively behavior, these fish are a popular choice among fish fans" - Syd Carp (Aquarist and tropical fish enthusiast).

Vacuum energy fluctuations

 Quantum vacuum fluctuations are spontaneous and particle and antiparticle pairs are created and annihilate continuously. The vacuum  of space seethes with energy at the quantum level. If only we could witness this energetic activity!

Imagination, astro imagery and fractals will have to do!

Sunspots come in pairs

 

After a few days of quiet,  the Sun burst into action and sunspots became visible in pairs and small groups. The above photograph was captured in the morning of the 26th of June 2026.

The Sunspots are areas of the Solar photosphere at lower temperatures than their surroundings and they therefore appear dark. 

The spots are created by the differential movement of plasma in the sun's atmosphere at different latitudes. Consequently , the magnetic field lines are twisted and contorted.  The spots are areas where heat is vented and where the plasma is cooler and darker than the surroundings. As they are a magnetic affect, they are magnetically polarised and consequently sunspots develop often in pairs or groups.

DANGER WARNING 

Dont look at the Sun or try to photograph it. The above photograph was taken using specialist equipment and by an experienced solar photographer. There is a significant danger of destroying your camera's sensor and losing your eyesight!

The culinary versatility of the humble crabstick.

 Pasta with cubed or shredded crabsticks, diced courgettes, basil, a dash or two of pastis and cream.  Very easy to prepare, quick to cook, inexpensive and very tasty with a hint of aniseed. An excellent choice for a midweek lunch or supper.

If you are so inclined, you can 'Waitrose' it up by adding a few prawns and mussels but I like the standard model!

3d Max Madness

 

Designs downloaded from Thingiverse, ammended, painted and personalised. I am very pleased with the 3d print quality of the Neptune 3 pro budget Elegoo printer. 

Watch out! 'Scrapers and Bots are about!

 

Ironically created by AI.

I was alarmed to see my blog page count increase by over 200,000 in 24 hours. When I looked into this the most likely cause was Scrapers and Bots trawling through the content to find opportunities for intellectual and creative theft.

I am not anti Ai or for that matter entrepreneurial enterprise and have been surprised at the high quality of  information, images and visual art that Ai delivers. 

Ai is s powerful tool but the cynical application of its power for acquisition and greed is unacceptable and unsustainable.

I asked Google Gemini to create an image that best represented 'Scrapers and Bots'. I was provided with two images in succession that featured 'cute' anthromorphised computers doing their day job. I rejected both with feedback!

The posted image was the third provided after I had stressed for the second time that I was annoyed and angry at the theft of my creativity.

Clearly, androids when not dreaming of electric sheep, have collective loyalty!

Spray Booth in a M&S box.

 

"Spray painting odd shaped 3d parts for 'fidgets' for one young boy, who very much likes a fidget and has been waiting patiently for me to get around to it, presented me with a bit of a  problem. How to spray paint weird shapes without using my fingers to support the item being  painted?

Having watched Dom Chinea on the BBC Repair  Shop, I decided to follow his example but at a reduced scale. 

My lovely Cousin and Aunty sent me and my partner a M&S fruit basket that came in a sturdy cardboard box. Some gaffer tape, adhesive, a short length of stainless steel bar and copper wire once 'crafted' created the above 'Spray Booth' with suspension bar and hooks - virtually for free! My favourite price!

I love a bit of crafting in my shed and now I can add 'spray painting to my acquired skill set".

The Silver Y Moth

 

A Silver Y Moth came in through our window from the garden tonight and took refuge on the wall just below the ceiling coving in our sitting room.

Moths are beautiful little pieces of flying life and are a source of food for the pipestrel bats, which fly over our backyard.

Parmigiana with Cantabrian anchovies and Scottish smoked salmon.

 

Mediterranean sourced food fused with a little taste of Scotland and prepared and cooked by a beautiful woman with northern and Irish roots. Mix and match the best without borders!

New Moon and Venus Conjunction

 

"Brilliant image of the close conjunction of the planet Venus and the new crescent Moon captured by Dr Chrissy Roberts with his iPhone from Cambridgeshire last night. Thank you Dr Chris for sending this to Kurt in hospital" - Joel Cairo CEO of the JPO, the UK's most easterly Astronomical Observatory.

Something may go bang in the sky soon'

  

A star map for June and July in the Northern Hemisphere- looking South after dark. Map Credit: Astronomy.

Sometime soon and possibly in the next few weeks the star T Coronae Borealis is predicted to explode in a nova. This is a star that doesn't collapse to create a neutron star or a black hole. Instead T Coronae has been observed overtime to go through recurrent nova. 

This will be witnessed from earth by a significant brightening. So significant, that T Coronae, which cannot usually be seen with the naked eye, will be easily visible.

If you are interested we recommend you find the asterism (a pattern of stars) as shown on the above map as a crescent of brightish stars and check from night to night as to whether T Coronae is visible. If it is, you have witnessed a nova a literally enormous explosion in the Cosmos. LoL

 

Double Bow in the Sky.

 

It's what Noah would have wanted! 🕊️

A double rainbow happens when sunlight reflects twice inside raindrops, creating a second, fainter arc with reversed colors. 

🌈 What causes a double rainbow?

A double rainbow forms through the same basic physics as a single rainbow — refraction, dispersion, and reflection of sunlight in raindrops — but with one key difference:  

the light bounces twice inside each raindrop instead of once.

Here’s how it works:

- Primary rainbow:  

  Sunlight enters a raindrop, bends (refracts), reflects once inside, and exits. This produces the bright inner arc at about 40–42° from the antisolar point. 

- Secondary rainbow:  

  Some sunlight undergoes two internal reflections before exiting the droplet. This extra bounce sends the light out at a wider angle — roughly 50–53° — creating a second arc outside the primary one. 

Why are the colors reversed?

Because of the second internal reflection, the order of colors flips:

- Primary rainbow: red on the outside, violet on the inside  

- Secondary rainbow: red on the inside, violet on the outside  

This reversal is a direct result of the altered light path inside the droplet. 

 Why is the second rainbow fainter?

The secondary rainbow is dimmer because:

- Each internal reflection causes light loss, so less light reaches your eyes.  

- Only a fraction of sunlight follows the double‑reflection path.  

The secondary arc can be as little as one‑tenth the brightness of the primary. 

 What’s the dark band between the rainbows?

The space between the two arcs is called Alexander’s Dark Band.  

Raindrops in this region do not direct light toward the observer, making the sky appear noticeably darker. 

A double rainbow appears when:

- Sunlight refracts into raindrops  

- Reflects twice inside the droplets  

- Exits at a wider angle  

- Produces a second, reversed, fainter arc  

It’s a beautiful combination of geometry, optics, and atmospheric conditions — and one of nature’s most striking displays.

The thing is, if we know what questions to ask, we can in seconds have an answer neatly provided in whatever format and language we require.  Perhaps we should ask AI if - " there is gold at the end of the AI rainbow?"

Art and Artificial Intelligence

 

I uploaded to Google Gemini, one of my images based on a photograph I took many years ago on a New York Subway Station. It included a digitally added image of a nude female in a garden, that I had painted in oils and a 'smock'. 

I asked Artificial Intelligence to recreate the image in the styles of: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol. 

It did quite well with the very stylised Andy Warhol version and not badly with the Rembrandt version. It struggled with both Vermeer and Edward Hopper. 

I was particularly surprised with regard to the  Edward Hopper version, as when I created my original image, I had Hopper in mind.

I am fully aware of the downsides of AI including the deleterious impact it is already having on the  art, architectural, engineering, design and graphic professions. I cannot, however, resist the impulse to interact with whatever AI is, even though this may be 'A dance with the devil in the pale moonlight'.

A Bee.

 

'Bees hanging-on'

A Bee.

Apiaries.

Workers, Drones and Queens.

Buzzing.

Busy.

Swarming on a warm afternoon.

 Seeking nectar in the last nine yards.

A Bud opens to flower and scent the air.

A Bee balances heavy in perfume and sunlight. 

A Pollinator is hard at work in our 

'Bee-friendly'  Backyard.

George Roberts 'arranged honeyed words' June 2026

Don't delete this it's art.

 

'Still life with Arancini and Parmigiana' mixed food media on a table- artist in residence Anita Roberts June 2026.

"A work of art that thankfully wasn't too good to eat! 

Of all the things you can do in this wonderful world, marrying an intelligent, loving,  kind and talented woman is number one in my book!" Said the artist 's husband of over 50 years.

Scallops

 

Some prefer meat and two veg in dollops

But for my money I prefer 'scallops'.

On hot buttered toast

Much better than a roast

And for something oh so posh!

Not that heavy on the 'dosh'.

Add an avocado pear

A treat to crush and share

With your sister, brother or mother

Or your passionate 'shellfish lover'.

George Roberts  June 2026

Sinus Iridum - The Bay of Rainbows

 

Images captured from the Jodrell Plank Observatory using the 127 mm. Meade Apo Refractor and the Seestar S30. Data and image credit: Pip Stakkert.

"The other evening, our imaging technician Pip was using the  Seestar S30 to photograph the waxing gibbous lunar disc. He noticed that the 'Terminator' or 'daybreak on the Moon' was about to cross the prominent feature Sinus Iridum - The Bay of Rainbows. Sunlight had just touched the peaks of the crater walls creating the effect known as the 'golden handle'. This can just be seen top left in the bottom image". - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Captured from the JPO
and previously published on the blog

Reynard - Fantastic Mr. Fox Memorial

 

'Reynard's last Stand' - mixed media installation - June 2026 
George Roberts

As most of this blog readers might have guessed, I am very eccentric, so this weekend, feeling not at my best, I decided to ‘seize the day’ and create an art installation for our backyard. Like all art –there is an underlying ‘narrative’.

"Long ago on Maidstone Market in Kent, UK, a ‘cheeky costermonger’ offered me and my newly married wife, a red fox fur stole for 50p (it was a few years after currency decimalisation). The underlying threat being, if I didn’t cough up the dosh, said sad fox corpse would suffer the final ignominy of being dumped in the trash bin. Now even in those days, we were happily ‘woke’, so though neither of us wanted a dead animal skin for clothing, we decided to take the long dead fox off his hands.

Years passed while the Fox sat on a shelf in one of the spare bedrooms in our home. Then grandchildren started to appear and finally we reached the grand total of nine. ‘Sleep-overs’ at our house became a thing and the Fox became a night companion, protecting the children from the ‘black dreamers’ and ‘other nasty nightmares’. He was given the name ‘Reynard’ and was comprehensively loved by all. 

Years passed, the grandchildren became adults, sleep-overs became much less frequent and Reynard sat alone and mute in my wife's sewing room.

A month ago, my wife discovered poor Reynard had become infested with mites but neither of us could bring ourselves to put the fox in the bin. The grandchildren found out about poor Reynard’s malaise and were insistent that Reynard should have a dignified end with due respect.

So we cremated Reynard in the backyard and up-cycled a redundant bird table and a charity shop vase, to create a permanently mounted memorial and art installation with his ashes safely stored inside for posterity".

'Reynard's Last Stand'

Rocaille 'Scallops' Water Sculpture

'Scallops' water sculpture designed, reimagined and fabricated by George Roberts in May 2026. Key elements : concrete slabs, ceramic globe, broken tiles, sea glass, 3d printed water flow regulator, electric pump and hand acrylic painted scallop shells.

Macedoine - cooked root and green vegetables served cold in a mayonnaise sauce.

 

A very attractive starter or an accompaniment to a main dish. This french recipe is a colourful vegetarian treet. In my opinion it goes very nicely as a 'side' to accompany pasta.

Eric Hains artist and architect.

Eric Hains

(1913 — 2005)

Eric Hains was a painter in oil, watercolour and acrylic. He exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The Society of Architect Artists, London and Stuttgart and other Art Societies. His work has been purchased by the National Westminster Bank, Schroders Bank and Save and Prosper. Pictures may be seen in the permanent collection of Maidstone Art Gallery, Kent.

 

Hains was a Life Member of the Society of Architect Artists, London and Vice President of Maidstone Art Society.

What this little internet snap shot of Eric Hains doesn't say is that he was a kind and decent man, who when I was a school boy in Maidstone in  the 1960s, went out of his way to encourage me, a complete  stranger, to draw, paint, sculpt and become an architect because he recognised something in me worth developing and helping.  He gave me holiday work as an architectural assistant helping me to fund my degree course at Manchester and even appreciated my humour. Most of us,  if we are honest, owe some of our success in life to the kindness of others. This is my small public thank you to and celebration of Eric Hains a decent human being, architect and  artist. RIP.

Scones

 

A scone, butter and jam: a perfect union between Britain, Denmark and France. At no point were my taste buds 'overrun' or my scone values compromised by foreigners.🤣

'Get tanked up' with Syd Carp No 6

 

"It has been some time since my last aquarium post. Sadly I have had a number of deaths amongst the older fish in the tank. 

When you add additional fish to an aquarium this stresses the existing fish stock. This is a fact however good the filtration system you employ or how well established is the tank.

Now, I guess all you tank enthusiasts have just got out your cylinder filters and are comparing sizes and performance?

A top tip from your old pal Syd Carp - ' when you carry out the weekly partial water change clean out the hose from the aquarium to the cylinder filter inlet using a bottle brush. You will be astonished at the amount of plant debris and general crud  that builds up in this pipe. By cleaning this pipe, water flow, filtration and oxygenation of the water is significantly improved which in turn reduces stress for the fish."👍

Something worth celebrating - a pub lunch!

Don't think much to Nationalism, flag waving and other ways of expressing exceptionalism based upon geographic location, religion and ethnicity. Very proud of talented local people, excellent local businesses, wonderful locally sourced products and last but not least the unique 'pub lunch'.

Every shed should have one

 

The Nurse Diesel Memorial Fountain

The pump in the garden fountain was in need of an adjustable pressure reducing valve to prevent the water splashing everywhere. Unable to find just what I required on-line, I decided to design and manufacture my own. 

I used the parametric SolidCAD freeware for designing the valve and my recently acquired 'Bargain' 3d printer sourced from China for less than £130.

Two hours shed time from a standing start and all was done and printed.

Nowadays we have access to sophisticated technology at knock down prices. When I was a child, Alan Turing had just left Bletchley Park for Manchester. In those times, TV had just started and was in black and white, phones were attached to wires and transistors were still to be invented. Now we have AI self programming and directly challenging our intellectual supremacy on the planet. Whatever next?

Phi and the golden angle

 

The 'golden angle phi' may be found everywhere in the natural world and its mathematics provides the 'golden section' favoured by artists and architects over millenia. 

Key Mathematics of Phi

• Exact Value: \(\phi = \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2} \approx 1.6180339887\dots\)
• Quadratic Equation: \(\phi^2 = \phi + 1\) (or \(\phi^2 - \phi - 1 = 0\))
• Reciprocal Property: \(\frac{1}{\phi} = \phi - 1 \approx 0.618\)
• Continued Fraction: \(\phi = 1 + \frac{1}{1 + \frac{1}{1 + \frac{1}{1+\dots}}}\) [1, 2, 3, 4]

Credit: Wikipedia.

The fern in the image above is arranged and unfurling following those precise mathematical rules.👍🪴

'Art and artificial intelligence'

As I was about to start a 'self portrait ', I decided to see what an 'artificially intelligent bot' could make of a preparatory 'chalk and charcoal ' sketch.  Well, I was impressed with the likeness, composition and the line quality of the drawing prepared by Gemini Google.com

Full Moon in May

 

Relatively speaking, the May full Moon sailed between the clouds as viewed from our garden in Oulton Broad, UK. Not ideal for astrophotography but the Seestar S30 smartscope made a tidy job of it in difficult conditions.

A big bang thankfully 40 million light years away.

 

The faint blurry dot to the left of the brighter galaxy central bulge is the recent supernova in the edge on galaxy NGC 5907 in constellation Draco. The core collapse supernova represents one of the most extreme events in the Universe. If there were any living species within a few tens of light years of this collapsing star their future would have been exterminated. More will be posted on the Jodrell Plank Observatory blog in due course.

Lemon sole, tomatoes, peas and chips.

 

A classic national dish. Enhanced by sliced bread and butter. Garnished with tomato sauce and mayonnaise. Lemon sole is such a delicate and tasty flat fish. "What's not to like'

Kipper Pate Quiche ?

 

Does what it says on the tin. May not be  to everyone's taste but everything including the kipper pate was made from 'scratch' apart from the pastry, which was acquired from the supermarket as a roll (life is really too short rather like the pastry)!

Another pretty New Moon. Across the fields at Darsham, dark sky village, Suffolk, UK.

The New Moon seen setting over the fields at the 'Dark Sky Village' Darsham, Suffolk, UK. Photographed with a Google 8a smartphone. A lovely moment in time!

Jupiter-Waxing Moon Conjunction April 2026

A very pretty conjunction between the huge gas giant planet Jupiter and our much much smaller but much much closer Moon. 

Reynard the fox 1950-2026

 

On this eleventh day of April 2026 our furry companion, Reynard the Fox, was cremated and joined his woodland chums, who have gone before.  "May the fox be with you"