Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Thursday, 13 September 2012

Life in mars, maybe it had three legs...



We’ve been watching  doco about the mars rover curiosity. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Today, also, there was a memorial service for Neil Armstrong, who made the “giant leap for mankind” as the first human to set foot on the moon died on Saturday. He was 82. 


It made me thing about how far mankind has come , or gone depending on how ot think about it.
Roll the film back to 1957, when the first orbiting craft wet up and around the planet for the first time. In my mother’s sisters back garden we gathered in the back garden and watched the night sky. A velvet blackness set with sparkling diamonds. Then, look, one of them is slowly moving. It was very exciting to see that small sparkle of light making its way across the night sky.
Then there were the space craft that took monkeys and dogs up into space. 

And that took me back to about 1960 when there was a s completion run by a local store. The prize was a pretty black and white puppy. Oh how I wanted to win it, so did most kids. We wracked our brains and gathered together on the night that the winner was to be announced. Of course we all thought that ‘our’ name was the best. Hmph. I didn’t win. The name that was chosen by the judges was ‘Laika’ a very clever name. Us losers were very downhearted. 

Funny how things trigger other memories.  In a similar time frame was a visit to the nearest decorating store by Aussie singer Rolf Harris. That was before he was famous for his huge painting (can you tell what it is yet)  He created one of his masterpieces and delivered the catchphrase of the band of paint as he used en empty tin as a drum. ‘Trust British paints? Sure can’. Watch it to the end to see what I mean 

And that takes me to some of the other hits of the Aussie singer like this one, No I’m not going to tell you about it, just click on the link and enjoy it for yourself

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