Apologies for the interpution in service!   I’ve been away for the last three weeks, enjoying what was probably the holiday of a lifetime in New Zealand.  However, I’m now back in the UK and have (just about) recovered from my jet lag.  There’s been lots going on while I’ve been away though, and I’ll post a couple of things just now.

The photo shows me with one of the Moeraki Boulders, which are some very unusual spherical boulders which are (very distantly!) related  to the ‘cannonball’ rock formations found in my native Sunderland.  I’d always been told back home that they were only ever found in Sunderland and New Zealand, but I think that might be a bit of a Mackem urban myth as the Moeraki ones are quite different!