Thursday June 4th 2009. Day 21.

 

Election Day in the UK and Netherlands. I voted by post a week ago, maintaining my record of never having missed voting in elections in which I could vote. If you don’t vote you don’t really have the right to complain (a spoilt ballot or a blank voting paper are quite effective protest options, if necessary).

 

Recovered my bicycle, which now goes just nicely, went to the post office and put some Herschel posters in the post and picked up my latest set of Star Trek DVDs and then got to work on the great clean-up. There was a real degree of satisfaction in seeing everything looking so much more presentable afterwards. As an encore I even ironed enough shirts for the next week.

 

Judging by the areas of clean glass in the morning, the window cleaner fish did survive its ordeal last night. Of course, I never actually see it because it seems to be active only at night when the lights are off. If all goes well, by the end of next week I’ll be ready to add a number of neon fish and the aquarium will be complete.

 

Being somewhat of a political junkie, following what election coverage there was from the UK was just fascinating. My home town of Bristol was one of just three councils planning to release results last night. However, news of the results became almost irrelevant in the light of the gathering political crisis. Everything seems to suggest that this may be a blessing in disguise for Gordon Brown as his party is being systematically and brutally wiped-out in the polls while attention is being distracted elsewhere. Just 6 out of the first 31 Labour councillors to come up for election so far have survived: in Bristol just two out of ten were re-elected, one of them by only 9 votes. In the end though, the delays in reporting results defeated me and I went off to bed. It looks like the sort of political massacre that the Conservative party suffered in the 1990s as they all but disappeared as a political force.

 

 

Unofficial Herschel image of the day archive:

 

http://www.observadores-cometas.com/Herschel/Image_of_the_day/image_of_the_day.htm

 

Frequent updates are provided during the day on the Herschel Twitter (ESAHerschel) here:

 

http://twitter.com/

 

You can follow Herschel testing and observations in real time on the Twitter.