Chezcance @ Milton: Day 46/84: Full moon round again! Of course, it's a lunar month ..

Lunar month goes round and round. And here we are for our second [first was April 8th Day 17/84] Full Moon during lockdown; that also means we've had two New Moons [March 24th Day 2/84 and April 23rd Day 32/84] as well. "Following the science" as we are continually urged of late tells us that the the Full Moon on April 8th was as big as it gets i.e. when it is closest too the earth. It's 14% larger to the eye at what is called its perigee and a third brighter than at its most distant, its apogee. Tonight the moon is 47,033km closer to earth than it was on March 24th when lockdown had just begun. This time around it's had the effect of metamorphising my title from 'Boarding @ Home' to 'Chezcance' for this Moon Day 46/84 so who knows where this blog will be by the end of today/ tonight? The moon's crescent shape is frequently depicted perhaps most famously as a Muslim symbol derived from references in the Quran 52: "The Hour (of Judgment) is nigh, and the moon is cleft asunder." It has been suggested that the moon was cleft asunder at some point in history being a miracle by the prophet Muhammad. NASA suggests there is no evidence on its surface to suggest that ever happened. Intriguingly the Malesoures whose symbol we now use in our village, derived from our own Manor is a crescent too. And Yes, when the Wills' were granted English Arms by The College in London that crescent was included. The subsequent Scottish Arms from Lord Lyon substituted the appropriate symbols for coal+salt as Prestoungrange, a sheaf of grain as Dolphinstoun and Lochnaw's castle.

The moon is believed to have broken from the earth and gone into orbit. Earth's gravitational pull stops it from rotating always presenting the same face to us. Daytime on one side of the moon lasts about 13 and a half days, followed by 13 and a half nights of darkness. When sunlight is hitting the moon's surface, the temperature can reach 260F/ 127C; when the sun goes down, temperatures can dip to minus 280F/ 173C. The man on the right below is of course Neil Armstrong, first man to step out of our own world into the universe beyond; it was July 20th 1969 and kept John F Kennedy's Pledge to have a Man on The Moon by 1970.

Moon not made of green or any other colour cheese. Armstrong and NASA scientists all confirmed the old belief was not true, any more than the notion of splitting the moon. It also seems unlikely that any man came down from the moon too soon trying to find Norwich … this folk story rhyme was first seen print in The Only True Mother Goose Melodies that was published in 1833 by Munroe & Francis, in Boston. Seems some disagreement on pease and plum porridge persists though.