Please take your space debris home with you

Somewhere, right now, there is a room full of boffins tracking a satellite the size of a bus as it plummets through our solar system at a rate of 5miles per second, heading for somewhere on Earth. But not, apparently, America. Oh that’s OK then.

I was listening to the radio this morning and they said that there is a 1 in 3000 chance that someone will be hit by a piece of the decommissioned satellite. Just dropped it into the end of the news like it was nothing serious. Chance of rain plus some falling space debris, make sure you pack your helmet as well as your umbrella.

I’m a little bit freaked out by the idea of something flying through the sky, Armageddon style and taking someone out. There is something like a 1 in 21 trillion chance of it being you. Chances of winning the lottery: 1 in 14million, maybe I should start buying a ticket.

One guy on the internet said that this is nothing new, over 400 pieces of debris fall to earth every year. And this is supposed to make me feel better how? Something I had never given a second thought to now apparently happens every day. I wonder what the statistics are for being hit but any piece of space debris, is it more than being struck by lightning?

Only one person has ever been hit by falling space debris, they say the person was unharmed. She must be making a fortune this week, I have seen quotes from Lottie Williams all over the internet. Her advice is to stay outside and look for it coming. As much as that appeals to me for twelve hours on a Friday night, I think I’ll take my chances on a bit of telly and bed thanks.

But this is all part of a bigger problem. The levels of space junk have now reached critical, and NASA have been called upon to start clearing it up. I don’t think it’s as simple as using a big hoover to suck all the crap out of the sky. Maybe they could just get a massive magnet, send it up there and see what sticks instead.

How can they leave so much rubbish up there? It’s like a bunch of messy kids not tidying away their toys after playing with them. It’s clearly men that are responsible, any woman would have factored in a cleaning up plan at the end of the use of the equipment (it’s tidy up time!), the men just wandered off and got distracted by the shiny buttons on some other satellite.

Apparently this is a kind of dress rehearsal for when a much larger satellite hits the Earth in November. This one will include a very large lens, don’t fancy getting a thwack on the head by that. But I think this will all become part of every day life given the amount of crap floating around up there. Pack lunches? Check. School run? Check. Took piece of decommissioned satellite found in garden to Household Waste Recycling Centre? Check.

So watch your back today. I just hope that whoever finds space debris is unharmed enough to milk the publicity for all it’s worth. Tut tut astronauts, when will you learn to tidy up as you go along?

Five Minutes Peace

We all love our kids but jeez don’t they come with noise, chaos and havoc? We’re all just hanging out for that delicious moment when kids actually fall asleep and the countdown to our bedtime begins (technically should be about half hour after the kids given how tired we are), when we all desperately try and fit as much as we possibly can into our few hours of grown-up time. Usually at the mercy of demanding V+ or Sky+ boxes or, in my case, the man insisting on watching a film because then it feels like we’ve actually ‘done something’.

This weekend I enjoyed a very rare few hours of quiet. The man and me went on an organised ghost hunt on Saturday night which mostly consisted of standing in the pitch dark holding hands with strangers. In silence. I didn’t want ghosts knocking and moving furniture around or wailing, not because I’m scared of ghosts, but because I didn’t want my long awaited peace to be broken.

From the moment I wake up in the morning (son number two pulling my duvet off me then heaving my head of the pillow with all his might) to the second I fall asleep (with the telly on to silence my screaming thoughts) it’s nothing but Mummymummymummymummymummymummy followed by whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy or, in the case of son number two mamamamamamamamamamama for ten hours, whilst running around getting drinks, snacks and fulfilling any number of other demands. And I know it gets worse as they get older: “Mum he looked at me.” “Mum tell him!”

The man and me very occasionally, and always regret it afterwards, sleep in while the kids sneak about downstairs creating havoc. A few weeks ago we got up to find that one of them (or possibly both I can just imagine them gleefully encouraging each other on this one) had put bubble mixture in the cats drinking fountain, creating a small but elaborate jacuzzi which could have provided one of the small mammals slain by Expensive Cats a nice pre-death treat (thankfully the kids had not thought of that and the only thing found floating in the bubbles was a Toy Story pencil).

But I can’t just blame my kids for the chaos that is our house, Expensive Cats also enjoy a spot of early morning mayhem. Every day, before dealing with destroyed boxes of cereal in the dining room (why can’t kids understand the wording “slide finger under flap”) and after crunching through a sea of coco pops (that’s another two quid down the drain) I get to the kitchen to find any number of slaughtered creatures littering my floor. Some of them have been skinned, disembodied heads lie a foot away from other random body parts and sometimes just small piles of entrails remain. Step on some poor creatures innards barefoot every morning and you quickly learn to put your shoes on before you even come downstairs.

There’s a kids book called Five Minutes Peace, where Mrs Large (the matriarch of the Large family of elephants) tries to have a bubble bath while caring for her 3 children. Quite what she was thinking even attempting to have a quiet bath in the middle of the day with three kids around is beyond me. She even takes a tray of tea with her. I mean, really? I’m lucky if I get a chance to have a wee in peace without a small child  sitting bare bummed in my lap because he needs a poo right that second. Anyway, predictably she doesn’t get her peaceful bath and the kids eventually get in with her. She then leaves them to it and gets three minutes and forty-five seconds to herself downstairs. That’s where the book ends. It doesn’t say that her penance for those three minutes and forty-five seconds was a tsunami in the bathroom, emptied out bottles of shampoo and the most expensive ‘treat for mummy’ conditioner used to “clean” the shower screen floating in the remaining one inch of water that’s left in the bath (with a foot of bubbles on top which will take ten minutes to wash away), and 3 rolls of soggy toilet paper and an emptied out waste bin floating in the flood water on the floor. Was it worth it for three minutes and forty-five seconds?

So I really enjoyed my ghosthunt, if nothing else for the peace and quiet that I never seem to get in my house. But however much I wish for silence I know that there will come a day when I long for this mayhem, and I will miss CBeebies being on at full blast and having to clean marmite off radiators, whilst being used as a human climbing frame. No, really.