The Beestonian Issue 11

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The

Beestonian

ISSUE 11 / August & September: 2012 Out(doors) and Proud _Page 2 University of Beestonia: Life As A Mature Student BESTonians: Our own J-L0(we) _Page 3 Rural Strides _Page 4 & 5 Judo the Mats Gooooooold Getting Back on the Bike _Page 6 Au Contraire V The Great Outdoors _Page 7 Beeston Beats: Martin Jackson Oxjam Update Horace’s Half Hour _Page 8 Famous Last Words Thought for the Month

About Us: We are a locally run, locally based, regular, free paper for Beeston and its environs. We are independent in all ways and not-for-profit, so if we say we like it, we really mean it. You’ll find us in good Beeston coffee shops, pubs and other places we love.

Close Encounters of the NG9… Did you hear anything strange on Friday, 10 August at 7 am? Beestonian Paul Dennis thinks he did. While most people would have been pretending not to hear their alarm clocks, Paul, 46, was having a pre-work jog round Highfields Lake. Apparently, this would normally be a serene experience, with just the babbling of water and calls of ducks and geese to break the quiet. However, while running on the university-side bank, he claims an increasingly loud, “whooshing” noise caused him to turn and, to his amazement, see what appeared to be a fireball moving at incredible velocity before smashing into the lake with a noise Paul described as “like a thousand cars back-firing at once”. And then silence for a second, before the resident waterfowl went understandably crazy at what had just happened. But what did just happen? The week in which it occurred is apparently notable for being the time Earth orbits into the Perseid Meteor cloud, a large cloud of dust hanging in space made up of the remains of a passing comet. As our planet passes through the cloud,

millions of particles are pulled into the atmosphere and then rain down as shooting stars. This display is highly anticipated amongst amateur

“Any wannabe space debris owners: grab a net. ” sky-watchers. The vast majority of these burn up in the atmosphere, but the rare one becomes a meteoroid: a meteor that survives the journey down and impacts the ground or, in this case, a boating lake. It is extremely rare to see one of these, and they are greatly sought after by scientists because of their rarity. Is a chunk of this meteoroid now be resting on the silty lake bed, prodded by pike and whatever else lurks in the waters? Any wannabe space debris owners: grab a net. However, in the remote chance that Paul saw the beginning of an alien invasion centred round Beeston, we at The Beestonian would like to put a message to any potential invader: we welcome you and will

Paul points to the place. Photo by Lewis Stainer.

aid you in your evil plans to eat mankind, as long as you spare us. Plus, Cliftonians taste better... Did you see/hear anything unusual on the 10 August to corroborate these events? Have any theories on it? Maybe you’re an expert in this sort of stuff and fancy letting us know so we can get to the bottom of things (the lake, even)? Then we’d relish hearing from you. Email: thebeestonian@gmail.com Lord Beestonia


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