Small World

I've been trying to upload a post to my blog all day and much of yesterday, but Microsoft 2010 and Blogger don't communicate as yet. The constant trying has made me look at my poor little post and think Are You Really Worth All This Hassle? But now I know its not me that just can't hack a new system, I'll just keep doing it on my old laptop.

The thing is, I was browsing an atlas to see where the Oxford-Warwickshire border might be (and happily, its where I thought it was) and then my eye drifted to the lines of latitude. Newcastle sits on 55 degrees north. Who else shared my latitude, I wondered?

Not many. The line cuts through a bit of Denmark, skids along just south of Moscow, takes in Omsk and the steppes in the far east and then hitches out through the chain of the Aleutian Islands and touches a bit of Alaska, passes a long way north of Edmonton, crosses Hudson Bay and then one or two towns (Portrush) in Northern Ireland and a smidgen of South west Scotland back to Carlisle and Newcastle. It sits a lot further north than I imagined, touching no part of the US, for example.

No huge cities, certainly. (Unless Omsk is huge. Does anyone know?) A lot of open country. Have you ever wondered who lies on your latitude? Who lies on 55 degrees north with me? Anyone?