Dear LPG,  

During the month of April 2025 we were told just how warm it has been.  Whenever I meet someone I know casually and I am not sure what to say after, ‘Hello’ and, ‘How are you’, my ‘go to’ subject is still a comment on the weather.   What is happening in the sky and whether the sun has been kind to us is the accepted start to any conversation. 

Our warm weather has been breaking records according to the weather forecasts this year although I have to admit that for me, while the sun has been glorious, at times I am having a bit of difficulty feeing the warmth as soon as it hides behind a cloud or I step into the shadow of a tree or building.  Have you ever noticed that it often seems warmer in the house, which is a blessing because it has meant that we have had to use less of that really expensive stuff; electricity?  I seriously think that when it is warm and sunny we have an obligation to go out there and take in some natural vitamin D if we can.   

I recently made a short walk in the park with a friend last for two hours as we stopped at each bench on the path and let the sun have its effect on us.  At one point my friend and I shut our eyes and just let the warmth and our imaginations do their thing.   

After a couple of minutes of contemplative silence, we compared notes and my friend told me about her imagined vision of a sunny beach while the dreamer in me imagined a meadow with flowers, bees and butterflies.   For some odd reason I had to have been temporally transported to Holland because there was a windmill in the middle of my meadow and that got me thinking.   

We all know what one is but I can’t really ever remember ever seeing one in the UK.  I had to ask Google about them and apparently the we had a network of them just about everywhere as recently as the 17th and 18th centuries.  They were quite common in the 11th century and had a lot to do with flour making but there were quite noisy too. 

Please don’t ask why but I also learned that the UK is officially the windiest country in Europe.  Perhaps they have always intrigued me because windmills feature among the few types of building which have their own moving parts, and while their original use in flour making has declined, it appears that we have so much wind that we are doing our best to make it into electricity.  

How, you might ask, and while I learned a bit about the process from YouTube, I really have little idea about the technicalities but I am hoping that, when they get it right the price of that particular utility will become a bit cheaper for us consumers.  

The internet tells that Scotland is the windiest county in Europe and we people south of that border can’t be that far behind, which got me thinking about the relationship between wind, sun and electricity. 

We have all heard about how solar power is taking over when it comes to finding a good way to generate electricity cheaply.  We continue to be invited to put those solar panels on our roofs.   We are apparently the leading country when it comes to getting the wind to do this too.  These days they are called wind turbines and, while we try to get the sun generating electricity on the roofs of our houses, wind farms are not to be ignored. 

For some reason such moments put a song in my head and the one that came to mind was an old Donovan song that people of my age might remember.   So, in future when I decide to close my eyes and visualise windmills I will need to imagine a much less romantic, and more modern picture I suppose…  

JL, Blythe Hill.  
 

 

 

JL found out a bit about the history of windmills…

 

 

 

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.. how the newer ones work…

 

 

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… and she reminds us of that song she mentioned…

 

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