{"id":1832,"date":"2014-12-08T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/2014\/12\/a-sidekick-advent-calendar-day-8.html\/"},"modified":"2014-12-08T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T09:00:00","slug":"a-sidekick-advent-calendar-day-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/2014\/12\/a-sidekick-advent-calendar-day-8.html\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sidekick Advent Calendar Day 8"},"content":{"rendered":"<span style=\"font-size: large;\">&#8220;Nothing and nowhere is more wintry than the far reaches of space.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><i>Jacques Derrida<\/i><br \/><i><br \/><\/i>I admit the above quote is an outright fabrication but it&#8217;s also totally true!&nbsp;Next year Sidekick will be publishing <i>Laboratorio<\/i>, an anthology of creative writing by astrophysicists at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, helmed (and edited) by their poet-in-residence Simon Barraclough. Along with fellow Sidekick collaborator Harry Man, Simon is one of poetry&#8217;s biggest space enthusiasts, and his second Salt collection, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/simonbarraclough.com\/neptune-blue\/\">Neptune Blue<\/a><\/i>, includes a planets sequence. We have asked for &#8211; and been granted! &#8211; permission to reproduce his ode to the ice giant Uranus as part of our advent calendar.<br \/><br \/>Now, of course, it&#8217;s well known that Father Christmas <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians\">only got as far as Mar<\/a>s during his forays beyond our own planet&#8217;s atmosphere, but we reckon Uranus would make a suitable base of Christmas operations after Earth&#8217;s ice caps melt. It&#8217;s a little further out, but then, gentrification is forcing all of us to make longer commutes these days.<br \/><br \/>Keep an eye out for a Jacques Tati cameo towards the end of the second stanza!<br \/><br \/><div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-rjPPvcop0wQ\/VITahLtJGPI\/AAAAAAAAAjQ\/EIgiUex386E\/s1600\/P1030054.JPG\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-rjPPvcop0wQ\/VITahLtJGPI\/AAAAAAAAAjQ\/EIgiUex386E\/s1600\/P1030054.JPG\" height=\"640\" width=\"425\" \/><\/a><\/div><br \/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Nothing and nowhere is more wintry than the far reaches of space.&#8221;Jacques DerridaI admit the above quote is an outright fabrication but it&#8217;s also totally true!&nbsp;Next year Sidekick will be publishing Laboratorio, an anthology of creative writing by astrophysicists at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, helmed (and edited) by their poet-in-residence Simon Barraclough. Along with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/2014\/12\/a-sidekick-advent-calendar-day-8.html\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Sidekick Advent Calendar Day 8&#8221;<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[428,459,529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent-calendar","category-simon-barraclough","category-uranus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidekickbooks.com\/booklab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}