May summary- summer arrives

Summer arrived in the first week of the month, a very welcome change from the awful wet and windy winter and Falmouth's beaches sprung into life.

Falmouth's Gyllyngvase beach on May 12th

Amanda was lucky to find the sun in the Isles of Scilly early in the month,for the annual world gig championships.

It is rare to see the aurora borealis in Britain, let alone down here in the far south-west, but in the second week of the month an intense Coronal Mass Ejection, a large expulsion of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona, produced a display of the Northern Lights in west Cornwall. 

The aurora at Wheal Coates, south-west Cornwall
Source: @stucornell on instagram

Not such a great month for Barbara, unfortunately, as most of it she has spent recovering from an eye operation. As the recuperation time is long she will not be in Cape Town next week for Physical Separation '24 and Mill Circuits '24.

Jon, Amanda and I have been working on these conferences during the month and the timetables are now finalised. They are looking good and it is not too late to register. Today is also the deadline for submission of abstracts for Process Mineralogy '24 and Critical Minerals '24 in November. If you have missed the deadline, don't worry; we will be preparing the provisional timetables later this month, so there is still time to submit abstracts.

And finally, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a surprise announcement on the 22nd of the month, that he had requested permission from the King to dissolve parliament and called a general election to be held on 4th July. The odds are that a change of Government is in the offing!