What is this thing "Book"?

Took myself off to the cricket ground this afternoon, not for the purposes of running, or even walking - although I did a bit of that - but to actually lie in the sun and read.

I have hardly looked at a book in weeks, normally most of my reading is done quietly at the pub with a pint by my hand; no pub-going has thus resulted in no reading as I've been entertaining myself with online story telling in the form of various sci fi adaptions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Or watching a couple read "Dune" over several weeks.

Lockdown has turned me into a mega-nerd basically.

So today, I read the first 50 odd pages of a Stephen Baxter sci fi novel. I wish I'd chosen something a bit easier to get into!

The trick is now is to keep up with this habit over the upcoming weeks. I've missed books.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 26.05.20

Celestial Bodies

Lovely close approach of Venus and the crescent Moon tonight, dominating the skies as I rode home and then went shopping later on.

The only thing other than the moon you will see at night that is brighter than Venus, is a supernova. Remember that. You never know when it may happen.

The building works at the old Robin Hood Hotel have required the arrival of a crane, that oerlooks my garden like one of the sinister Deceptacons from the Transformers movies.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 27.02.20

Into the Mist

It's Black Friday weekend, which means I'm on call and go into work in order to give out sweets and treats to the pickers and packers and try and nail a smile to my face against all my introverted impulses.

It wasn't too bad though, actually receiving thanks for giving folk a couple of Malteaser Celebrations was actually quite helpful, although there were a few greedy sorts around wanting too many bananas or helping themselves to too many lollipops.

The main issue today has been cycling today in the freezing fog that has enveloped the town overnight, it really wasn't much fun at all and I refused to work past 3pm when the light begins to go. I did however go for a quick walk round town to photograph the sights, or milky opaque lack of them.

There is the film "The Mist" where the inhabitants of a small midwest town in the USA find themselves, menaced by mysterious and terrifying monsters that have come across the dimensions into a thick fog. The townsfolk hold up in a supermarket, but eventually a few of them a run for it, out into the mist...

Well walking  along the river today was just like that, the possibility of a creature rising  up from the water and sweeping me beneath with a meaty tentacle ever present.

Of course it didn't happen, but it's fun to lose yourself in imagination...

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 30.11.19

The Asperger Child

I was trying yet again to get rid of a load of horrific clutter in my horrifically cluttered flat, when I found various notebooks that I have kept haphazardly at various times in various places.

Most of them are comparitively recent and full of various scrawls; the book of holidays, which is red, and the book of moon-a-mucks, which is brown, and horror and prose and thankfully no bad poetry whatsoever.

What I also came across was a very 80s design A4 notebook, which I was using in about 1987.

This was the book of planetary geology and economics, of flying saucer sightings, interstellar space craft design and a navy belonging to a nation and history that never existed.

These are all my designs. My stories, the external expression of what went on in my head and what still does, endless design of aircraft and navies and cricket teams and all sorts.

I had no idea back then, but thanks to reading Oliver Sacks I have since discovered that this is very much a trait of Asperger Syndrome, as is the obsessive bowling of tennis balls against trees while commentating on it in Richie Benaud voices. Which I've greatly enjoyed doing since 1980 and never will stop doing.

Tourettes and Aspergers do often run together, their spectrums ribbon around each other like friendly snakes, and both share OCD and ADHD co-morbids. What I am, and which bit of all this does what, is very unclear to me and doesn't matter anyway.

So here it all is, the created universe of Si!

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 15.11.16

My Mother's Triffids

Mum has always had her little army of plants sitting in the kitchen window, and everyone's favourite is this sort of purple inkspotted sort of creation that seems to flower in clusters throughout the year.

I'm not overly sentimental about domestic flowers, as it were, but I think this thing is wonderful. No idea what it is, but if seems to make all of us a little happier.

Then there is this new addition, this characterful flower that looks like a miniature triffid. Luckily it doesn't sting me in the eyes when I look at it.

The rest of recent events I shall speak of little; but to me it is like Brexit, the culmination of the "reality TV generation" who think that knowing who to vote for on X-Factor or American Idol means they are qualified to deal with complex matters of economics and foreign policy.

There we go.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.11.16

The Harnessing of Geo-Thermal Energy

This is a subject that usually rises to the upper reaches of my mind whenever I hear climate-change sceptics (or septics, some might call them) or anti wind farm folk going off on one about renewable energy.

The generation of almost limitless power from the seething mass of magma that our continents float lazily upon.

It's the no lose renewable option. No house price depressing windmills or car melting solar panels; no worry about off shore wind farms scything migrating birds out of the sky, or tidal power generators interfering with the movement of fish. You just dig a pipe a few thousand metres into the ground, pour some water down it, and wait for it to flash off into steam and rise up some other pipes to drive a turbine. Nothing to see. Nothing to crash into. Nothing to make your "As seen on Escape to the Country" posh village home lose a few quid off its value.

Geo-Thermal energy is essentially nuclear in origin; fission reactions in Earth's core heat the molten mantle and drive things like volcanoes and hot springs. But this is a clean form of energy, water goes in, steam comes out. No carbon production or geiger clacking waste to dispose of. And the energies involved are so much higher than other renewables.

All this is for the future of course, reliable sources of shallow depth geo-thermal heat are not common. But imagine what could happen when we develop the technology to drill twenty miles down? The power is virtually without end. The science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon foresaw this as the future of the Earth in his classic "Last and First Men" where he wrote of the evolution of humanity over trillions of years.

The potential is there. As a science fiction lover, and writer myself I love wondering where it could end up. I suppose there are hazards too, relating to seismic activity and instabilities in the Earth's crust. People might fear that somewhere like Basildon will end up under ten feet of bubbling lava. But in the end, it will be worth it.

Si

The Pros and Cons

I Dream of Butterflies

I was afflicted by one of my butterfly dreams again last night.

It's an odd sort of thing to be afflicted with, but it is true to say that these days, I have recurring dreams involving flutterers. I swear to god, I've seen more of them while resting in the Halls of Morpheus than I have when I'm awake this year. Butterflies. Glorious butterflies.

The pattern is always the same. The dream will be wending it's often rather mundanely surreal course through my brain, when unrelated to any of the action at all, I'll see a butterfly somewhere.

Last night, it was in the clothes department of a John Lewis type store. For some reason, after every rail of clothing, there would be a sort of wooded alcove - !!! - and within one of these alcoves, there was the largest speckled wood butterfly I'd ever seen, sat there, wings half open with an smaller, extra set poised at a steeper angle.

Next to it, sat an even larger one, motionless as statues of dryads, unaffected by the Inception projections parading around the shop floor. Except when I tried to take a photograph, at which point they waited until just before the camera came into focus before fluttering off into the pink flowered hedge.

Then there were red admirals the size of my hand, outstretched, beautiful, painted like icons onto a tree stump. Neon green brimstones. A swallow tail basking in the sun mysteriously shining as the scene shifted to a Byron-esque river bank overlooking waters full of silvery glinting trout.

That was just the ordinary species. My dreamscape created exotics too, butterflies the like of the birds of paradise of Borneo and Sumatra. Purple forktails with streamers a foot long, golden peacocks, emerald fancies, fancied starstreaks.

None of them would allow me to take a photograph. The only way I can prove to you these species exist is to tell you about them.

But it was a more non-descript species that was the oddes. Violet-grey in colour, wren sized and furry of body and wing, it decided that the best thing to do everytime I raised my camera was to fly into my face, and settle upon my lips, fluttering its wings against my face.

What nectar, pray tell me, would it find there?

Enjoy the nature of your dreams.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 23.09.15

Steampunk Gatherings in Newark

Under the auspices of a good friend of mine, Newark now has a Steampunk Society.

I attend their meetings in an unofficial journalistic capacity, largely because I can't afford the spectacular clobber required although I do look the part in my own way, silver sprayed Doc Martens and all. I'm also a science fiction afficianado, and just love what is strange and different, especially in a very conservative town like this one.

I'm a bit of a "retronaut" as they say.

For those of you unaware of Steampunk, it's a lifestyle movement based on a putative pioneering society where Victorian England made scientific advances without the benefit of valves, transistors and the radio wave. Hence the clothes have a look of true Victoriana with accessories from Jules Verne's and HG Wells' views of the future. Blunderbusses are optional, but look great if you have one.

We are close to Steampunk's mechanically throbbing heart here in Newark; the Lincoln Asylum festival is the largest Steampunk gathering in the country. Hopefully we will all be attending the next one, due to be held in August, I think.

I shall now throw in some photographs from our most recent meeting, at the Flying Circus in Newark a couple of weeks ago. A very interesting looking bunch of people, I'm sure you will agree! Even, might I say, spectacular.

Si

All images and text Copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.05.15

Mr Spock and the Joys of Non-Neurotypicality

Many better writers than me have already been pretty eloquent in expressing the impact Leonard Nimoy and his creation of Mr Spock had on their lives.

I'm not going to bandwagon jump, nor am I going to pretend that Spock was some kind of inspiration for my love of sci-fi, spaceships and astronomy.

I've written elsewhere of where that came from - the artist Donald Rudd  - but what was actually going through my mind on hearing of Nimoy's death was a piece by Oliver Sacks in his collection "An Anthropologist on Mars". Sacks writes of two autistic people in that anthology, the artist Stephen Wiltshire, and the animal behaviourist Temple Grandin. I think it's in the Grandin piece that Sacks talks of how autistic people often stated that their favourite character from TV was Spock, and his latter day successor Data.

Sacks, who incidentally himself has stated recently that he is not long for the world theorised that it was the portrayal of a person with very non-human emotional needs trying to make sense of a very human environment that appealed to folk with autism. I think also that the fact that the tremendous contribution these people to those around them, and the fact that their colleagues valued them and treated them warmly when they were perhaps not able to respond likewise, would also be influential in this.

Perhaps also the Aspergic love of knowledge and information too would be an attraction.

Seven of Nine, a character who would also would have had "AS Appeal" in addition to her other obvious charms, was not around when Sacks wrote the article. Certainly sat where I am upon my Tourette's spectrum, where it dances with that of Asperger's, I found all these characters fascinating, and enjoyed their relationship with the neurotypical world, although I was and still am very suspicious of how the terms "Neurotypical" and "NT" get thrown around sometimes.

There is a whiff of contempt about it, I occasionally find...albeit a rather understandle whiff.

Still these are terms that have entered common (ish) usage. And it is to Leonard Nimoy "and the character I created" that a huge amount of credit must go to for making not just autistic - or non-neurotypical - people perhaps feel more comfortable in their skins, but anyone who felt that maybe you know, "knowing stuff" was more important than having cool hair.

Si

My View of Another Planet

My inability to take flight and leave the earth behind to explore the magic of the solar system in person frustrates sometimes. Science is developing fast, but not as fast as I am ageing, but things like manned landings on Mars will not occur until I am old, and exploring the stars is a hundred generations away.

As for life, well, I used to be optimistic that we would have proof of life - historic or otherwise - elsewhere in the solar system before 2030, with proof of intelligence external to the solar system within my lifetime. I suppose the former may yet occur, but it seems that there is no sentient life near enough and developed enough for us to have intercepted a signal from.

So, any otherwordly experiences I get are a bonus. Witness these photographs.

It looks as though I'm in orbit over the surface of Europa, swooping down over the surface of the Jovian moon which may yet harbour life in its sub-surface ocean, perhaps congregating around an extraterrestrial version of our white and black smoker colonies many thousands of meters down.

Of course, I'm not. I'm peering over the roof of a Ford Focus in the fierce frost last night. . It's amazing what beauty there can be in the mundane. The near full moon made everything glitter, here it hovers over a church hall roof glazed in ice.

My hands however, were not beautiful this morning. The cold takes a toll on dry skin.

Si

After a Comet Lovejoy Holiday...

It's been a while since I've been able to observe the comet - put that down to cloudy skies, work schedules, and I'm afraid on one night a total inability to withstand the cold.

I thought it would be a rather more difficult object to find, having seen reports on twitter that it was now fading, but it was easily observable in my 10x50s despite the presence of a waxing crescent moon not too far away. It has now moved away from the Pleiades in a North Western path, and is now in the vicinity of Aries and Triangulum.

In fact the two stars that for the base of the narrow Triangulum triangle are almost pointing to it.

It has faded somewhat, but is still an easy object in binoculars and looks rather similar to the Andromeda galaxy at the moment. The condensation of the nucleus seems less apparent, but the teardrop shape is still present, although I can't get any hints of a tail. The magnitude is probably around 4.5 or so now, having dropped from the peak of 3.7-3.9 it seemed to reach at perigee.

If you wish to observe it, it is now an early evening object, culminating due south at 6-7pm.

Good luck spotting it!

Si

Comet Lovejoy in the Newark Haze

Newark has always had a peculiar micro climate. The twin effects of the River Trent, the valley it flows along, and the emissions of the sugar factory, always seem to be the recipe for a hazy sky at certain times of the year. Sadly, tonight seems to be such an occasion; the night sky has an odd glow about it too, the reflection of the much mentioned sodium streetlights.

In the garden, the wind is still strong, moving the dangling chimes around with errie chings of metal on metal. A motorbike is growling in endless oblongs of irritation around the block. There are foxes too, howling in the distance.

Breeding season will soon be here, if this mildish winter hasn't triggered it already.

So it is an atmospheric night, but sadly, not a great one for comet observations. The haze might not be affecting star visibility too badly, but it is a deadly suffocant for the light of diffuse objects like comets and nebulae.

Nonetheless I was able to find the comet quite easily in my 10x50s, lurking rather closer to the Hyades now, almost in the same field as the star at the cluster apex. In appearance, there is a very definite elongation to the North-East, with hints of a tail, even in this poor seeing.

I've read the magnitude is now something around 3.9 which means under a clear moonless sky it should be easily visible to the naked eye, highest in the South at about 8pm-9pm. But in town, you will still need binoculars to get any kind of decent view of this once-every-eight-thousand-years visitor.

Who's eyes were watching Comet Lovejoy the last time it was here?

Si

Naked Eye Comet Lovejoy

After a day at work where the only view of the outside I had in twelve hours were snatches of the Showground fields being wheeled over by gulls painted scorching white by the sun, I was glad to return home to dark clear skies.

A chance to get the binoculars out again, and hunt down Comet Lovejoy.

I headed out into the garden, knowing that the comet was now skulking in a very undistinguished part of the sky in the badlands between Cetus and Taurus but thinking it might take a bit of finding. But before I even put my 10x50s to my wind blasted eyes, I felt I could see a very very dim blur with averted vision.

And I must have been right, because the comet was in the field of view as soon as I looked.

The comet looks markedly different with the moon out of the way. Easier to see, obviously, but also more condensed. It is a definite grey-green tear drop shape now, and there might just have been a very faint hint of tail.

As I became more dark adapted, it became clear that the comet was visible to the naked eye with averted vision, although it felt like I was straining my eyes so hard they began to stream. I'd put the magnitude at about 4.5 perhaps a little better, and far easier to see than the open cluster Messier 34 in Perseus not too far away, by means of comparison with another fuzzy object. It looked smaller than Andromeda, but more condensed at its core.

It is past nearest point to Earth now, that was a few days ago when the moon was still a nuisance, but it may still get a little brighter as it reaches perihelion in a week or two.

Further Comet Lovejoy Observations

The day shift was running, another 15km along the Owl Road with no owls, past the fieldfare fields between Hawton and Farndon, and watching a huge buzzard being pursued across the Trent to the power station by a couple of brave and naughty crows.

The night belongs to astronomy, and more specifically Comet Lovejoy.

It was easy to find  even in a rather barren area of sky, about ten degrees West of Orion's Belt, and in my 10x50s the effect was of a slightly smaller and fainter Andromeda galaxy forming the apex of an isosceles triangle with two 6th magnitude stars in Eridanus. There is a definite teardrop shape about the comet, but there is no tail in view; hopefully it may become apparent in the run up to perihelion.

The magnitude I would guess is about 4.8-5, and in my urban skies there is no chance of it being a naked eye object unless it brightens to 3.5 - 4. But comets are unpredictable, if it outbursts at perihelion, it may appear rather brighter.

It's only a rare comet, like Hale Bopp of 1997, that really looks like the common mental image of one of these magical visitors from the depths of the Oort Cloud. Lovejoy is not such an object, but I always feel great joy in being able to spot a comet, especially from an urban garden.

Si

First Sight of the New Comet Lovejoy

A little over a year ago, I was writing excitedly about spotting Comet Lovejoy, a 4th magnitude object seen in the morning sky in Cancer near the famous beehive cluster. It was a bitter night, and it seems I was well dressed and "fortified" against the cold.

2013 Comet Lovejoy Observation

Last night was probably colder, and hampered by a near full moon dominating the southern sky. I also had a 6am cycle to work ahead of me and was nervously anticipating another icy and nervy slideathon on untreated roads. I thought I had no chance of spotting it.

But I grabbed the 10x50s, tried to get out of the way of the trees and streetlights, and waved my binoculars underneath Orion like a drunk with a shotgun. I thought I had no chance of seeing it, but below Rigel, to the north-east of a star that may have been 11 Eridani, I came across a grey green elongated blurry patch in the binocular field of view.

Passing through a very barren part of the sky, it was the new Comet Lovejoy, 2014 edition, dallying with the trees and rooftops. Even with the strong moonlight it was easy to see, but harder to describe; it was rather like looking at a more condensed version of the galaxy Messier 33, a ghostly smear on the dark window of the sky. It seemed to be longer in the direction of Rigel and Orion's belt, but it was hard to make out real detail. 

But it was a comet, and I don't see many! I suspect in a week or two, as the comet moves higher and further into the evening sky, and the moon gets out of the way, it might present quite an impressive binocular sight although I doubt it will be a naked eye object from my urban garden. 

To find it, use this guide ; Position of Comet Lovejoy through January  - to put it simply, for the next week, look to the right of Orion in the sky with your binoculars, from the darkest spot in your locality you can find.

Si

The Lullaby of Philae

"My #lifeonacomet has just begun @ESA_Rosetta. I'll tell you more about my new home, comet #67P soon… zzzzz #CometLanding"

So read the last tweet from the Philae lander, sat in its awkward little shady spot on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Unable to recharge its solar powered batteries, the power threshold was breached and the probe fell silent. Just minutes before, the probe was jauntily telling us that it knew time was short, but it would carry out its experiments and send its date back to Earth via its Rosetta mother ship to the very end.

On twitter, thousands of people tweeted their support for the plucky little lander, making it the number one trending topic, before they watched its dignified end with tears in their eyes.

It wasn't actually Philae tweeting; it was a PR worker for the European Space Agency. Philae is a (much quoted) "washing machine" sized instrument package and landing system that landed on Comet 67P last Wednesday. It is not a person.

Artist's impression of Philae coming into land (DSL on Wikimedia)

But no-one treated it like that.

Some people profess to dislike this "anthropomorphising" of non human entities. But in this case the ESA PR guru was doing their job, and brilliantly at that. Philae isn't even alive, yet we have seen it as a courageous, independent little robot engaged in a life or death struggle in a hostile environment far from home. We have created human interest in the inanimate, a huge human interest that will help help to justify to their Governmental backers that their investment was worthwhile, let alone the huge amount of science Philae has carried out in its short lifespan on the surface.

Then there are the scientists, who have put perhaps twelve years of their lives into Rosetta and Philae. They must have got to the point of seeing Philae as being alive too.

Someone on twitter said that Philae wasn't David Bowie's Major Tom. I agree. Philae was the Tin Can, while we were the Major Toms, projecting our hopes, our optimism, our dreams of success and our fears of loneliness and abandonment. We gave it a soul. Philae lifted our eyes away from a world of Ebola and religious wars,and grinding low paid employment into a world where the human race is still capable of wonderful things.

No wonder we wanted it to be alive.

And so many of us were awake towards 1am, watching the little spaceship slip into deep hibernation, and perhaps thinking of Huey, the little robot from Douglas Trumbull's classic ecological sci-fi movie "Silent Running", tending his plants with his little watering can as his space greenhouse drifts off into the forever void.

And perhaps we had a moist eye or two as we tweeted a lullaby to the craft, although, you know, I have a very heavy cold. It was probably that. Or maybe something in my eye. Yes, that was it.

After all, who gets sentimental over a washing machine sized chunk of metal on a lump of ice?

Copyright Creamcrackerednature 15.11.2014

Green Boots and the Ghosts of Everest

Once again I find myself tapped behind glass at work, and find myself having to look upwards and outwards with the eyes behind my eyes; I'm imagining and daydreaming again.

I've been thinking a lot about "Green Boots". Green Boots lives high in a cave, on the North-East Ridge of Mount Everest, and has done so since 1996. He greets every Everest climber heading for the summit by the North-East Ridge direct or North Col routes, recognisable to all at the staggering altitude of 8500 metres. A landmark of legend.

The Northern Aspect of Everest, the North East ridge leading from the left of the summit. Picture from wikimedia commons, credited to Carsten Nebel

"Live" of course is a misleading term. "Green Boots" is thought to be an Indian climber called Tselwang Paljor, who died after summiting the Mountain on an Indian-Tibetan Police Expedition. No-one is totally certain about this, and his body at that altitude is unrecoverable. He lies forever in his little cave, his clothes perfectly preserved, as bright and shiny as the day they were bought.

Including his bright green boots, that give him his name.

Over 200 people have died on the various Everest routes since the 1920s, and most of those bodies will still lie where they died, be it of a fall, avalanche or sheer cold. On some parts of the mountain, the lie of the land and prevailing winds has created small "cemeteries" - George Mallory, the most famous body found on the mountain, apparently lies in one of these. Other well known bodies, like those of Joe Tasker and Mick Burke, have never been found.

I can imagine that their families were devastated at having no remains to bury, but I wonder how the men and women themselves would have felt. Do their spirits roam the cols and snow fields in an endless unrest, or do they take in the unbelievable vistas, and think themselves privileged to have been able to visit such an incredible part of the world, and feel no sadness about remaining a part of it?

I can only envy them, and the people who survived the climb. For they have seen things a landlocked lubber such as myself, riddled with vertigo and prone to agonising pain in his hands in only a moderate Northern breeze, can't even dream of.

All text copyright Cream Crackered Nature 09.11.14 - picture credited.

Lincoln Steampunk Festival

Something rather different today, although one could say there is a fair amount of scientific equipment involved.

I went to Lincoln Steam punk Festival, another of my holiday adventures. I was (rightly) terribly afraid of looking horrifically underdressed and out of place amongst what I thought (again, rightly) would be a fantastic looking throng, so out came a black shirt, retro shades and my usually never seen in daylight bowler hat. Not so much steampunk as dismally failing goth, but better than nothing.

To the train!

It seemed odd to be heading up steep hill for an event other than the Lincoln Grand Prix cycling race, but when I got there it was worth it. So much to see and look at, and admire. Being what I am, I sometimes envy groups of outgoing people, and there was no question that the Steampunk crew of begoggled Victorian scientists, and pith hat wearing soldiers sporting badges relating to their membership of some form of Tea based regiment, was something I would want to be.

Being a fan of Verne and Wells, and the later "valvepunk" sci fi of the 30s to the 50s with Asimov and his joke analysing "Multivac", this I suppose is only natural. The practicalities of dressing like this in a town where sometimes wearing a hat makes you a target for a beating, well, that's something else.

There is a safety, in numbers.

One thing that was very noticeable that this was no youth cult. Many of the Steampunk folk were were well into their 50s, and some even older than that. As was pointed out to me by a friend, the look they sport is not a cheap one, and a fair amount of affluence might well be required to support the lifestyle. The other thing, was that it is a look that requires a little bit of weight to make it really work; skinny steampunks don't look quite right.

Apart from two people, it's a very white movement was well, the reasons for this I have no idea. They are hardly a right wing crew, after all.

The amount of material I've collected today is huge, I'll begin with thise images from the walk up the hill, and the Castle Square area where the first group of stalls were.

Waiting for the train

The crowds in Castle Square

Surprised the scooter wasn't tricked out. 

A senior gathering

Meta. Photographing one steampunk photographing two steampunks

Aesthetics versus functionality

The sun shone occasionally

The black haired woman sported horns of some description

Steampunk dog clueless on goggle wearing

The impermanence of flesh

It did indeed play a tune

Posing by accident with her wings

Retro Rommel and the flame haired girl

Slim

A group of ladies

Genteel stall owner

Militaria

Scary scary fellow

Loucheing for tea

Browsing in boots

Posing with tourists

On the Balegate

I advance, masked

Antique shop owner

He appears to have the horn

A mixed gathering

Spinal plumbing

Angel wings