13°C, clear bits, warmer tomorrow
12 hours & 13 minutes of daylight today. Check for yourself: here, on Date and Time.
Strange feeling, have I got a cold all of a sudden? Headache, lethargic and a sore throat. Hope clings to hayfever which comes on with beech pollen at this time of year. Some hope.
13°C, clear, pure sunshine
A few hours preparing the race bike for it’s first outing this year (tomorrow). My suspicion is, however, that it will be no better than last year despite servicing the gear levers at Campagnolo, stripping & re-seatting the headset bearing; after all that, it could be just as annoying to ride as it was in October.
One problem is that some jobs are necessary only every few years- like the headset. That’s enough time to forget the technical details- like the bearing size in the headset.
In addition to the License agreement, here are some notes of guidance to lodgers on living in a harmonious household:
Further solutions to problems:
-12 to-10°C
For part of the journey, we dipped into -12C air. Yeah, it’s colder than last winter. It’s like a scene from “let the right one in”, or maybe Narnia out there.
This is a jolly album, it has folk overtones with complex overlapping rhythms & percussion. Beginning to think that I like it.
0°C, fog & black ice.
Black ice: rain all day yesterday, then the sky cleared at night. The resulting black ice was scary to say the least. On the footpath, you could stand still, and look down to see yourself slowly moving even on a shallow slope.
It’s not brilliant this car. The engine is starting to misfire occasionally, oddly enough near the end of a long drive. The boot doesn’t always close properly, there is the whirring of an electric motor that pulls it shut, but a rear light cluster seems to stop it- maybe the car is not that well put together. Also, I miss the fuel consumption gauge; it’s nerdy I know, by it would help you get used to gear changes on a 6 speed diesel car that you don’t know.
It’s got curvey door mirrors, so what? Well, with the mirror mount with stylish curves the wide view is actually blocked by the mirror bezel. What’s worse is that unnecessary blind spot is also a view blocked by the door post when looking rear-right. How stupid. the other irritation is that the seat is too small. The boot doesn’t always close, it seems to snag on a mis-aligned light cluster. Oh dear.
-2°C & dropping. Snow soon.
Snow flurries, too cold to cycle and it’s likely to stay this way for two more weeks. I’m physically frustrated- my legs are fizzy and I can’t settle. At least I have a turbo-trainer this year. There is a gym in work too.
Found it! how thrilling it is when something lost comes back to you. It’s been over six months & many hours in all, looking. Such an open, honest pleasure from a well meaning inanimate object: though no sentient being, I am grateful to you. Do you need a wash?
3°C, clear & cold, light winds.
Wrote this note to the lodger & put it in a bag of apples:
If you want some food, go and buy some. Don’t steal mine!
He has read it. Incrimination itself.
Good cycle ride: getting home was hard work but I put that down to a poor evening meal the night before.
Good night out: I think I hate weddings more than I hate Christmas.tModern British weddings seem to be orchestrated for the wedding photographer and everything revolves around him. Call me old fashioned, but this feels wrong to me. The whole occasion is turned into a decadent consumerist event. The average British wedding costs as much as a new car, or the deposit on a first time buyer’s house.
Best thing about it was wandering the grounds and appreciating the bats’ efforts to catch moths. The worst thing was, by far, the DJ.
So, the Gulf oil leak has run for 84 days. 184million gallons in the Mexican Gulf; an amount that the USA burns in just over five hours. In a way, this disaster could help the gulf ecosystems. With new drilling banned for a while, some areas could start to recover from the over fishing that has gone on for decades. Since the water is warm, it’s said that the oil will disperse and be broken down by bacteria quicker than in other American oil disasters like the Exxon Valdez. However, fewer dead vertebrates have been found, perhaps because Americans have killed most of them by fishing anyway. the US Dept of Energy estimates that there are 5,000 active oil seeps in the gulf- a natural phenomenon it seems. the Gulf is heavily polluted by fertilisers, especially nitrates causing "dead zones" in the sea.
The clean-up, hoping to safeguard human health, could have the side-effect of restoring some of the long term damage in that sea.
I hope they’re right.
Tales from the compost heap: dug a new compost heap space yesterday. "Dug" because there was another slab 6" below the surface. Anyway, doing that I disturbed a mouse who dived under a block which needed to be moved. Carefully, I lifted it and the mouse sprang upwards a foot in the air and scampered away. He was quite fast, apart from doing another Zebedee like leap on the way.
Conventional wisdom has it that it’s part of their escape tactic, to distract & confuse predators. It’s the word ‘confuse’ that needs a re-think; what they really do is render the predator helpless with laughter. There must be other examples of natural behaviour that needs a re-think.
It’s early, and we’ve started the day with a 5am thunderstorm.
Micycle 