Lovelock says it’s too late (BBC) to save the planet. I’m sort of inclined to feel no surprise. However, my preception is that we’re not going to save the planet because there is no will to do anything apart from talk about it. Number one problem never gets aired, no-one dares even mention it: overpopulation.

We live here very near another zone of snowfall, the Malverns got the most it seems.
Last Monday was ‘Blue Monday’ I’m told. Actually, I was quite cheerful last Monday, less so today. After a box of chocolates, I’m lifted out of the gloaming though. Could be paying the price for that tonight with an interrupted night’s sleep. Damn.

Reading back over previous year’s posts, they follow the same patterns and themes; things like poor sleep, exercise frustrations. My newer posts are longer however, and my grammar is better too.
Using the Gym in work, and I have the turbo-trainer at home. Should have bought one during christmas week.
Alternative holiday names: looking for a non-christian name for some of our holidays is a strange & tricky problem, one full of pitfalls. How about naming them after the nearest meteor shower, so winter holiday becomes Ursids; summer is Perseids; Easter, Lyrids; and so on. Unless you have a better idea.

When the kids get old, they’ll be able to say "we don’t get proper winters anymore like back in my day"

…Mark my words

.

This graph’s title is a bit misleading- it isn’t "through December", it’s from 1950 to the end of 2009. Also, Ranges like summer 1968-71 were all below freezing. Surely not! There is a North American ‘z’ in Standardised so perhaps this data comes from Alaska or something.

Strange sleep routine: bed early, too tired to notice the others arriving home at mid-night. Then waker at 3 unable to get any more sleep. Camomile tea fixed it so that I nearly slept through the alarm. It is not supposed to work like this.

That SW wind blows strongly some more.
Mosquito is a siren (in the UK anyway) that is meant to repel teenagers. Shops and cafes use them to repel loiterers and they are becoming quite commonplace. The claim is that they can’t be heard by older people and selectively annoy ‘youth’ who then go away.
Explain why I can hear them then! I am 45 years old (as of yesterday).
The device makes a sound rather like the sonar effect you hear on tacky WWII submarine films, only the pitch is octaves higher, as high as the sound bats make I’d say.
I ponder…
Had no luck yet finding the frequency that these things peak at, but Pipistrelle bats begin at 15 and range up to 45KHz. Not sure of the physics at play here, but wouldn’t there be harmonics at an octave above and and another below?
None in my tutor group have ever heard a bat- they said today. I had to ask.

Shot in south Wales.

Look, I have even more chocolate, the sort that keeps me awake at night. Better deploy the self-discipline.

This wind has been blowing for two weeks. It’s warm, and riding home is fast & effortless. Bet it changes soon.
Birthday outing soon, pinning hopes that it lightens after a bad day at work. At the time of writing, I have cider in my veins.
I can be confident that it really is my birthday- it has been raining.
This evening, I find I have more Dark Chocolate Halva than in the morning. That’s the way it should go.

Have the gulls moved away from the seas. There are plenty here, mostly the usual inland landfill-site-gulls, but now there are a few sea gull making the seaside gull sound. Maybe there is some truth in the story that they fly inland to escape the big storms out at sea. There is a big low system bearing down the northern approaches.