Point me to Mecca

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0°C, sleet.

There is a sort of ante-room leading to my classroom, it’s quite small and closed by a strong, fire-door. Sometimes kids go in there to quietly revise, socialise or just get away from it all during lunchtime. Today I nearly tripped over a girl dressed in black and wearing a headscarf. She was crouching down and then standing back up, time and time again. She must be Muslim and be doing the daily prayers thing. She’s lucky I didn’t knock her flying if I’d flung the door open at just the wrong moment. There was a mat laid out in the room and she knelt on there a few times. I went into my room another way instead.

Should I have popped my head round and pointed left to say “but Mecca is that way”? She was facing south west and Mecca is South-east from the UK.

12 mph

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-4 to +1°C. Light clouds. No ride, 40′ on turbo.

Drive to work. It’s far too icy after last night’s fog dropped to the ground in the early hours. Then it froze. Traffic was thick which meant an average road speed of 12 mph. That is crap, if I did a speed like that on the bike, I’d be ashamed of myself and would keep quiet about it.

The car wasn’t entirely happy about today either. When I start it, the radiator fan runs on full even with ambient temperature at -5°. Does that mean a temperature sensor has failed?

My moment of maths glory today. A guy at work showed software that draws graphs and he placed a circle on the origin with X^2+y^2=4. His question was how to double the radius of the circle. And, it was me that got it out of all the staff. Then, warming to the subject, I got the expression that moved the circle along the x axis too. My moment of glory you must admit.

Hard underfoot at Hulme End

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-5 to –3°C with snow

Hard ground, hard mud and hard cowpats is what we found in the White Peak area. The grass crunches and rock sold mud ridges jarr underfoot. The temperature has barely been over 0°C all week. I’ve been up there for a Duke Of Edinburgh Award related course which went well. We did a short walk which had a route that would prove tricky for the kids doing their expedition. At the half-way point, we stopped for sandwiches. This is when the snow started. Firstly light, but it fell on hard frozen ground and stuck immediately. Some of the flakes were visibly perfect little hexagonal starfish. We were all well wrapped, so no discomfort.
It’s like this kids; all the paths are marked white on the ground, so they’re dead easy to follow.

The drive home was a different matter. I had to drive at about 25mph after sliding about behind a lorry that was floundering sideways up the hill at Draycot. I’m not so worried about crashing and getting hurt, not at that speed anyway. I really don’t want to wreck my car, that’s all.

Anyway that’s enough for tonight- a lot more of the white stuff to come, we’re told.

Sunrise, 07.49

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-3.5 to 0°C, light ENE, thin cloud, very low humidity

I had to pull over on the drive to work today. The sun was poking its orange bald head through a forest on the horizon and more remarkably, beaming an orange shaft of light upwards to the clouds. It looked so striking that I found a layby and jumped out with my camera. The light was still low so the picture is blurred by camera-shake. Even on the drive to work, you have to make time for something like this. There are islands poking out in the ocean of mundanity.

If you’re ill below the neck- don’t ride!

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-4 to +1°C
Every year I am troubled by the same decision- when should I start riding again after a cold. Every year I am hit by a two week common cold and left resenting the lost time.

There are a few sites that discuss this dilemma:
.livestrong.com/article/552640

Sportsmedecine

So the conclusion- If you’re ill below the neck- don’t ride!
Does that sound like a good slogan for a tee-shirt?

As ever, that’s not the only criterion, look at the outside temperature; last night -4°C. The air has been extremely dry, so dry that there was barely any frost this morning. There is a 200 yard sheet of black ice on the way to work though. It’s remarkable that no-one has crunched their car on that slope.

The Artist

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3°C, light cloud. light wind

Film: The Artist. A lot of people will be put off going to see this film. It’s black & white, barely any sound, and it’s a homage to pre-talkie cinema and worst of all, it’s only the art-house cinemas that have the courage to show it. A lot of people are going to miss a real gem there. They probably fear it as an art-house difficult cult film. But it’s not, it’s utterly charming, old fashioned love story shot with a nostalgic fondness for the “golden age of film”. There are many ways that the film plays games with the audience, there are visual tricks, jokes, teases and no doubt- references to films of the 1920s. There are times when it’s hugely heart-lifting, moving and funny too. This is a pure feel-good film that lacks the insincere kitsch of many others. It’s so good that it may even convert many of us who believe the old films were naïve, childish and played to a simple audience.

What should I do about these spiders?

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5~2°C, SW. c=0

There is one species of spider that really likes living in my house. They’re very thin, long legged and hang out near the coving in most rooms in this house. Latin name: Pholcus phalangioides. It’s the daddy-long legs spider.

That page’s author recommends encouraging them. That sounds like an opportunity to make a silly jibe with some emotional support. I shalln’t. They are quite delightful little lodgers, there must be 30 to 50 in this house in various rooms altogether. They must be getting food from somewhere, it’s not mine they are taking. There are a few eco-system enclaves here which may be the source. Each one is rooted in a ceramic pot with a houseplant poking above the soil. Sometimes flies take wing. they look like fruit flies, tiny and delicate looking. There must be a load of other stuff living in those pots that can’t be seen too. Remember the fantastic mushroom that grew out of one pot last November? There is an entire realm of life in each of those earthenware worlds.

I’m quite taken with their fragile awkward lanky gait. This year’s mild weather has seen more of them survive. Last year the house was fairly barren, the hard hard frosts took their toll. Maybe they can grow large. So, what I’ll do is take their photo and just enjoy their presence in my house.