A north wind

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18 to 10 °C, cold fronts, stiff N wind.

Today has hinged on a change of season, it’s definitely an Autumn feel since yesterday. Last week saw a sea change of sorts too. The first 10 days back at work were plagued by tiredness, not just me- everyone. Wednesday night I turned in 1½ hours early, and that made a world of difference. Now it’s normal again.

FS-Google Earth

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20°C, WNW Winds strong, 60 to 25% cloud C=61 miles.

Flight Sim for the masses: Did you know that GoogleEarth has a flight sim built in? Start GE in normal earth mode, and press Ctrl+Win+A and a dialogue box opens:


If you want to know the Keyboard shortcuts, press Ctrl+H

Photo: shot a little late, it only took a few minutes for the full effect to be lost. Moments before, shen I decided to stop the bike there was a clear cross in the sky, those high altitude cirrus clouds had a swathe cut through by a flane, it’s vapour trail was the cross and the wake was clearly visible too. The plane itself was long gone, but the effect was quite striking- take my word for it!

Atonement

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20°C, 40% cloud, light winds.

Cinema: Today I’ve just seen a film that makes me take back all the bad things I have said about cinema. It was a film full of passion, tension, guilt driven by honour and lust. We both came out shaking, not stunned. Stunned is the wrong word, that suggests that we had our senses blunted, no we were on the edge of our seats and enthralled by the escapades of the cast, intoxicated by the production and breat taken away by the photography. Every shot was perfect , the period details were flawless apart from one aeroplane shot. It was just so clever, the visual links, the sounds the music and the way they all were interwoven into the characters and plot.
On buying tikets, we’d noticed that the staff had their favourite film printed in their name-tags, things like Die-hard, Withnail & I , and we entered the auditorium thinking what would we have on our badges. Now I know, it would have been "Shipping news" or maybe, American Beauty. But they are superseded
LINK.

Storytime

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21°C, 50% cloud.

Commuting: on the ride to work today I stopped next to a van at the lights. In the cab were two macho lorry drivers types , big muscly arms, tattoos and shaven heads- the whole deal. They had a loud stereo playing as we waited for the green light. But it wasn’t music they were blaring out- they were listening to one of those Harry Potter audio books.
It’s good to get stereotypes overturned now and again.

Paucity

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20°C, foggy then clear.
Notice the paucity of entries here lately. Blame Flickr, there is more going on there.
Actually there is there is more to it than that. Just about everyone at work is complaining of tiredness, we have a kind of collective jetlag feeling. It’s put down to the new term, and change of routine plus change of season. One curiious suggestion was to do with airt pressure, I’d considered humidity before- but pressure seems more eosoteric. Unfortunately my weather station gadget records pressure trends, but doesn’t give a reading in millibars.
 

read

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24°C, it’s a warm month- September

Reading Freakonomics right now. It’s quite a readable volume despite lots of Americanisms that I can’t work out. It’s been a good few weeks since last enjoying a book, a book desert.
Evening routine:

…work-get home-nap-eat-walk dogs-1 hour schoolwork-washup-add blog-play Stalker-read-bed.

I’m still talking about "Wormwood", erm, hope I haven’t bored anyone.

New term, new year.

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21°C, clear and crisp. c=20miles

Commuting on the racing bike which is far from ideal. It’s going to take ages to get that winter bike repaired. Frankly I’m in a dilemma in looking for the best way to do it.
Work: new term has started, sleep habits have gone all awry.

Adrenaline

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22°C, clear today., Yesterday C=32 miles; day before C=51.

Young Oak: Below is a picture of the Acorns from a young oak tree. Some of them are malformed- perhaps due to the gall wasps laying eggs on many of the leaves. I have posted pictures of those here before.

All that post-virus malaise has gone. Yesterday, I rode for 32 miles with a bloke in his 70s. We swapped good stories, had a lot in common- he was formerly a teacher and we shared a number of other coincidental experiences. I rode to get rid of those butterflies that come of excessive adrenaline.
Yesterday was a notable high for another reason, it came like a present – realising that we had another 2 weeks before term starts. I was so excited & relieved by that discovery.

It arrived today- a very shiny thing. Hold it up to the light, and it looks flawless, solid, impenetrable. It’s going to be good, I like it.

Wednesday

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18°C, rain
It’s Wednesday, and I forgot to put the bins out!
Linseed: another day another layer, just like old times. The linseed layers are rather patchy, but as layers are piled on, the surface gets more lustrous with a better contrast in illuminosity between light and shadow. 
No new ground is being trod on this one, it is more of a refresher. It’s enjoyable enough, it makes me think about painting, and doesn’t cost much time, each session is about an hour, and I get a finished oil painitng after a few weeks.
 
However, I am planning a quite a complex one for the day this is finished though. The idea has been rattling about since the winter.
Drawing it up will be done differently.
Chornobyl: interesting BBC links debating the ecology of the Zone.
Some useful disagreement there.