It was Wednesday last week - so this is day 6 - that this corner of our green and pleasant land slid to a halt and since then pretty much all of the country has been affected. Englishmen are famously never happier than when they are moaning, so we must all be almost delirious by now. Fortunately, the temperature stayed above freezing for most of yesterday and, by the look of things this morning, for most of the night as well. By midday today the thaw had recommenced and our road is now passable again, largely thanks to the efforts of a few residents who must have spent hours chipping away at the ice.
There have been comments to the effect that other countries - like Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden etc - cope with snowy winters so much better than we do, and why is it that when we have a few inches of snow everything stops? Of course, what those whingers overlook is that the countries they mention suffer these conditions every year, and for weeks or months at a time. Naturally, they will have the tools and equipment to deal with the problem. I see that many Americans have snow blowers which, I assume, they use every winter. Anyone living in Brighton would use such an implement about once in every ten years, which hardly makes a purchase a sensible investment. Not that one can buy snow blowers in England as far as I know. I have never seen one - not even a picture of one - but I imagine they are similar to the leaf blowers one can buy.
Anyway, the snow has certainly slowed the pace of life, which might not be such a bad thing.
There is one thing puzzling me. When I look out of the windows in the front of the house I see icicles hanging from the guttering and water dripping off the end of them. Do icicles melt from the bottom, or does water run down them to drip from the ends? The icicles don't seem to be shrinking, which indicates that they are just acting as conduits for ice-melt from above, but I would have expected the narrow points at the bottom to melt first.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Long Time Coming
Long Time Coming, Robert Goddard's latest book, has just been published. I usually rush out and buy a copy of his books as soon as they hit the shelves but at the moment, with all the snow and ice around, I have been unable to get into town to a book shop. I do have an Amazon gift voucher, so I may well go that route.
Long Time Coming, the thaw, I mean. It really is most unusual for us to have snow and ice hanging around for this long. We were running low on fresh veg and a few other essentials, so yesterday I trudged - and it was a trudge - to our nearest supermarket as none of the nearer shops would have what we wanted. Asda is about a mile away, which is not really very far, but there are three hills to climb on the way. I did wonder if they would have Long Time Coming in stock, but no luck.
Long Time Coming, the thaw, I mean. It really is most unusual for us to have snow and ice hanging around for this long. We were running low on fresh veg and a few other essentials, so yesterday I trudged - and it was a trudge - to our nearest supermarket as none of the nearer shops would have what we wanted. Asda is about a mile away, which is not really very far, but there are three hills to climb on the way. I did wonder if they would have Long Time Coming in stock, but no luck.
Eureka
No, I'm not doing an Archimedes. That is also the name of a town on the coast in northern California and I understand from my friend Skip that there was an earthquake there yesterday. The Old Bat and I visited Eureka back in 2006 when I took this picture.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Just discovered
This link in which Kseniya Simonova, a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "America's Got Talent.", uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.
I've been thinking
Today's quote for the day: "The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
We hear so many conflicting reports about climate change that I have never been able to make up my mind which side I believe in. This all started years ago. I was working in the newspaper industry when it became all the rage (and a government directive) for newspapers to be printed on paper with as great a content of recycled material as possible. On the face of it, that sounds a very laudable ambition. Just think of all those old newspapers that would no longer end up in landfill sites. But there is/was another side to the story. The old newsprint has to be collected and transported to a factory where it has to be cleaned of ink (using noxious chemicals) before it can be pulped and turned into fresh newsprint. The virgin newsprint, however, is/was imported, mainly from Finland, and was produced from timber grown especially for that purpose. There was a lot of rubbish talked about saving the tropical rain forests although no paper was ever made from that timber. What was usually (conveniently?) overlooked was that for every tree felled for newsprint, two were planted - and that growing trees absorb more CO2 than mature ones. All-in-all, recycling newsprint required as much energy as producing virgin newsprint, and resulted in less CO2 being sucked out of the atmosphere.
All that is not really what I have been thinking about, but it does indicate how ambivalent I am about the warnings of doom for our planet. All the same, it would not be a bad thing to reduce our use of fossil fuels and reduce the volume of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere. With that in mind it occurred to me that if every car driver reduced his/her weekly mileage by just 5 miles, this would make quite a sizeable difference. I don't know how many cars there are in this country (and I have no intention of trying to find out), but I do know that the population is about 60 million. Obviously, not everyone has a car, but if we assume that there are 15 million cars in this country, then a reduction of 5 miles a week for each of them would mean 75 million miles less each week = 3,750 million miles a year. If the average fuel consumption was only 25 miles per gallon, that would be a reduction of 150 million gallons of petrol/diesel used each year and several tone of CO2 less. And that's just in this country: if the idea spread to the rest of Western Europe, North America, etc the savings are potentially enormous. Just by driving 5 miles less each week.
We hear so many conflicting reports about climate change that I have never been able to make up my mind which side I believe in. This all started years ago. I was working in the newspaper industry when it became all the rage (and a government directive) for newspapers to be printed on paper with as great a content of recycled material as possible. On the face of it, that sounds a very laudable ambition. Just think of all those old newspapers that would no longer end up in landfill sites. But there is/was another side to the story. The old newsprint has to be collected and transported to a factory where it has to be cleaned of ink (using noxious chemicals) before it can be pulped and turned into fresh newsprint. The virgin newsprint, however, is/was imported, mainly from Finland, and was produced from timber grown especially for that purpose. There was a lot of rubbish talked about saving the tropical rain forests although no paper was ever made from that timber. What was usually (conveniently?) overlooked was that for every tree felled for newsprint, two were planted - and that growing trees absorb more CO2 than mature ones. All-in-all, recycling newsprint required as much energy as producing virgin newsprint, and resulted in less CO2 being sucked out of the atmosphere.
All that is not really what I have been thinking about, but it does indicate how ambivalent I am about the warnings of doom for our planet. All the same, it would not be a bad thing to reduce our use of fossil fuels and reduce the volume of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere. With that in mind it occurred to me that if every car driver reduced his/her weekly mileage by just 5 miles, this would make quite a sizeable difference. I don't know how many cars there are in this country (and I have no intention of trying to find out), but I do know that the population is about 60 million. Obviously, not everyone has a car, but if we assume that there are 15 million cars in this country, then a reduction of 5 miles a week for each of them would mean 75 million miles less each week = 3,750 million miles a year. If the average fuel consumption was only 25 miles per gallon, that would be a reduction of 150 million gallons of petrol/diesel used each year and several tone of CO2 less. And that's just in this country: if the idea spread to the rest of Western Europe, North America, etc the savings are potentially enormous. Just by driving 5 miles less each week.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Tongue in cheek
When I started Fern's daily photo blog it was done very much TIC. After all, how many times, I wondered, could I really come up with different photos of woods and fields? But I have actually surprised myself, although I appreciate that regular visitors to that blog may not feel the same. What has happened is that I notice more of the smaller details while walking rather than just strolling along with my mind on other things. All the same, the results are certainly far from spectacular. Some of the daily photo bloggers really do receive my admiration. Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. Yes, that really is his name - at least, that is what he calls himself. He lives in Brookville, Ohio, and I believe he is not a well man. He must spend hours sitting by the window photographing the most amazing variety of birds that visit his garden and posting some of the results on his blog. I certainly envy him his talent.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
A nice gesture
A police spokesman said one officer who was detailed to guard a fallen power cable in Storrington was approached by a resident from a nearby house who apologised that she could not make him a cup of tea because of the electricity failure.
Instead she presented him with a mince pie she had heated on a log fire.
Instead she presented him with a mince pie she had heated on a log fire.
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