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London bricks: encrusted with snow
Side order of icicles
Today seems like a good idea to come up with Gedankenexperiment III, featuring a cat.
Probably my cat. The cat that shat on the bathroom mat in the middle of the night… before commencing loud miagolare so that those that serve her might wake up, let her out and clear up the mess.
No snow, yet
This time last year, there was plenty.
Personally, I can’t stand the stuff. The only things that should be wet and cold are a dog’s nose or a *insert spirit of choice* and tonic.
Today’s walk
Involved Rudi treating the park like his own back garden, so no chance of shots of said lurcher in the snow. Whilst the kids and I were prancing about trying to catch the little bugger I saw these. I do a like a distressed half-dead flower, the bird was an accident. I wish I had taken the proper camera now as this was a phone job.
Going Stir Crazy
If Sigur Ros isn’t your thing, here’s an alternative – #1 viral video this week
Matt Whistler’s Merry Christmas 2010 Southover Street Brighton from Convict Films on Vimeo.
It made me laugh.
WARNING: contains some nudity…
Frozen
Sometimes, in extremis, I take Rudi for a quick whizz around an old cemetery. My heart is always in my mouth as it filled with trip hazards and holes for him to put a paw down. Now I run the risk of being fined if I let him off the lead, thanks to a load of bye-laws being passed earlier this year.
I’m not saying I do let him off mind.
Anyway, I have taken this particular headstone before because it is striking and sad, having five children’s faces carved into the marble. Some are in better condition than others. The last time I took this subject it would be fair to say that the angle of the girl’s head and the eyes tilted downwards put me in mind of something from The Exorcist. Yesterday she had ice in her eyes and it somehow brought them to life.
“A Tall White Mute”
Wot I have learned in the new ice age.
That the weather forecasters are mainly wrong about the timing, the quantities and location of snowfall.
That BMWs spin their tyres a lot and that in these conditions the TinCanfromJapan is an effective conveyance. Snow chains – Honda Civic = you decide.
That a heated pitch does not a match in heaven make.
That not even the Poet Laureate can compose a 2010 snow poem without cliches, although she wrote one about a snowman prior to her Laureateship than I am quite keen on here.
“You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”
Snow Horse by Ray Keller
Melt or Thaw?
There is a difference apparently.
Either way, this pansy seems quite happy in its frozen home.
And, in line with government urgings, I am now trudging to work.
Forecasts
I became completely obsessed with the weather and the forecast this week, practically to the point of excluding everything else in life. I had good reason, being due to travel extensively across the south of England for celebratory activities which have now, like so many, football matches, been postponed. If you have spent about a week monitoring the weather out of the window and checking various forecasts hourly it is hard to just stop and go cold turkey. Yesterday was my best day yet – a bit of obsessive checking in the morning and at night. This morning the tv/radio did not forecast sufficiently comprehensively for my full satisfaction so I have had to top up with a bit of online forecast too, although I am trying to leave the Met Office site alone now – for good.
I have heard a few reasons why we have the weather: one was Arctic Oscillation, another the slowing down to a great looping meander of the usually zippy jetstream. I have heard discussions about how national weather variance is nothing to do with global climate mean temperatures and I have also heard a discussion about probability, which of course made good sense to me as a punter.
It seems instead of saying we are not likely to have a cold winter, or a barbeque summer is nailed on, the forecasters, to cover their modesty, could say the above but then add – there is a 40% chance of rain today, or a 10% chance of snow and so on. Apparently they already do it in America.
Well if that’s the way forward you may just as well put the bookies in charge – they couldn’t make a worse job of it and as an additional bonus there would be endless weather markets to pass the snowbound time. In fact, if the market was left to decide, the weather forecasts would be more accurate, engender less angst (in me at any rate) and be a good deal more entertaining.
There is a 100% chance that the front looks a bit like this today
Snow (Hey Oh)
an excerpt from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lyrics:
Our sad tree
“Hey oh listen what I say oh
The more I see the less I know, the more I like to let it go…hey oh whoa
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there’s nowhere to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks
Will be concealed and there is nowhere to go”
We hope here in Southend where we have no field that A-M and EP (aka LS & DHC) will oblige us by running in theirs and sing the song…
