I think I shall take my camera for a walk this afternoon. We have bright sunshine, with a very high thin cirrus just softening the light enough for some pastel-shaded bijou landscapes. Whoops - sorry - got that wrong - rain, snow, hail, sleet, freezing fog, black ice, thunder, lightning, gales, floods - I can see the icebergs off Larnaca harbour from here! I just don't want to upset anyone.
Birmingham..Nice and bright, the sun is just about to come through my bedroom window its looking good, its 8-40 Sunday, am I going to get up no its so warm here in bed, so its another hour on the lappy.....then I will think about getting up!
I'm waiting for the official letter from the Office of Extremely Silly Rules telling me I can only breath out half as often as before in order to assist the government in achieving its carbon emmission targets.
Clearing skies now here in Stornoway. No signs of life however! Suppose I should get on with the ironing, but summoning up the enegy to put down my KIndle and do some work requires planning and energy. Cup of tea first, I think.
You need a neighbour like my 87 year old couple across the road. They still use an open fire for heating and water and although the pump doesn't work in a power cut, the residual heat is enough for us to have a laugh and chat by the fire. His camping Gaz heats a tin pan of water so we don't go thirsty either. They are amazing and the stories are too.
I must confess that I do get a little homesick around Christmas time. I have always enjoyed the traditional English Christmas. I particularly miss the English village pub, for which I have found no substitute worldwide. As for the sunshine, mid July to mid September can sometimes be reminiscent of Dante's Inferno!
Bright and clear in York ATM . We have two grandchildren for a sleepover as their parents were at staff parties lastnight. Youngest has just ordered boiled eggs and fried bacon for breakfast, which is a combination I have not cone across before
Calm, overcast , looks like there was rain during the night, paths are damp, more rain forecast for the afternoon and evening. Looking ahead there is some rain forecast for each day up to Saturday, none showing heavy stuff though.
Dear John, Not "or" but "and" in our case. Unlike you we don't have wasteful central heating (or indeed mains gas) so we warm only the rooms we are using, when we are using them. Get up: turn off bedroom heater. Will turn it on again about 1 hour before going to bed. Go down to kitchen: turn on electric heater until we have enough other heat from bottled-gas cooking (toasties for breakfast, leeky pie for dinner) to turn it off. Study: electric heater: writing this while wearing sweatshirt over T-shirt. Two pairs of socks: sheepskin slippers. Séjour: electric heating only until the chimney is swept next Tuesday. Studio: sweatshirt, gilet, fleece, scarf, beret-like hat while standing in front of free-standing bottled-gas heater. For bath tonight: towel rail + fan heater, turned on well before running the bath. In winter, we often turn off the bedroom heater for a few hours at night, but on a really cold night it stays on all night. Hence comments on increasing electricity bill: the temperature determines how far in advance we turn on the heating in any given room. I have worked in cold surroundings, e.g the Himalayas in February with no electric power in the village for 5 days, so I don't take kindly to feeble virtue signalling by those who pretend to know about cold weather. Cheers, R.
When I was young, in Aberdeenshire, winters were very cold for weeks on end. Frost on the inside of windows was the usual view in the morning. We dressed to suit the conditions. We had a cooking multi fuelled stove in the kitchen and my clothes were put on a clothes horse overnight for my dash downstairs to get dressed in the morning. We had emergency lodgings arranged near the school in case we couldn't get home (10 miles away). People did die because of the cold, including one classmate who decided to walk across a field to get to her farm home. Found against a fence, dead. As a child I didn't really appreciate the dangers and the effort to keep us warm. As an adult, I realised how hard it must have been. It wasn't till the mid 70s that we got gas central heating and what bliss that was - but I was in London by then!
