Bugga

Well, it's snowed. In fact it's still snowing. And it's stuck, so hurrah!

Unfortunately, it's that annoying level of snow: not quite deep enough to stop even English drivers, no where deep enough to look pretty, but enough to turn to grotty brown sludge and slush. And I expect it's slippy and treacherous rather than c-rumpy.

Bugga

Well, it's snowed. In fact it's still snowing. And it's stuck, so hurrah!

Unfortunately, it's that annoying level of snow: not quite deep enough to stop even English drivers, no where deep enough to look pretty, but enough to turn to grotty brown sludge and slush. And I expect it's slippy and treacherous rather than c-rumpy.

Chilly Choosday

You were probably wondering¹ why I was so quiet yesterday. Well, today is my first back in the office after the weekend. I took yesterday off poorly (not very poorly, but of the sort that makes a body wary of travelling through a Tube strike for an indeterminate period of time between two and three hours without immediate access to facilities).

We went to South Cambridge for the weekend, chez wallabok, which was fun as usual. What was less fun was the journey – once again, when we wish to travel at the weekend, the powers that be decide that is when they will close the rail lines for engineering works, so what with catching the bus to Stratford, convoluted changes on the Tube and a train journey to South Cambridge – in total I’d say something like 70 miles – that’s three hours of journey, primarily because of London’s third world weekend public transport system. With a similar chunk of time spent getting home on the Sunday, let’s just say we could have flown to Nova Scotia in not much more time.

Still, journeys apart, it was a good weekend, though I think we both managed to pick up versions of whatever malady ruined it all for my little God Daughter, who was very unwell on Sunday.

After spending yesterday keeping warm and not straying too far, we’re back in today. And of course today is when the snow arrived on our Manor. Not a lot and certainly not so much that we can’t get about, but it’s a start. I have mixed feelings on this: next weekend is the annual GASP weekend in Norfolk and as much as I’d like to be snowed in, I would rather it wait until Monday night next week, when I have been and come back.

In the meantime, courtesy ellefurtle’s iPhone, here is a rather soft focus view of our garden at about 8.15 this morning. I was arsing around with my camera at the time and couldn’t work out how to stop the flash, which is no use when you’re trying to take a picture through the kitchen window.



You can’t tell on this picture, but there is a bird feeder on the cherry tree, with a chaffinch feasting on it. Honest.

There is, of course, no snow lying in the centre of London, so I have no idea whether it has since melted or is getting deeper at home. I’ll see if I can get a better picture tonight if it’s still lying. Then at least the flash will be useful.





¹Translation: You probably hadn’t noticed (and why should you?)

Chilly Choosday

You were probably wondering¹ why I was so quiet yesterday. Well, today is my first back in the office after the weekend. I took yesterday off poorly (not very poorly, but of the sort that makes a body wary of travelling through a Tube strike for an indeterminate period of time between two and three hours without immediate access to facilities).

We went to South Cambridge for the weekend, chez wallabok, which was fun as usual. What was less fun was the journey – once again, when we wish to travel at the weekend, the powers that be decide that is when they will close the rail lines for engineering works, so what with catching the bus to Stratford, convoluted changes on the Tube and a train journey to South Cambridge – in total I’d say something like 70 miles – that’s three hours of journey, primarily because of London’s third world weekend public transport system. With a similar chunk of time spent getting home on the Sunday, let’s just say we could have flown to Nova Scotia in not much more time.

Still, journeys apart, it was a good weekend, though I think we both managed to pick up versions of whatever malady ruined it all for my little God Daughter, who was very unwell on Sunday.

After spending yesterday keeping warm and not straying too far, we’re back in today. And of course today is when the snow arrived on our Manor. Not a lot and certainly not so much that we can’t get about, but it’s a start. I have mixed feelings on this: next weekend is the annual GASP weekend in Norfolk and as much as I’d like to be snowed in, I would rather it wait until Monday night next week, when I have been and come back.

In the meantime, courtesy ellefurtle’s iPhone, here is a rather soft focus view of our garden at about 8.15 this morning. I was arsing around with my camera at the time and couldn’t work out how to stop the flash, which is no use when you’re trying to take a picture through the kitchen window.



You can’t tell on this picture, but there is a bird feeder on the cherry tree, with a chaffinch feasting on it. Honest.

There is, of course, no snow lying in the centre of London, so I have no idea whether it has since melted or is getting deeper at home. I’ll see if I can get a better picture tonight if it’s still lying. Then at least the flash will be useful.





¹Translation: You probably hadn’t noticed (and why should you?)

The march of technology

Finally after all this time I have decided to read some Sherlock Holmes stories. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to it – possibly because the only copies of the stories I ever owned were printed in an unwieldy huge volume complete with pictures from the original Strand Magazine. Furtle has a collection that is even bigger, over three impossibly big volumes. They are splendid to have on the shelf, but impractical for general reading.

I downloaded the iBooks app for iPhone and, courtesy Project Gutenberg, downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I am part way through the former.

I have to say that they are quite readable and they come at my favourite price: free.

They have also forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of electronic books. When Amazon released the Kindle, I wasn’t sure that I saw the attraction. At least Apple’s iPad does other things too, but the Kindle at least as far as I understand it, is simply an eBook reader. Anyway, having managed quite happily to read on such a small platform as my iPhone, I am warming to the idea of having a mobile library in the same way I have all my music available to me on my iPod. I don’t think that I would wish to replace all my books with eBooks: I love the damned things too much, but for straight forward portability, a single device with a dozen or so paperbacks beats a dozen or so paperbacks hands down.

I guess the next step, is to wait until products like the Kindle or iPad have enough memory to hold a few movies or seasons of my favourite TV series, a few dozen books and about 20,000 songs and with a battery life of days rather than hours and are made available at a price rather less than my immortal soul and I’ll be well set for portable entertainment.

At least until the first time I drop it or spill a drink on it, of course; in that case, we’re back to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes low-tech values of the original Gutenberg/Caxton variety are best. You can read a squidgy paperback. A waterlogged Kindle is a paperweight.

The march of technology

Finally after all this time I have decided to read some Sherlock Holmes stories. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to it – possibly because the only copies of the stories I ever owned were printed in an unwieldy huge volume complete with pictures from the original Strand Magazine. Furtle has a collection that is even bigger, over three impossibly big volumes. They are splendid to have on the shelf, but impractical for general reading.

I downloaded the iBooks app for iPhone and, courtesy Project Gutenberg, downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I am part way through the former.

I have to say that they are quite readable and they come at my favourite price: free.

They have also forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of electronic books. When Amazon released the Kindle, I wasn’t sure that I saw the attraction. At least Apple’s iPad does other things too, but the Kindle at least as far as I understand it, is simply an eBook reader. Anyway, having managed quite happily to read on such a small platform as my iPhone, I am warming to the idea of having a mobile library in the same way I have all my music available to me on my iPod. I don’t think that I would wish to replace all my books with eBooks: I love the damned things too much, but for straight forward portability, a single device with a dozen or so paperbacks beats a dozen or so paperbacks hands down.

I guess the next step, is to wait until products like the Kindle or iPad have enough memory to hold a few movies or seasons of my favourite TV series, a few dozen books and about 20,000 songs and with a battery life of days rather than hours and are made available at a price rather less than my immortal soul and I’ll be well set for portable entertainment.

At least until the first time I drop it or spill a drink on it, of course; in that case, we’re back to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes low-tech values of the original Gutenberg/Caxton variety are best. You can read a squidgy paperback. A waterlogged Kindle is a paperweight.