Off Topic: Energy Conservation

Required reading for anyone interested in conservation and environmental issues. Technology alone will not solve our problems.

Someone clever needs to invent a mechanism to discourage consumption other than taxation. We need to abandon the paradigm of ever-increasing consumption and re-find contentment in our circumstances.

In other news, I am in Denmark and so Blogger assumes I have become Danish - all the text & links is in Viking-speak.

Housies

We are all moved in to our new house. The housing slump has an upside! For £10 a month more, we get about twice the space, closer to town. W00t!

We will be generally incommunicado for a few days - we don't get phone / internet set up until Wednesday.

If anyone wants to know our new address, please email and we will send it on. With a new phone number, when we find out what it is...

There is nothing like test match cricket

I've just listened to the end of the second test between the West Indies and England, in Antigua. What a finish! The Windies with no hope of winning, but with only one wicket in hand... ten overs left... light fading...

In what other sport can a draw between two teams you have no interest in build so much tension that you start pacing around the room?

Meteorological speaking...

To the tune of, "I've got my love to keep me warm."

The snow is snowing,
The wind is blowing,
So how will I make my way home?
What do I care how much it may storm?
So long as trains take me home again.

But they don't run if there's
Snow or sun or there's
Leaves all over the line!
Trains are English; they're only on time,
On cloudy, grey and drizzly, rainy days.

On with my overcoat,
On with my gloves,
Standing on a platform waiting,
For trains that don't come.

I should have noticed
What the Met office
Predicted would happen today,
But instead I went on my way,
And now the trains won't take me home again.

Yes, it's snowing - very heavily, relatively speaking, for this part of England. No, I don't know if the trains will run this afternoon, but it seems unlikely. Sigh.

Trudge, trudge, trudge... wait...

England is at her beautiful best this morning. She rose early and washed carefully in some heavy rain; her scent is the sort of cool, clear, fresh, carefree that perfumers would sell their own mothers for glue to bottle; the sun is out, shining around a few wisps of high cloud; the air is cold but still; and the light is a golden wash that you could squeeze out of the air and drink. Or wish that you could. Even the East end of Bristol looks good in it.

It makes walking to work a pure pleasure.

Guess who got textas for Christmas?

Word Games

Here's an easy game to play; here's an easy thing to say:

When is someone English, and when are they British?

I used to think these were pretty well interchangeable terms when talking about people (and things) who are English, but I have discovered this is not so. Have no fear, though: the rules are very simple.

• If someone is from England and they are good at something, they are English.
• If someone is from Scotland, Wales or Ireland and they are good at something, they are British.
• If someone is from England and they are not good at something, they are British.
• If someone is from Scotland, Wales or Ireland and they are not good at something, they are Scots, Welsh or Irish, respectively.

A very admirable scheme, I'm sure. Hence:

• Andy Murray, the British tennis player (actually a Scot), but
• Johnny Wilkinson, the English rugby captain.
  
• Gordon Brown, the Scottish Prime Minister of Britain, and
  
• John Major, the ex-British Prime Minister (actually English).
  
• Cardiff, the Welsh capital, but
• The beautiful mountains of the West of Britain (ie. Wales).

This scheme is particular hard on the Irish, who are not part of Britain at all. The only major difficulty with it is Kevin Peterson...

Snow!

Yes, we have snow. Here is our back yard this morning:

and our street:


and the Met office has added a new term to its vocabulary: "Bitterly cold."