...quite how bad the effect of changing the clocks from BST to GMT is. As I compose this (as opposed to go online and publish) it's about 16:45, and the sky is dull grey, a little off-apricot in the southwest where the remains of sunset are. It's getting dark and not yet going home from work time. Certainly it's time to need artificial lighting to do anything detailed except close to a window. Ugh!!
The final homeward cycle ride of the year started in fine sunny, if brisk, late afternoon sun. A wonderful time to cycle. But by about 3 miles into the journey (just under 6 to go), I'd gotten past the first couple of creases in the land, and had a view down a valley in roughly the direction that home lay - and saw a large grey cloud, trailing virga. Uh-oh!
A couple of miles later, cresting the last rise, I could see much more clearly that the rain was just about over where I judged the village to lie. Time to pour on the coal, blaze down the hill, and through a couple of miles of straggling villages. Crossing the main road, the next good unobstructed view of the scene looked seriously gloomy. No traffic to wait for, speed across the dog-leg junction, and another mile of village, now heading almost directly into the grey. What would have been a fine ride was turning into a race. One last curve, and out into a mile of straight between open fields - and blessed relief! The weather was off to the north of the village, so I could ease up, cycling less desperately along in the low sunshine, my shadow long on the fields towards the rain.
So it stayed dry all the way home, and the rain missed us - but the grey cloud brought premature end to the afternoon; by 17:15, it was time to put the lights on indoors.
Earlier this summer, as I touched up the few stone chips and couple of finger-tip patches of rust by the door-sills of my '92 Corsa, I remarked how corrosion resistant modern cars are - I'd had more rust repair to do on our previous car, 8 years older, when it was only 3 years old. Then late last weekend, for the first time in several weeks (a dry summer has meant less use of this than typical) I lifted the bonnet to check that the wash-bottle was topped up, and something didn't quite feel right as I lifted it.
Yep, one corner, where the double skin ought to have drained through a small hole, enough water must have built up to corrode a couple of square inches of the inner skin, and that was where I'd lifted it, and my fingertips had gone through. So this Saturday, I stood out in the raw north wind with a bucket of warm soapy water, a small file and some pliers, cleaning off the engine grime and getting rid of the corroded through area, and getting just about down close enough to just bare metal around the edges that it was sensible to apply the rust-eating primer. The area affected is a bit too small and awkwardly placed (and shaped!) to use plastic padding and aluminium mesh to repair, especially given that I definitely want the space between the skins to be able to drain, so in the end I let it cure overnight then just sprayed the lot with top-coat to cover the black iron compounds left after the primer has done its thing, and that will have to do.
[Now playing - Radio 4 Six o'clock news]
Well, I wasn't sure I would have the weather for it - yesterday the forecast for today was for lots of showers, but the morning forecast has improved - but I have cycled into work for the last full day where I can this year. I could have done on Monday (but for visiting the vet) and Tuesday, but for misleading forecasts; though Weds was wet, and yesterday we had a serious shower about going-home time, while I was in the process of retrieving an old puss.
This time it was 4 miles plus before the sun showed angry and red through cloud on the eastern horizon behind me; there's a lot of cirrostratus and classic mares'-tail cirrus, and only a little blue sky.
When I woke, I thought intellectually that it would be good - having with one thing and another not gotten around to any real exercise so far this week - that I'd feel better for doing so, even if the thought of being out in the cold didn't appeal too much. But with a heavy brushed-cotton shirt over the T-shirt I need for the office (south facing glass wall + low sun = hot in winter), the arms felt a litle surface chill, but no more than that; and by the time I got into my office, I was feeling on the sort of high that reminds me why I like to cycle to work, and that's a joy to rediscover in the spring.
Well, Smoke came through the op alright - a couple of bad teeth removed, and a serious de-scaling. And a thyroid reading of 280 on a scale where 15-40 is normal. So it's little orange pills morning and night for a few weeks, so that maybe with the eating like a horse that he does he'll actually put on a little bit of weight, instead of being mainly bone and sinew.
It's been many months since I last got anyone contacting me as a result of my on-line CV; now two in as many days. Either there are agencies out there desperate for business, or the IT slump is starting to wear off at last.
The sunlight alarm is doing a wonderful job - there is always a moment of tranquil first consciousness in the morning thinking "It must be a beautiful day outside!" before the rest of the process swaps back in, and I realise what it actually means. It does get more difficult to resist the lure of resumed hibernation.
Meanwhile, it is now a beautiful day, and if it weren't that I had to deliver Smoke to the vet for his dental work, it would have been just wonderful to cycle. As it is, I won't even get chance to get a work-out today, as I need to wait by the 'phone to hear a puss's progress if things reveal a need for more work or a disaster happens. Hope I'll have the chance to cycle tomorrow, on the very last full day of the cycling year.
The autumn colours are really at their finest now - the golden leaves are well outnumbering the brown scorched ones from the long dry spell that have been sticking around since August.
Smoke, our oldest cat (14yr 7mo) has always been a big eater; only now he's getting rather skinny, and rather picky in his habits (preferring to have the jelly but not the meatblob) and has started to dribble a lot after eating. So off to the vets last night.
Verdict - needs a bit of dental work, and a blood test to check if his thyroid has kicked into overdrive, which he's going in for on Thursday morning. One earlier cat of similar age that went in for dental work came out of the anaesthetic with kidney trouble, and had to be euthanased soon after, so I'm a bit concerned about our old thug-lump.
OTOH, another went in for dental work at that sort of age at the same time as a young cat went in to be spayed. The older one was checked over, and we were told that she had a heart murmur and might not survive the op. As it was, the old lady came out feisty as ever, and survived until nigh on 17 years old, whereas the young (pedigree Burmese) cat took several weeks and a return for hospitalisation before she recovered.
By 18:45 last night there was barely enough light to navigate down to the bottom of the garden. Next week, with the clocks going, that'll be soon after half past five. It's at this time of the year that I'd really like to be able to seamlessly relocate somewhere like New Zealand for six months.
And this morning, driving in, the car thermometer gave air temperatures just below freezing most of the way, under greyish skies with high clouds.
Brought in the last of the apples from the tree (a Charles Ross) yesterday, so they're currently all arrayed over the dining table and part of the kitchen breakfast bar. That's it until the broccoli starts doing its thing next spring. The plums finished six weeks ago or more, at the end of August, and the Bramleys came in shortly thereafter.
At the weekend, I decided that some of my old pairs of underpants were probably past their "best before", so did like most blokes of my age have become accustomed to do - went into Marks & Spencer intending to pick up a pack or two of y-fronts, like what I've worn ever since I stopped wearing nappies.
But no longer was I under the protection of St. Michael, patron saint of sensible underwear! Discarding boxers [which seem to have for no explicable reason undergone a revival - as far as I'm concerned, they're something only old geezers like my dad's generation would wear], trying to find something that sat in the old y-front/jockeys niche was a struggle. Most of the offerings were either things looking like cut-off thermal long-johns, or posing pouches. I still haven't dared try the ones I bought on - things they called "slips", though as far as I'm concerned, a slip is a satiny skirt-like thing a girlie wears under her dress.
Has the world gone mad?
Autumn 1978 was quite busy for me - and the 18th was most important in my life. I decided to scrounge some coffee in the hour's gap between to lectures and suddenly a thunderbolt struck. Unwitting, I'd met the love of my life, and we're still here together today, despite much in the way of trials and tribulations. And the fact that it all happened, so far as I can tell, with pheromones going directly to our respective hind-brains, my complete lack of dating skills didn't matter (any more than it did when a certain other young lady decided to add a notch to her bedpost a couple of weeks previously, an event which made the Hawklords track The Only Ones off the Twenty Five Years On album significant to me).
To mark a silver "unniversary" we took a bunch of friends out to dinner, with enough diversity but enough overlap (most were gamers, most were in software, most had cats, most were people we'd known as students - but the mosts weren't the same in each case) that conversation could range free and wide. It was a wonderful evening.
Alas age shows, in that although only 4 bottles of wine were consumed amongst 10 of us (ok, 6 drinkers and 4 drivers), and the after-dinner coffee back at our place ended not that long after 00:30, I felt pretty wrecked the next day.
Yesterday I commented about my ride to work; by the time I was getting back home, the low chalk ridgeline southwest of the village was already rising to obscure the sun - I'd been out all the daylight hours. Soon it'll be back to the season where I leave the house in the dark, and get home again in the dark; time to break out the SAD-hat for light therapy.
This morning was much the same as yesterday, only more frost/heavy dew making the fields all grey-white for the first mile; and less mist, though one tendril did cross the road at one point.
Next week is forecast to be colder, and there's mention of snow in the north - so I expect we'll see rain down here, which may mean that today will have been the last cycling to work day of the year, unless the weather is crisp like this on 24th December, when it is traditional to go home at lunchtime.
If Kallyr Starbrow exists in any campaign I run, I think she will have to be an follower of Rigsdal One-Eye-Open, not that funny foreign Polaris chap.
First real frost this morning, greying the grass at the far side of the front lawn, and covering the windows of the car on the drive - though a quick wipe with the hand showed that it was as much dew as frost, clearly hovering in that latent heat gap at 0C.
As I left the village, Urth was just turning its face to the day, the houses just dropping from the face of the sun, and the mist starting to rise again from the fields. Climbing the first rise, where just a couple of weeks ago I would see the sun blaze back at me from around where my shadow fell on the white line at the roadside, with its reflective micro-beadings, the land was still all in shadow. There was frost on the verges all the way, though the forecast had suggested that the wind would keep temperatures up overnight.
As it was, it was a simply wonderful crisp morning to cycle in.
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