Wednesday.
Today was not very warm, which is a shame as it flies in the wisdom of the warmists:
ne'er cast a tee-shirt all year as climate change will boil us all alive
Anyhoo, back to the awful reality of a British winter. The forecasted freezing fog didn't make an appearance, at least not in this neck of the woods.
Neck of the woods, what is that all about ? Do woods have necks ?
It was damn cold. The ice on the bucket-thing-that-will-be-a-sort-of-water-feature was a couple of inches thick, I broke it this morning and by mid afternoon it was re-frozen.
The roof repair man tells me that 360 quids will make good the knackered lead at the front of my house, on top of the thing that runs along the front, the bit that makes the hall wide and allows a downstairs bog, oops, toilet alongside the hall. Mrs C. would like a porch building too, somewhere to leave all the coats in instead of the stupid coat rack in the hall. But oh no, we couldn't sully a porch with coats. Ha.
Felt so down, just not finding it easy to start training, was going to do a spell on the turbo; work to do, then J's boyfriend called round to pick up a parcel. Oh my he was cold, the trip from Coventry on his motorbike froze him to the core. We peeled off his jacket and gloves, set them and him by the fire to thaw. That reminds me of my times on a motorbike, back in the early 70s but we never had days as cold as this, I can only remember a couple of times when it snowed, that was only for a day, never had long cold snaps like this. I can only remember one day in 1975 when I was stuck in snow, and very few days from 1973 to 1976 when ice was a problem.
Let me think;
winter of 1972-1973; Jan. one day of snow, the day I went to Derby & back on a training ride
1973-1974; late Jan, a couple of days of snow
1974-1975; March or April, a day of snow
1975-1976; Dec, one day of snow
1976-1977; nothing
1977-1978; no
1978-1979; Jan, a longish cold snap with lots of snow.
1979-1980; none
1980-1981; nope
1981-1982; awful, late Dec to Feb was cold, snow, ugh, -20 one night.
1982-1983; Jan and Feb cold lots of frost, not much snow
1983-1984; nope
1984-1985; blimming cold, lots of snow. Woke up one Sat morning and walked over Frankley Beeches when the road was closed by 10' drifts. Did a splendid ice climb on Tryfan.
The winter of 1986-1987 was bad, I remember that Jan to Mar 1987 was a record for being clody nearly every day, and I rode a hilly TT in Stoke with still remains of snow drifts at the side of the road.
So the wisdom is, it is often cold in winter, not always, and not any more or less than earlier last century.