Wood You Believe It

Unseasoned (wet) wood for domestic stoves is being banned from 2012 and coal from 2023.  When I first read this, it seemed a bit harsh - OK, wet wood will not burn as efficiently, but surely its better than burning gas in a boiler.  However, there is a nasty pollutant in this type of fuel that deserves to be got rid of, so probably not as severe a ban as I first imagined.  Personally, my wood is dried out for at least 12 months, and probably a bit more.  I try and get my wood heap up to full capacity early Spring, then around half gets used the following Winter and I start the cycle again.
I don't think there's anything wet about my wood, but I've ordered a moisture meter just in case, which will allow me to bore the pants off everyone if they dare to mention wood burning stoves and prove to myself that drying works.

Dropped the car off at my local(ish) car garage in the next village and ran home via a little used footpath I last ventured down about 4 years ago.  Nearly lost my shoe a couple of times in a boggy bit of grass, but actually really enjoyed running over ground that I haven't been on for a while.  This has got me thinking about entering a race or 2 in the Spring and Summer but not sure what distance - half marathon as a minimum seems sensible, not worth travelling for less.  I wonder if sprinters think like that?  Must be tough - travel hundreds of miles, do a false start and get disqualified.

Don't Stop Me Now

Following my post of a couple of days ago (Blame Game), it looks like Kirsty Allsop despite her not being one of my favourite presenters has put similar thoughts forward in a piece in the Guardian.  She advocates that management should have a system in place to take over the social media stuff when
things get 'too much' (my words) and seems to make sense.

Anyway,  back to the running.  I've been out 3 early mornings in a row, this morning's being a 7.5 miler and felt reasonably good after it.  Not so good part way round, but that was probably because I needed a pit stop and there were no convenient gateways available.  When I found a suitable verge I felt much better thereafter.  Yesterday I had to stop for 3 pitstops, which given that the majority of my running is out in the countryside not as bad/risky as it sounds.  The biggest issue is filling up the shower plug hole with the odd blade of grass when showering.  Further details available on request.
If I tell anyone about these types of pitstops, they are often quite shocked, but to me they have become 'normal'.  By normal, I'm not saying it happens every time I go out, but it means that I don't stress about an early morning constitutional before I venture out.  Saves time y'know.

Skipping Along

I sometimes take my mini-ipod with me when I run - usually when it's dark and there's nothing to occupy my mind.  I have a selection of my favourite artists which at the moment are Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Ben Folds, not that the artists are an integral part of this story it's the listening that is different to most other times I listen to music.
The thing that interests me is that when I'm running I listen to all of the song.  No skipping to the next track if I'm not too familiar with it, and no skipping because I can't sing along to it.  There's no singing when you're running!
It reminds me of when records were pieces of vinyl placed on a turntable and the needle gingerly lowered down to begin the listening experience.  A few crackles and strange noises and the music kicked in.  I'm sure I did skip tracks very occasionally, but as a general rule I listened to the whole album cover to cover (although it was 1st to last track, not cover to cover).  I know all the words to most if not all of Pink Floyds albums which I purchased on vinyl, but not the ones I had as CDs or downloads.
So, note to self: don't skip tracks and your life will be enhanced by little heard tracks.

Blame Game

Caroline Flack, a TV celebrity presenter, sadly ended her life at the weekend, and this resulted in a great deal of angst about the role of the media and how they basically gave her a hard time along with social media trolls etc.  This has led to an immediate campaign for social media users to 'be kind', as if this hadn't occurred to anyone.  It seems a bit odd that we need to remind people to be kind to each other, but at least we have social media to tell people how to behave, then we can give them some grief if they don't.
I don't speak from experience, but it seems to be that celebrities must be torn between deleting themselves from social media to avoid the hassle, or embracing it as a marketing tool raising their profile, influence, income etc.  I guess it's quite a dilemma, and I would like to think that their management team (I guess all celebs have some sort of management team) should be able to help and advise.  Unfortunately, I would hazard a guess that the management team are paid a percentage of income, and that must surely skew their advice when it comes to any sort of decisions that would affect earnings.  I don't see any celeb managers getting the sort of media intrusion and social media grief that the celebs get.

Travellers Tale.

Driverless cars; a ban on diesel and petrol car sales by 2030; severe congestion.  All these things are making it difficult to predict what private transport will look like in 20 years.  I guess (readers can Google this) that the ability to hop in a car and go where you like when you like started in the mid 30s as the car became more affordable and popular, so it will have had it's 100 years of fame to be replaced by what?  I have always liked the idea of driverless cars - it combines the flexibility of the aforementioned with the luxury of being able to make use of the time spent travelling, the sort of thing currently only afforded to company execs with a chauffeured vehicle.
I can't see public transport ever replacing the private car except in large cities or along urban transport highways e.g. London-Birmingham despite the talk.  I can, however, foresee that low cost affordable electric vehicles such as e-bikes/scooters will gain in popularity when they become safer, practical and more prevalent (and thereby gain in popularity).  We probably need to re-boot the Sinclair C5.

Driving Changes

There's an interesting article today in The Guardian about congestion in London.  You can read it yourself of course, but the bottom line is that private cars make up a very small proportion of London's traffic, the rest being Ubers, Black Cabs, Buses and delivery vans.  I hadn't really thought about it before (being a rural yokel), but of course the Amazon Prime type of delivery - delivered a.s.a.p. without combining and optimising the deliveries are bound to create additional traffic.
How do we fix this?  Answers on a postcard (2nd class) to TfL.

Bridge That Gap

It must be an age thing, but I get much more concerned about bad weather than I used to.  We've just had a terribly windy Sunday with an awful lot of rain in a short time and I've been quite concerned about everyone else's as well as my own property.  How odd.

It transpires that the UK government are working on plans for a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Early days yet, but that would be a rather expensive piece of infrastructure.

Racing Along.

The new Formula 1 season must be imminent, articles have started appearing about all sorts of racing rubbish.  What is apparent, is that the good ol' BBC, although supposedly unbiased news reporting seems to almost ignore sports it doesn't broadcast itself. For example, when it had the rights to F1 it was plastered with 'in depth' reports, speculation and other space filling articles, whilst now it limits itself to syndicated pieces.  Mind you, I don't think we're missing anything.
Talking of the BBC, there must be a good case for it to stop reporting/broadcasting on all sport entirely as a cost cutting exercise.  Surely there's enough independent sports channels around to fill the gap.

Remoan.

There are still many EU remainers that harbour thoughts about returning one fine day to the UE fold.  It would be interesting if we did, but I'm sure it will take as many years to get this uppermost in the politicians head as it did for the Brexit thought to get to the top of the list i.e. about 40.  It still amazes me that we ever got to vote on it in the first place, such is my confidence in politicians doing things for the majority of the electorate rather for their won narrow party views.  Brexit has never been a party v. party argument despite some wanting to turn it into one.  Luckily that failed to materialize.

I have had around 10 days off running whilst my hamstring knits itself back together, and unsure to wait a while longer of give it a go.  It's not sore, even to touch so I'm fairly optimistic it wasn't so bad and I can go for it.  I've been keeping the sweat flowing on my cycle turbo, but because I usually do it early morning, it's been rather cold (minus 1 today) and takes a while to feel warmed up, unlike running where I feel warm within a few minutes.  I always say that running is worth (in fitness terms) twice as much as cycling, and it seems to fit the warming up equation as well.