So Here it Is....

It's Christmas in 3 days time, but more importantly we had the shortest day yesterday so I'm happy about that.  The only thing is that it seems to take quite a few weeks before there's any noticeable difference in the length of the days.  I have a holiday booked for the first 2 weeks in Feb, so when I return I hope Winter will be well behind us, as far as the short days go at least.

I have a niggling sore throat at the moment that hasn't kicked into a full blown cold like it usually does, although it's much worse late evening.  I'm hoping it keeps at bay or goes away for the festive period, but I fully expect it to het worse before it gets better.  I've had no running or cycling for a few days now and its taking a bit of mental toll.    

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

 The greatest of all time?  That's been a typical question asked during the world cup.  I guess it's been asked at every world cup, I mean, there's a lot of air time to fill nowadays.  The more channels there are, the more programs have to be created, the more utter cr*p has to be spoken to fill the programs that have been created to fill the schedules of the channels that have been created.  You get my drift.

We've just come out of a prolonged cold spell where external water taps were frozen for over 2 weeks.  Average temperatures have hardly risen above 1 degree during that time but were a heady 10 this morning- it felt positively balmy.  Our house takes a while to get 'up to temperature' when I switch the heating on, so it's surprising that the big wide world outside can change so quickly.  I might even bike in this week.

 

Cold Comfort.

 It's the football world cup at the weekend - Sunday I think - where France will beat Argentina.  The reason I mention this is that my interest in football is passing at best, and although I can join in laddish conversations about certain things, footy is not my area of expertise so try and stay on the peripherals of this sort of thing.  However, when the world cup comes around,  I find myself drawn into the intricacies of  team selection and what formation is best to beat team X, ..but only if it involves the national team.  So what does this prove? that I'm a diehard xenophobe?  ..or too nationalistic?  I'm not sure really, just that I like to support my local team, no matter how detached I am from them.  I even cheer for the Scottish curling team at the Winter Olympics.

I've managed 3 early morning runs this week - 21 miles in total.  It has been quite a cold week with minus temperatures for most of the time.  It was minus 5 yesterday morning, but luckily no wind to speak of so I didn't need to get my tracksters out to replace the shorts.  I did have 4 layers on my upper body though. 

Royal Outing.

 Harry and Meghan have released the first 3 episodes of their 'drama' which allegedly will reveal some juicy information about the way the royal family and staff behave and treated Meghan etc. etc.  Unsurprisingly, it contains nothing of interest to anyone except those of us who always want to know the smallest details about anyone, let alone the royal family.  Predictably, the press have filled goodness knows how many pages of absolute nonsense about it, quoting 'palace sources' or 'a friend of XYZ' and to press home how aggrieved we are al feeling - how it's an insult to the Queen's legacy.  Luckily, its only 6 episodes so they will have to disappear back into their rabbit hole and dream up another way to make money then hype it up to reveal - nothing yet again.

I look at life from both sides now.

 They have just announced that a new coalmine will be opened in Cumbria to supply coke for the steel industry.  Evidently we currently import this from South Africa.  This has, of course, kicked off a great deal of debate regarding the climate change effects, global warming etc. etc.  I don't have a strong opinion on this either way, but I do have a strong opinion that it is really, really difficult to decide which is the right opinion.  On the one hand we want to reduce/stop the use of fossil fuels that exacerbate the global warming situation, on the other hand we want to make sure we optimise what we are using to minimise the effects of CO2. This is a great example of where both sides are right/wrong.