[Dujon] Other sources suggest it is 8cm leg span. I haven't measured but I'm sure we get the odd house spider around that size.
[Rosie] 10¹⁴. Now that's what I call a world wide web!

[Boolbar] *groan*

Saturday was the coldest October day in 30 years' recording in the grounds of Plas Rhosi. Max temperature 6.0°C with a nice fresh northerly wind and showers. Delightful. Tonight the wind has died down and there's a brilliant night sky and frost. The grass, over the squelchy mud underneath, has that "crisper whisper" as you walk on it. Screen temperature -1.3°C.

How virtuous I felt this morning, getting up by BST, while gentlemen in England still abed took putting back the clocks as an excuse to stay in bed an hour longer, instead of an opportunity to fill an extra unforgiving hour with sixty minutes worth of noodling on the Internet.

[Rosie] It was certainly parky up on the Ridgeway at 8am. Car's thermometer said zero, but the wind in our faces certainly made it feel much colder. The visibility reminded me of Switzerland though - could see all the way to the horizon :-)

Here, even the motorway run-up to a big bridge slows 'em down. Dutch drivers have no idea what to do in order to climb a hill without causing a traffic jam.

(pen) Are there any words in Dutch for a hill, mountain, slope etc? Probably about one-tenth of the number in Welsh.

I parked nose-in on my little parking pull-in last night, which is on something like a 12% slope, leaving the front of the car rather higher than the rear. I had to free-wheel back out and get on the level before the engine would start. Not doing that again with a low petrol tank.

[Rosie] Heuvel for hill, helling for slope, and berg for mountain. No mention of bluffs, cliffs, butte, downs. (Although duine for dune). My knowledge of Dutch is not encyclopaedic, but they very rarely get mentioned. Here, the kids go toboganning down the edges of the dijks (they don't all end in water - some have fields/houses/roads on both sides); maximum run = about 15 metres max.

(pen) Houses on both sides? I thought the purpose of a dyke/dijk was to hold back water in emergency so isn't that a bit like building houses on the beach? Have I got his right? As to hilly words, I imagine Afrikaans must have a few because South Africa is pretty steep at the edges.
(Phil) Must have been very low. But how did you get up there in the first place?

[Rosie] It's just a little pull-in, about 50% longer than my car, but is rather a steep slope up to the garage (which I don't use...for the car). I think that's only about the 5th time I've gone in nose first in the 5 months I've been parking there. It might have been coincidence that the engine wouldn't fire until I was on the level, as the tank still has enough about 3 gallons in (approx)

*Cross-post alert*
Just a nudge that there is a get-together this Saturday afternoon in London. Details on the Pilgrim page at Orange

[Rosie] There's a concept of sacrificial land - the water is going to come up 'so far' but no further. I think the same is thought of some of the houses. Besides, the flood would only reach the bottom half of your house where the washing machine, bikes and canoes are kept. The living room and kitchen are usually at the same level as the road running along the top of the dyke.

(pen) Ah! The Dutch must be a stoic lot. I'm happy on my hill but ironically a few million years ago it was a beach, which accounts for the deposits of rounded pebbles a couple of miles away, the so-called Blackheath Beds.

There's thick and dull fog obscuring the whole of Rotterdam from my 6th floor office window this morning. Yet as I drove off the ferry which arrived in Rotterdam from Blighty this morning, I was almost blinded by the sun shining into the off-ramp. Oh well. Never mind. The eggs, sausage and bacon on board this morning was very nice.

No fog here, but I do have egg, sausage and bacon on some bread, which I find tastier than a board.

Funnily enough, 'plate' in Dutch is 'bord'.

Oh come on everyone... don't make the whole front page look like it's 'me, me, me'. Say something!

something (oblig.)

semi thong (anag.)

sunnink, quelquechose, rhywbeth. sorry no Dutch.

iets

qqch in french textspeak.

I made a collection of Christmassy snowglobes over the last week of evenings. But they're virtual ones in an online world, so probably none of you can see them.

[Raak] I don't believe you.

[Raak] They are lovely. Did you get much appreciation for them - virtual or otherwise - in your online world?

[pen] They went down quite well when I presented them at a Show & Tell event last Sunday. There's a couple of these every week in SL, where builders show off the new things they've built.

I had no idea that sort of stuff went on. Anyway... Any other news from anyone? Or do I have to tell you about my weekend again?

This year I will not be making plum jam - thank goodness. Moving to a new (old) house has meant there are no fruit trees, other than the ubiquitous lemon, but the vege plot is much better here, even if it is tiny, about 1.5m x 2m. The soil probably has some deficiencies, but without time to check, I simply dug it over, planted a bunch of things and hoped for the best. During winter it gets almost no sun, but the late spring and summer are very good, at least so far. Anyway, I am growing a strawberry (one tiny plant), zucchinis, black cherry tomatoes, three types of beans, chives, spring onions, basil, and capsicum, which is the smallest at the moment, but still looks hopeful. Because it got hot quickly the pak choy and kailaan broccoli didn't survive (they bolted and were eaten by bugs), sadly, but everything else is going completely bonkers. The basil doubled in size overnight and leaving a zucchini overnight before picking meant it was suddenly half a kilo.

oh, I forgot the stuff that was growing there beforehand. There is a lavender bush which sort of hangs over the side of the garden, and a geranium which I'd prefer to pull out since it tends to overshadow the chives and things down one end, but it adds pretty colour in winter so I'm just keeping it trimmed for the time being. And there is mint around some edges and behind the lemon tree, and parsley growing wild in a patch to one side. Oh, and the silverbeet, of course, which came up by itself. That should probably be classified as a weed, but it makes very good "spinach" and cheese pie. Next season I will probably remove that particular plant and replace it with some coloured varieties.

[flerdle] another new garden? Gosh. How splendid - ours is as barren as barren can be right now. We're just heading into the really cold season, with frost every night and snowy mornings every now and again. And I'm thinking about what can be easily uprooted and moved as we're seriously house-hunting in January. The only thing I'm bothered about are my roses, my hazel (grown from a nut found in a French hedgerow while picnicking in Normandy), my raspberries...

Flerdle, watch that mint! Some varieties (don't ask me which) can escape the confines of an in-ground plot and run rampant around the whole garden. Experience informs me that, should that happen, it's one heck of a task to get rid of it from the areas in which it is not welcome; a bit like some bamboo and cannas.

What Dujon said. I am still waiting to see who will win out of the rampaging mint and the roving bamboo.

[Dujon] Oh, I'm definitely aware of the potential invasiveness of mint! It was all overr the place here, but now that it has been removed from the vege plot and banished to the bits we don't care about -- behind the lemon tree, over in the corner, and next to some of the border rocks-- it is actually looking a lot happier and healthier, and it's not regrown in the bits we do care about (unlike the grass, which is much more tenacious). frogstar likes to use mint for tea. I think the stuff is vile.

Bamboo, Annerley(Brisbane), circa 1995. The horror.

Oh, I like mint, flerdle, although I can't remember ever having mint tea. In the days prior to the realisation that it had designs for the taking over of Maison Dujon - well, its garden - I used to occasionally pluck a leaf and roll it between my hands. Lovely. No more though as there is no mint in the 'new' place. Should we decide to again grow some it will be confined to some sort of box arrangement with no opportunity to hit the ground running.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Humbug!

[Giertrud] It wasn't late for me. Where is home for you? I have this vague sense it is in the South...

Hello. Apols for radio silence. With the little 'un I don't get much time for frivolities, or MC, these days. Had a good Christmas and am now stuck in Southampton airport toilet. Best wishes for the new year.

Happy belated Christmas all. One English windmill visited today. Drank tea out of bone china and ate cake. Came away with three kinds of flour, a whole cheese and a jar of jam. We are rich indeed.

Happy new year everyone.

Happy New Year all.

(UK, pen) Could be, when it finally gets going.

[Rosie] this is the first work morning of the year. I was up before 7, it's still ruddy dark, and after two and a half weeks off, it is taking a bit of effort! Any road, the year is underway. HNY.

North of the border we get today as a holiday too as a means to recover from Hogmanay. Personally I'm glad New Year's Day is over - I always have a really heavy-duty Sunday afternoon back-to-school feeling on 1st jan.

I'm back at work today. Not quite sure what to do.

What am I doing here?

[Cross-posted] Next week, 9th January is a rather important date. Any plans?

Blow. That should have included a link. Sorry this is in its raw form: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/25979. aspx

I have just tried describing MC and the Morniverse to my new Dutch/American colleague. She needed to rush out to make tea before I had finished..

(pen) I even have trouble explaining it to blokes down the pub, some of whom are highly hedjumacated. I'd say you were very brave.

38°C at 9pm here. Toasty.

... and 34.5 at 12:15am. It is dry heat, as usual, so not particularly uncomfortable with a fan. And I have an ice pack on my foot after tripping over the base of some mobile street/shop signage this afternoon too. Ow.

[flerdle] You have my sympathy. Overnight temperatures like that are terribly enervating. Even here we are facing a few days of 'orrible 'eat. Fortunately we have an air conditioner installed; damn the cost of running it, I'll face that consequence later. As I type it's day time and just turning to 32ºC. Given the forecast I fear for my sanity and worry significantly about arsonists.

(Dujon) What you need is this. Somewhat easier are the conditions at Hughes Hall; thin fog (just below cloud base), 6.5°C. Not bad for January. It's never failed to go below 20°C at night here. I noticed Melbourne had a quite dramatic change yesterday but there seems no immediate relief in your area.

[Rosie] Fortunately I live to the east of the Great Dividing Range. Even so it's often seven or eight degrees warmer here than it is in Sydney itself (taking the BoM site at the airport as a reference). Yesterday produced some high readings in the west but, as flerdle mentioned, it is more often than not a 'dry' heat in those areas.
I have not listened to the news this morning but yesterday Tasmania and Victoria were suffering terribly from bushfires. Given my location I am, so far, happy that apart from re-packing our photographs and important papers into a suitcase for easy evacuation there has been no immediate threat.
[flerdle] Where are you, you world flitting butterfly?

[Dujon] Back in Melbourne. The cool change that Rosie mentioned came through here noticeably at about 2-2:30am Saturday, and yesterday was lovely. Today is pleasant too. Tomorrow should be up to 38, then down again to the low 20s. Then up again... This is very normal here, but it plays havoc with my sinuses.

I surmised such was the case, flerdle, but knowing you you could have been just about anywhere it was hot. Fortunately we've been spared extreme temperatures here (I saw that somewhere in the state managed 46ºC the other day. Phew!). Our friendly BoM though is promising 43º tomorrow (Tuesday). We'll see.

[Rosie] Dramatic changes are quite common in Melbourne. In mid-December I was out at 5pm and the temperature was about 34, iirc. As I walked home I noticed a distinctly chilly wind; by 5:45 the temperature was 22. (flerdle may remember the temperatures more accurately than I do!)

I spent longer than I had intended reading the Pea and Honey Recipes game last night - right from the beginning. From it, I can trace (in my case) two job moves and two house moves, a new relationship and a marriage. And it's bloody good quality. Some of it is even excellent. *rejoins game with renewed vigour*

(Duj, flerdle, CdM) The heatwave is noteworthy enough to have a summary here. It's not a heatwave, of course; it's a heatwave event.

Ah, the dear old BoM. I am not denigrating the organisation, in fact if I could give it some sort of collective hug for the information it supplies so freely I would. Whilst the data included in your link are interesting I found the text a little 'non-BoM' style. By the way, Chez Dujon recorded a pretty normal summer temperature of but 37.9ºC yesterday, although some of the more coastal (offical) sites reported around and about the 43º forecast.

*sighs and blames the heat*

(Duj) I think OZBOM is pretty good, one of the best national services.
37.9°C normal? Hmm, I'd guess your mean max in January is just below 30°C. I shall retaliate with a -9.2°C max on 12 Jan 1987. Sunny all day; it was weird.

Your 30ºC is probably a pretty good estimate. The 37.9ºC I experienced yesterday is, nevertheless, not some sort of extraordinary event - after all it's only just over the old 'ton', a not unexpected event here. Your minus readings you can, like many in North America, Siberia and such high latitude places, keep to yourself.
[To the rest of you] Sorry about the weather stuff.

(Dujon) Your 37.9 is about the same as me getting 30; it happens about once a year. The UK record is 38.1 (10 Aug 2003) and the RosieRecord a paltry 35.9, same day.
The minus 9.2 was what statisticians may well call a "different population". I've had a number between -5 and -6 but this was lower than I'd thought I'd ever see here.
You wouldn't like this place.

No more than I'd take a holiday here, Rosie. ;)
Anyway, some time this afternoon or, more probably tomorrow's morn, I shall have to climb yet again on to my roof and clear off all the leaf litter and branches that have been deposited there since the last time I undertook the task. It seems that we are due for another blast of hot and dry air in a couple or three days so to fail to do so could well be construed by some to be a form of criminal negligence.

(Duj) You won't be having a bonfire, then. I shouldn't.
Vostok leaves me speechless even as a weather nut. But Jakutsk is a sizeable city and quite a nice one. The current fog has lasted about 10 days, the temperature falling slowly all the time. The city causes the fog.

Can we resolve to kill games off with greater assiduity this year? I think higher turnover would be a good thing.