If you ride an adult trike down a really steep hill, you can go really fast.

(KS, G) England is surprisingly hilly, though mostly on a small scale. Wales and Scotland are seriously hilly, mountainous in places, and any level piece of land is occupied by a rugby or football pitch. The hill in the picture drops 250 ft in about 1/3 mile so your trike had better have good brakes.
(pen) Your Cop-op sounds a good deal classier than mine but I can walk there, which gets one off one's bum if nothing else.

[Rosie] Splendid. There's nothing better after a walk to buy teabags - a good cuppa.

So. No news really. Grey and gloomy and only just below freezing here. We could do with a sparkling winter day, I reckon.

Above freezing overnight last night. A positively balmy 5° walking in to work. A little sheen of water over the still glassy ice on the pavements.

5°C here too, and 3°C overnight - feels positively balmy. I didn't even wear gloves this morning! We didn't have as much snow as the UK, so our pavements are now mostly clear. The ditches are still filled with billowing drifts though.

Our weather is crazy. It's been from -1.6666666666666667C (29F) at the lowest on some days and today the high was around 21.666666666666668C (71F)!

I tried to guess the temperature in Celsius and my guess was a tiny bit high, but I ended up saying that I was a bit high.

She just might be . . . though I don't know on what. Helium, maybe? But most likely, sugar.

It seems that the snow has finally cleared! Shame, because it means there is not chance of my looming examination being postponed. I suppose I should do at least some revision, then!

(KS) Not enough 6's. :-)

I was in court today, and I realized that (with the possible exception of a wedding I once attended), this was a first for me. Let me hasten to add that I was not there for any bad reason. It wasn't even to contest the $60 ticket I got for jaywalking last week.

I've been a number of times; and on each occasion I've been sent away because nothing was actually happening.

Two appearances in magistrates courts (Oxted 1978, Croydon 1987) for Driving with Undue Care and Attention. First one, guilty - quite a big fine, second one - Case Dismissed, cockup on the part of the then-new Crown Prosecution Service. My cousin, a solicitor now retired said that if you saw the shambles that is the back office of most police stations you'd wonder how they ever manage to prosecute anybody.

I have never been in court, though that may be likely to change if they ever find out who did poke Camilla with that stick at the student protests.

[Cross-posted in other places] Anybody want a single ticket to the recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, this Saturday (18th Dec) in Crawley? Cost price £9. email phil at philspub dot co dot uk. First come first served.

[Phil] Damn it! That date is my sister's birthday. Sorry, old chap, but the £9 must remain in my wallet.

666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666 . . . is that enough, [Rosie]?

I found that last post very sixy.

I found it really annoying ;^)

Blind drunk. At 7.30pm. For shame. Bloody students.

Blind Drunk. At 7.30am. For shame. Bloody lecturers.

Mellow. At 1230 am. For shame. Drink-driving laws.
(KagShuk) Well, not really, but a commendable effort. Try these: 142857 X 7, 25641 X 39, 1369863 X 73.

Rosie surely knows this, but it's fun to multiply 142857 by all sorts of numbers. For the geeks among us.

I've been in court lots of times. I was the court reporter in our local magistrates court for about a year. Wonderful job - like watching a whole day of soap operas. There was the woman fined for keeping Shetland ponies in her kitchen, the father fined for punching the upstart who copped a feel of his teenage daughter at her birthday party, the businessman who bought his way out of a driving ban by paying a huge fine, but wore Tweety-Pie socks under his sober business suit... all recorded in detail.
I haven't had a drink since a glass of red wine last Monday. It's about time... (it's a bad idea to drink when I'm cooking - things tend to go wrong - and I cook every night.)

I could do those math problems by hand, but it'd take too long before I head off to bed, so the computer calculator is it.
142857x7=999999, 25641x39=999999, 1369863x73=99999999

A bunch of nines . . . how about a bunch of bananas?

Hello? Anybody there?

Currently trundling through a landscape that looks like an infrared photograph. All the green stuff is completely white. No snow but the thickest frost I've ever seen.

Currently blasting through the going-away-for-Christmas-but-bringing-back-friends-for-New-Year cleaning. Veeeerrrryyy slow thaw going on, but it's good to know that it's warm enough for the salt and grit on the roads to work.

[KS] I assume Niblet Woofles is the one in the middle, holding Valerie Bridget and Briana.

Santa in middle. White and tan dog (as reindeer) is Niblet. Black and tan dog (as Santa) is Woofles. Valerie, Bridget, and Briana are not in the picture.

My absence was enforced by 'the weather'. A couple of weeks ago a small but nasty storm decided to travel across my little bit of territory. In the process of doing so it deposited about 75mm of rain and hailstorms the size of a florin in about half of an hour. Regrettably it also targeted me with lots of high voltage sparkly things. The aftermath was somewhat sobering, even though I was quite sober at the time. At two in the afternoon it became as dark as it was at eight that evening (I checked) and then IT happened. Casualties so far have all been computer related/connected. Computer: fried; hard drives: fried; back ups: fried; UPS: fried; modem: fried; router: fried; weather station: suspect (i.e. yet to be proven).
Oddly enough - and I'm assuming that the telephone line was the ingress for this devilish behaviour - the two telephone lines and the various devices attached survived unscathed. Even the ADSL filters exhibit normal behaviour. The circuit breaker in the 'fuse box' dropped out and, at least to date, no other damage seems to have been inflicted.
I am now using a new bright and shiny computer thingy (I hope that my insurance company will come to the party else I'll be skint).
Circumstance now dictates the use of Windows 7 (although I suppose I could install my original XP) which, despite all the media praise, I find rather odd. Is it possible that I am becoming a Luddite?

(Dujon) That sounds pretty dreadful and ironically it's the kind of weather that I like. If not the telephone line could it have been caused by an induced current from a nearby bolt of lightning. Was your house nearly struck, for instance? Some people I know disconnect everything computer-related if there's a storm about, something I regard as a bit chicken, like hiding under the table, but it might have worked. I don't know. It wouldn't have made any difference if the damage was caused by induced currents.
Meanwhile, we've had the coldest December for over a century but it's now slowly relenting and it felt positively balmy outside tonight with a temperature of 2°C and light rain. It should get a bit milder still in the next few days but the average will still be below 0°C, over 5° below what it should be. Good riddance to December, as ever. Gloomy, cold and miserable with the steaming dog-turd of Christmas as seasoning. Let's do a restart and have a new year.

Oddly, despite the temperature having risen 10°ree;C in the past week, it actually feels colder in my flat now than it did then. I suspect that a number of people in the other flats are away and we're not getting the benefit of their heating. Also ours was just left on a 'stop the pipes from freezing' setting while we were away, and I think it's taking some time to warm the walls back up. Beautiful old stone buildings - donchalove'em? And we're moving into a bigger one!

[Rosie] Induced currents? I would say that that is quite probable. The circuit breaker dropping out also indicates either some imbalance in the power circuit or an outright over-current surge. I suspect both. The weather station seems to be defunct - in the sense that it's not reporting any wind data and will not 'talk' to the computer via its com port. The anemometer is, of course, well above the roof (it is 12 metres above ground level).
[rab] I understand your coolness. When Mrs Duj and I bought the property in which we now reside it had been unoccupied for three or four months. Unlike your own home ours is just a simple brick and timber construction and would not, I assume, have the same heat sink properties as a stone building. In our case the house can still be cool but simply living in the place makes it far more comfortable than it was when it was deserted.