Yesterday began frosty, bright and sunny, with a clear blue sky. Late in the morning we set out for a walk to benefit from the sunshine, which promptly disappeared as the cloud moved it. Okay! So we went for a walk anyway. Sometime after we returned home, the cloud shifted and the sunshine and blue sky returned. So it goes.
This morning also began with bright blue sky and sunshine. And there was frost on the shed roof and on the grass once more. I had a quiet but chilly cycle ride to the market in Uppermill. I bought a coffee for the young woman who sells the Big Issue as she looked half frozen in her usual spot outside the hardware shop. I did my fruit and veg shopping and rode home through the sunshine. A beautiful day! Apparently!
By midday the cloud had moved in again and this time it brought drizzle with it. However, my weather app suggests that the sunshine might return somewhere between three and four o’ clock. We shall see.
The weathermen did predict rain moving in. It’s very annoying when they are proved right. They have predicted high winds and possibly stormy weather as we approach the end of the week. That sounds about right. Tomorrow my daughter and I, with the small people, are driving down to Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where my son and family live, to celebrate his daughters birthday a week late. I have been present for almost all her birthdays, missing out the one that fell in lockdown. Once lockdown was done my daughter and I, with a three year old and a four month old, drove down for the next birthday. We drove back on that occasion through a monumental storm. The next year we had heavy rain. And the one after that. And so we started a new family tradition: drive south for the birthday celebrations and drive back north through pelting rain or even storm!
On the comedy programme “Just a Minute” on Monday night, one of the contestants somehow brought pancakes into what he had to say, declaring that he dislikes Ash Wednesday as it is a reminder to him that he has to wait almost year for Pancake Tuesday to come round again. He went on to say that it is no use people telling him he can eat pancakes all year round, as it’s a kind of religious/cultural thing for him. Pancakes are for Shrove Tuesday. Likewise, you could tell him he can hang decorations on a tree all year round but the religious/cultural thing is only to do so at Christmas.
I have bad news for him: hot cross buns which used to be available only for Good Friday - the cross on the bun representing the cross on the green hill far away outside a city wall - have long been available all year round. Worse still, on Saturday I spotted mince pies on sale in our local post office. It’s bad enough they appear as soon as Hallowe’en is over, if not before, but they really should have disappeared by mid-February. I’m not sure of the religious significance of mince pies but culturally they certainly should not be an all year round thing. We want to keep our waistlines after all.
Looking at the drizzle, which is still falling, and having Facebook throw up for me in “Your Memories” pictures of years when our village was covered, albeit briefly, in snow at this time of year, I think about skiing. Is it a possibly disappearing sport, as was suggested on a news report the other day? As snow is less predictable, athletes have to travel farther - bad for the environment. Because glaciers are melting there’s less chance of training all summer and so more athletes have accidents. So is skiing still a viable sporting activity? Climate change is making itself felt.
In another sport, I read about a 16-year-old competitive endurance runner has been nicknamed the “Greta Thunberg of sport” after refusing to travel to Australia to compete in the World Cross Country Championships. Innes Fitzgerald, from Devon, wrote an open letter to British Athletics on 20 January, asking to be excluded from its team selection for the World Cross Country Championships. The event is set to take place in Bathurst, New South Wales on 18 February.
She recognises the honour and privilege of being given the opportunity to compete for Great Britain but feels that she can’t justify the carbon footprint of flying all that way. She’s taken part in events in Europe but has travelled by train rather than flying. Her whole family seems equally committed to reducing their carbon footprint, travelling around by train and taking folding bicycles with them for travel between railway stations. Good for them!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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