Have a Happy Mid Winter Festival

Picture taken from Arbor Low on New Years Eve 2004.

Here's to the Winter...

I have to confess that I like winter. I am happiest when there is a good storm raging outside. Ideally I would be in a cottage, preferably near Clashnessie, Sutherland with Mrs Birdwatcher. It would be late December, the sun has already set and outside there would be rain pelting at the windows with the wind whistling and howling, rocking the trees and rattling the doors. If you listened carefully you could hear the sea crashing against the rocks, and imagine it foaming angrily as it battered the rocks and clawed at the cliff face. Of course inside Mrs Birdwatcher and I would be snug in front of a well-established log fire, books on our laps and glasses of Bunnahabhain by our sides.

The key is the ferocity of the storm. Drizzle and a mild breeze brings me out in a rash, but even after the most depressing day my spirits rise with the sound of the wind getting up and rain, lots and lots of it.

Best of all though is to wake to that special light that you get after an overnight snowfall. Even now well into my middle years I still leap out of bed pull on warm clothes, just to get outside and experience the fresh glistening pristine snow.

Now with Global warming there is talk of winters being mild and stormy with little snow. We shall see. I suspect that the British climate has a few tricks and surprises up its sleeve. I hope so. It would be a shame if scenes like the one below were to become a thing of the past.

Global Warming

It’s December, a few days before Christmas (just in case you had forgotten). I am sitting outside the Cafe @The Green Pavillion (winner of the regional food hero competition), in the warm winter sunshine sipping a Latte chatting about life in general with my twelve year old, and generally watching the world go by. Nothing odd about that you may think! Except I am in the Peak District, in Buxton, a town more renown for mist, fog, damp, and cold, and that’s in the summer. To sit outside a café up here in the middle of winter in warm sunshine is unheard of. On Monday Mrs Birdwatcher and I went to Macclesfield. We left in bright sunshine only to find Macc under a blanket of thick, damp, moist fog. It’s usually the other way round. Yesterday I went to the Goyt. The sky was a clear blue and if it had not been for the chill wind and the lack of curlews crying and calling, it could have been spring, and the news was full of the chaos that the freezing fog was causing in the South East.

I am also feeling smug. Smug, because I have done all my Christmas shopping, including all the food. I am clearly in a minority. Sitting in the sun sipping Latte I had to smile as the crowds rushed by. People have that desperate, harassed look at this time of the year. They rush about aimlessly, snapping at small children, searching in vain for some inspiration. I think before we stroll back up the hill we’ll have another Latte.

Anyone for cricket......

Back to reality after the false dawn of England's first day success. Its the early hours of the morning and I am listening to the dulcet tones of Geoffery Boycott mangling the English language in his own inimitable way, the hopelessly misplaced optimism of CMJ, and Agers talking about everything but the awful state of the English batting / bowling attack. Its 2.30am and I sad person that I am, am sitting bleary eyed at the keyboard, listening to the third test from Perth on the internet. The experiment of drifting off to sleep with the cricket as a background has been abandoned after a lengthy and rather one sided discussion (loose use of the term) with Mrs Birdwatcher. She declared the experiment a failure after I punched the air (from under the covers!) when Harmison got Ponding out lbw on the first day. She felt that this constituted unreasonable behaviour! (rough translation of her actual words) so its the internet and only the Fish for company.

Blimey just after I typed "Harmison got Ponting out", he has just done it again! Caught behind! Scary!

Is this the start of England's comeback? We shall see. Anyway apparently the Freemantle Doctor is on his way, so that will give them all something else to talk about.

Don't they teach them anything at Skool.....?

Latest literary offering from teenage daughter!

Even Man Flu has a silver lining

I had a severe case of man flu last week, so had to spend quite a lot of time in bed. One of the few benefits of this is that I got to listen to Radio 4 during the day. Where would we be without Radio 4? Or rather where would I be without radio 4? It is the vital ingredient of my day. I wake to it, to the honeyed tones of Humphries and Co and usually I drift off to sleep to it. (I have as a concession started using an earpiece so that Lucy doesn’t have to share it with me.) I usually wake sometime in the early hours to something on the World Service and reluctantly turn the radio off. I even find the shipping forecast soothing!

I will listen to Radio 4 whenever I can. If I am in the house on my own it is not unusual for me to have all the radios on, tuned to Radio 4 so that as I move from room to room I don’t miss anything. My MP3 player is packed not with tunes but with downloads of Melvyn Bragg's “In our time”. “Oh my god dad your so boring!!!” as my daughter pointed out to me on the train on Saturday when she asked me what I was listening to. Come to think of it my current ring tone is Melvyn Bragg introducing the “In Our Time” programme on the peasants revolt. It causes some puzzled looks when I forget to turn it off during meetings.

The children have taken to humming the theme tune to the Archers at me as a way of winding me up. Usually when I have told them that they are doing the washing up! I told them that when they are my age they to will be listening to Radio 4. They were not impressed, but I have a hunch that they will.

Some of my earlier memories are of Radio 4 or the “home service” as I suspect it was called. The Archers used to be a mainstay of our Sunday mornings, along with sausages.

So what is so good about it?

Partly it is the certainty of its schedule. But that’s true of Radio 5 (Radio Bloke as Lucy calls it) Its content?

Well it rarely fails to entertain and inform. But I like the way it has evolved; rarely a radical change to the schedule, just a gradual gentle evolution, mixing the old and traditional with the new and modern. Long may it continue!

Reasons for Not Shopping at a Northern Supermarket Reason 103

Allowing me to put my shopping onto the conveyor belt and then telling me that the checkout point was closed. Grrrrrrrrrh!

Bread and Therapy...

I asked my daughter if she wanted to help make some bread yesterday evening. I thought it would be a chance to have a chat about one or two things (she is fourteen and pushing the boundaries!!!) She said yes. I had to pick myself up off the floor. So there we were chatting away, taking it in turns to knead the dough, when she asked me why we bothered to make bread?

Why didn't we just buy it from the supermarket like other people did? (She was going to say normal but decided against it, wise girl that she is.)

I explained that its better for you, that it tastes better, that its fun to make.

She wasn't convinced. I really miss normal bread she said. Nice sliced white bread, its so fluffy and light......

I stopped listening. I concentrated on kneading the dough. Its very theraputic is kneading a piece of dough, especially when you are feeling a bit irritated!