Snow! At last!

Snow! At last!

The view from our back window at about 7.30 on Wednesday. Had Abi been awake it would have been the view from her bedroom widow.

It is prettier than it usually is

Apologies for the large not very good quality picture but I took it before sunrise and I haven’t yet worked out how to resize JPGs on my MacBook … I take that back, I’ve got it on the PC now and can use IrfanView, so here is the smaller version

WimpStorm 2007

Wimps!

All last night it was “Severe Weather Warnings” on the radio going on about how we were having the worst storm for years and years and years.

OK, it was a bit windy in London when I left for work in the morning. But only about what seems normal if you are used to living on the coast. Only one wheely bin in our street had been blown over – and they had just been emptied the same morning.

It was unnaturally warm for the time of year. I left the house equipped for bad weather, with a wooly jumper in my bag, and zippy sort of top and my big Barbour coat over my arm. And it never got cold enough to put the top on, never mind the coat I walked to the station and got on the train wearing my T-shirt. We haven’t really had a cold day yet this winter. Not just no frost or snow, its never been near a frost, even at night. I’ve only actually felt cold once, and that was on Monday waiting on Plumpton station at sunset, for a train for Lewes and some decent beer after an afternoon at the races. And even then it wasn’t cold enough to put my jumper on, even though I was wearing the coat.

And everybody is panicking. Worrying about trains and transport and crashes and so on. Well, if there is a serious storm its not here. The wind wasn’t enough for the builders in the street I work in to stop using their cranes all day. In the evening I had the Reader’s Course at the Cathedral. I walked to Euston station after dark in my T shirt again. Worked up a sweat even. Maybe that just shows how unfit I am. Got on the Northern Line, got to London Bridge early, caught the end of Evensong. There were people saying the main line station was closed because the roof has caved in or something. But I met people who’d got off trains there.

Did the course, left a bit early, home by 9.30 on the bus. Easier journey than normal. Only to find out that people had been worrying because it is supposed to be so dangerous out there in this Severe Weather. Wimps!

Got back home. Someone put the wheely bin back upright, but another one was leaning against a car. Not quite the destruction feared.

Its more like autumn than winter out there. Except that there are almost no flowers, even fewer than there were at Christmas. Not none though. As well as the ubiquitous annual mercury (ubiquitous in South East London that is, I never knew it before I came here) there is something of the chickweed or mouse-ear sort – maybe even Sagina, and can it be? – its hard to identify flowers a couple of millimetres across from a moving train. And catkins! Catkins! The first catkins of the spring in the second week of January! Just coming out of New Cross Station. Maybe some kind of willow – again the moving train problem. If I get a chance over the weekend I’ll see if I can i.d. them.

Maybe I speak to soon, perhaps the forces of nature will be unleashed later tonight. I think I’ll go and get some chips and see which way the wind blows.

Nine Card Rummy

It turns out that the mysterious card game is Nine-card Rummy. Whatever that is.

They are playing by some sort of Rummy rules, discarding face-up, laying down the best run or set or straight they have (so is almost like a kind of poker). 1-2-3 beats K-Q-A, runs beat sets beat flushes, and four nines vanquish all. Instead of playing till someone comes out (as in Gin Rummy) they go until some condition is met (I’m not sure what) then score 1 or 2 points, using a crib board to tally. First to 101 in the normal way. Looks like a fun game, but there are all sorts o tiny special rules I don’t yet get.

And I saw a new kind of dartboard cricket tonight. One player “bats”, scoring whatever they hit over 40. They get to play for eight wickets, each falling when the other player hits a bull – one fort the green bull, two for the red.

On the bus back from College tonight I got smiled at by an attractive young blonde woman. Which was a turn-up for the books. Truly – it always raises the spirits. Even when you are young and thin and, OK, spotty and not that good-looking. And it works even better when you are middle-aged and fat and, OK, OK, seven times more spotty. After she had got herself on the bus she sat down on the seat right in front of me. She was reading a Terry Pratchet book – Thief of Time – and I couldn’t resist looking over her shoulder to remind myself of the plot.

When I got off the bus at Trafalgar Square I rather cornily looked round at her and to my surprise she smiled bigly. Which really did make my day rather a lot. Honest, it really does work. And then when I was walking towards Charing Cross Station it occurred to me that maybe she thought I was Terry. Its a resemblance people have joked about before. It was a running joke at the Glasgow Worldcon before last. I don’t look like him at all really, but I suppose I dress a bit like him. Or he dresses like me. If rather more expensively. Well, we both wear hats – and I’ve been wearing them since the 1970s, so its not just him. Honestly, I have no chip on my shoulder. And our beards are vaguely similar, though mine is shorter. And we got over it. At the most recent Glasgow Worldcon the running joke was that Charlie Stross looked like me. Or that I looked like him. Possibly the only man in history to sell a novel written on a Psion 3 – and he did – I saw him writing it.

Anyway, maybe if my suspicion is right, somewhere in the Blogosphere a lovely woman is saying that Terry Pratchett smiled at her on the bus going down Charing Cross Road.

Sorry love, it was only me.

But if you need my email address…

Four Calling Birds

To Greenwich on New Year’s Eve (yes, I know it was three days ago but we’re only just recovering today – a Certain Person got out of bed for the first time today just after midnight, and no, it wasn’t me, I was up by 4) to “celebrate a civil partnership” as the URC liturgy put it. You can imagine Basil Fawlty stage-whispering “whatever you do, don’t mention weddings!” while it was being drafted. I found myself sitting next to Alison Adam, who I vaguely recognised from Greenbelt and other places, though I don’t think I’ve ever actually talked to her before. And surprise surprise she led the singing. Rather well as usual. So that was alright.

Great service, if just possibly a teensy-weensy bit long-winded – Meaningful Poems and three or four Bible readings and stuff with loving cups passed round (I only got the non–alcoholic Methodist grape-juice, though it was just as Symbolic, the minister assured us) and hand-holdings, and rings, and some stage-business with the minister’s stole, and signings of things, and having their new wills witnessed (that was a first from my point of view) and various vows and promises. No symbolism left unturned. And pink fizzy wine at the end. I like pink fizzy wine.

And then off to the reception – sorry, party, how can it be a reception without a wedding? and a civil partnership is not a wedding, is it? – which was in a CofE church where the ceremony couldn’t have been for reasons too tedious to go into here, but anyone who has been paying attention will know far too much about already, and which the vicar explained rather well over the meal. Which was a sort of Nepalese buffet and very good too, though it took a long long while to serve as there were rather more people than the room could comfortably hold. Which was just as well – the long while I mean – as I was late, because although I knew the way I made a sort of detour through a council estate I’d not walked through before and then round the corner by the railway so I could walk up Humber Road which has one of the best views in South London. Not quite as good as the view from Nunhead Station of course. So I pottered around taking photos in the dark and the pouring rain. River, Dome, Canary Wharf, more or less the entire London Borough of Newham. Or as my mate Mike insists, “New Ham” – an invented name when East Ham and West Ham were merged and they couldn’t call it “Borough of Ham” could they?

The little device wot copies pictures from my camera is at work, where I amn’t. So maybe some photos get posted here tomorrow or the day after.

Twelve tables in the church, with turned-round pews for seats, and each labeled for one of the twelve days of Christmas from the Partridge-in-a-pear-tree song and all of us sitting where were were planned for. I was slow on the uptake. It took me an hour or so to realise that the table with all the fit-looking women labeled “Ladies Dancing” was the one where all the lesbians were… so then I tried to work out what the others meant. OK, maybe the labels didn’t mean anything, maybe I was making it up. I always was a natural-born conspiracy theorist. “Swans-a-swimming” seemed to be mostly married couples with young kids. “Maids-a-milking” had some older children. We were at “Calling birds” and mostly seemed to be vicars and preachers and religious folk. So is that how I’m seen? Or it could be even more subtle than that of course – according to one widely circulated and totally stringy and almost certainly completely untrue theory of the text of the song each verse refers to some Symbolical Thingy to do with the Church, and Calling Birds are the Four Gospels, which fits with preachers. Or is that going too far? Maybe I am making it up after all.

First time I’ve ever seen belly-dancing in an Anglican church.

Then walking back over Blackheath in the misty rain and smell of dead fireworks, vaguely losing my way, though its hard to tell whether you are lost or not on Blackheath, and I did exit the heath at the right place more or less, though it took about half an hour longer than it should have. For some reason the dodgy knees that are so troubling when going to work on a normal morning, and cause me to wait for a bus rather than walking even the half mile to the station, don’t seem of any moment at all at 1am in the rain tramping back the long way round from Greenwich.

The pub was sort of open when I passed so I popped in. Probably only the third time in my life I’ve been there in a suit, and the other two were after funerals. Bad idea of course. I usually haven’t had anything to drink before I get there, or if I have its just a pint or two from the college bar. On New Year’s night I’d been sipping the wine – mostly pink fizz – since about 5pm. I bowled in, had a pint or two, had some fags, started talking to Simon. No idea what about. Probably made all sorts of fool of myself.

And then challenged B. at pool. And when I went up to play after his break I cued a yellow ball instead of the white. I hadn’t realised quite how worse for the drink I was till that moment. Of course I graciously lost the match (as if I had any choice!) and went back to my stool and witterd on about something else. But later ended up playing Simon the pool captain till the bitter end. And did in fact beat him at one point. I know this because Someone has a mobile phone voicemail from me sent at about 4am that goes something like this: “Bugger. Bugger. Its four in the morning. I feel funny. I’ve just beaten Simon at Pool. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Bugger bugger bugger” except at greater length and with less coherence.