Brrr... It's cold out here...

Well, it's been a long time since my last update, so I'm going back a bit with this post to make a few points and complaints.

One
English winters are cold. Period. Everything ices over all the darn time. The road and the footpaths are frequently covered with ice, and a lot of the time it's a thin sheen that you can't even see until you loose your footing and almost fall over. No wonder people complain about "mad dogs" and Englishmen. I wouldn't be a happy canine if I were running over freezing cold ice all the damn time!

Two
Snow in October and November. What the? It wasn't even the end of Autumn when snow started arriving. The photo below is taken about 50 metres from the front door of my apartment block. No, I've not converted using the ridiculous UK imperial distance measurements, and I'm going to refuse should anyone request it. Metric was invented for a reason; get into the 21st century already.


Three
No white Christmas. Yes, that's correct. Despite a barrage of snow at the end of October, which was repeated several times during November, the snow making department went into hibernation as of mid-December, resulting in a boring GREY Christmas. Yes, I was dreaming of a white Christmas too, because I sure as heck wasn't getting one. If the weather is going to have the lack of decency to be cold all the darn time, it could at least provide the associated benefits. It didn't even get cold enough to coat everything in a nice white sheen of frost. Check please.

Four
Eight hours of daylight. I don't know how those people cope in the towns in the far North of Alaska and the like where they spend an entire month in pure blackness. But then again, I suppose being so remote might save them from cheesy vampire movies. Being pitch black at 8am and then again by 4pm is bad enough in my book. No wonder kids are getting rickets and such things from not having enough sunlight. The fickle weather goes from cloudy to pouring with rain in one minute, then back to plain cloudy the next, and then provides a respite in the form of a couple of minutes of precious semi-clear "sunny" sky for a few minutes before returning to characteristic grey for the rest of the day. And I thought the weather of Canberra and Melbourne could be inconstant - compared to them, UK is a fickle mistress demanding a new sportscar one moment before demanding a ticket to the ballet and then wanting to go slumming straight after.