A Month in Pictures - Part3

3. Fifteen Minutes of Flame

We have seen the dangers of cycling. Skiing - the boys are going next week - can be dangerous as well. Even snowballing is dangerous apparently.

However, I wasn't aware that Sudoku was also problematic. Yet, it was whilst concentrating hard on a particular grid that I failed to notice a few warning signs as this happened on the hob:



Proving that TV is a death-trap as well, Harry similarly failed to notice until the tea-towel was nicely ablaze. Meanwhile The Simpsons held his full attention. Mind you, that is excellent TV and usually more interesting than a watched pot.

A Month in Pictures - Part2

The snow meant a break in the cycling routine, but brought other activities.

2. Snow Way

Chief amongst these was "not going to school". The boys had 3.5 days out of 5 with no school in the main week of snow.

We had a snowball Olympics in the back garden, and also produced a couple of snowmen. Harry & I built one on Park Avenue which was recorded in this shot before it was sadly murdered by a person or persons unknown.

The snow was perfect for building - it formed so perfectly into large balls by the rolling method.

I then built this one by the "disc" method, although it too was destroyed within hours - this time by Harry !

A Month in Pictures - Part1

In January, I started with the intention of updating my blogs regularly and that lasted about 10 days it seems ! Other resolutions lasted longer. I did go for a cycle (nearly) every day for example.

But, a month seems to have whizzed by without any of my bloggable thoughts reaching the virtual page. Let's take a look back at some of the highlights:

1. Wheely Wonky

A few days after the hole-in-the-shoe, I found myself once again dodging pedestrians. This time I had diverted through the car park to avoid some throng of amblers, when I clipped the kerb and fell off in a rather low-speed and (it felt) low-impact.

However, when I picked the bike up, the brakes were sticking. I detached the brakes so I could sort them out later and then I noticed that the wheel was behaving very strangely. I thought it had been knocked off the axle but in fact it had been bent into the most intriguing 3d-shape. Not good !

It's very difficult to capture the wonkiness of this wheel in a photo, so you may have to take my word for it - it was very seriously bent !




In the short-term I did a wheel-transplant from one of the boys' bikes. In due course I had a new wheel fitted and at the same time cashed in the "We Owe You A Bike" voucher that Karen and the boys gave me last year - so I now have a brand new "fitness hybrid" as well as the trusty old new-wheeled mountain bike.

Coincident with all this new cycling equipment, of course, I virtually stopped riding (snow being the short-term excuse)!

Hole in My Shoe

I've been doing so much cycling lately that I have worn a hole in my shoe. Not quite in the way you would hope for.




On Sunday, I went out for the obligatory park & ride - I'm trying to build up slowly, so I am doing about 5 laps of the park at the moment which is about 6 miles.

Obviously the park is incredibly convenient - close, and entirely off-road.

However, there are other perils. It was post-lunch and the park was full of mobile obstacles - some travelling in packs, creating a 100% blockage. I am not exactly power-cycling, so I didn't mind the enforced slowing-down.

After a few laps, I got the hang of the distances and was able to negotiate around most of the walkers, push-chairs and dogs. The small dogs are the worst - they cannot be trusted to get out of the way, or stay put.

On lap 5, I encountered a triple-threat - pushchairs, dogs and 2-way pedestrians. I opted to pass on the left of the pushchair, slightly on the grass.

Or mud, I should say. My back wheel lost grip and slid beyond what I could correct. Then I lost the front as well and the bike slid along the tarmac with me under it. Luckily, the bike itself seemed to take most of the impact (and left some light scoring marks on the tarmac).

However. I saw that part of my shoe had gone red - that was where my shoe was on the ground and the abrasion went through the trainer, through Maxine's Xmas socks and took off a thin layer of skin which was now poking through.

Dangerous things, pushchairs.

Tuned Up

I spent a solid 2 days importing all my CDs into my iTunes/iPod.

That was well over 2,000 songs, and apparently enough music to play for 39 days continuously !

Then, I spent today actually removing some songs.

The problem is that you don't want to keep stuff that you don't really want to listen to. It's not about the space (that is effectively unlimited), but time is of the essence - it would take at least 3months to play everything as it is, without having to listen to nonsense.

Having removed duplicates and rubbish albums/songs, and done some other housekeeping, I then went to the trouble of downloading any missing album covers, so I now have a really "clean" 1,700 song set.

I have found there is one problem using the iPod on the daily cycle - I only get to listen to a few songs, which means I can't avoid realising that my sessions are actually quite short !

Half Pointless

I really do not understand the thinking behind the Bank of England's latest 50bp cut.

Lower interest rates will not, in my opinion, help that much (if at all). They may even be counterproductive. Each further cut must have less and less of an effect for technical and practical reasons.

In any case, if lower rates were going to produce the desired effect then surely 3% in the last three months would have done the trick. Most importantly, there simply has been no time to assess the impact of these dramatic cuts, or indeed of many of the measures put in place in this or other majjot economies.

Lastly, if they think that 5% to 2% hasn't worked (including 1% just a month ago), why do they think a further 0.5% will now help ? They should in that case have cut to zero and got it over with.

So the only reason for cutting now is that they intended to cut all along, and they want to be seen to be doing something.

There is no sense is just reacting to the continuing worsening of the economic conditions - what is happening now is simply the inevitable follow through on what has already happened.

There needs to be a better reason for the cuts than just the assumption that it will somehow fix the current symptons.

It is true that for some people, the effect of the cut will be to increase their monthly income.

However, this is only the case for borrowers, and then only if they have a variable rate mortgage, and then only if their lender passes on the cut (which there are sound reasons not to) and even then there is little reason to assume they will choose to consume more with the saving, especially if their job is in jeopardy (which it is).

A direct tax subsidy on mortgages would have been better in that case, and less arbitrary.

There is little practical relationship between the bank's official rate and the price of many forms of personal or commercial credit and, especially, there is little reason to suppose the lowering of the rate will create credit appetite - either by lenders (why should they lend ?) or borrowers (why should they borrow, and by the way, why does the Government want them to borrow ?)

I would think a much more suitable solution would be for the Government to lend (and provide other liquidity) directly to businesses through a nationalised institution set up for that purpose rather than trying to "push string" by making the banks do this job when it makes sense for them to do the opposite.

This might, of course, become a moot distinction as I would expect a very significant possibility of full nationalisation of the banks soon enough anyway.

Meanwhile, although it will still make little sense, I imagine we can expect to see 0.5% official rates later this year.

On Socks and CDs

The disappearing and sometimes re-appearing of socks is well documented. Re-appearances are usually in asynchronous pairs, obviously.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in CDs and their cases. Some of my favourite CDs have had a habit of vanishing. In some cases, when I finally gave up and threw away the box, the CD then turned up. One particular album went missing and I actually threw away the box and bought a fresh copy. Whereupon the original disc came to light, only to be subsequently followed by the loss of BOTH discs.

However, today I did actually find both copies of A Secret History by The Divine Comedy, hiding behind one copy of Dad Rocks (disc2) in a Hoosiers box in Matt's room. That solves that particular mystery.

I was doing a large-scale cleanup of my discs because I have been loading them into iTunes - hence the search.

I am late to iPods, but now that Karen bought me a nano for Xmas, I am discovering what everyone is so excited about.

It looks like by the time I have finished with the uploading, I may have about 2,000 songs on the tiniest thing - the incredible fact is that the 1in x 2in (maybe it's a bit bigger than that, but not by much, and it is as half as thick as the slimmest mobile phones) has to contain a screen, a battery and the actual storage gizmos. Incredible.

So far I have not tried the iPod in action at the poker table. I am not sure I will - I prefer to be able to hear everything that is going on. But it is great for the daily cycle.

I am a convert, no question !