Chilly-nilly

Good God, it's cold in London today - unfeasibly brass monkeys.  I shouldn't moan too readily, I suppose, it's actually a lovely winter's day.  The sun is high, wide and handsome.  And there isn't a puff of wind, but it is viciously cold.  I foolishly opted to go for a junior wander at lunchtime, and was given a damn good drubbling for my efforts by the elements.

I rode to work this morning wearing virtually everything I own, and was still insensible with cold when I arrived.  And I'm now bracing myself for the return leg.

Straddle bags

We're in a funny period of the year at present.  Everyone's at sea because the shift from late summer to full-on winter was compressed into about 600 minutes this year.  A little over a week ago, Mrs O and I would spending the evenings in the beer garden of our local, basking in the relative heat.  Now, London resembles a vast grey paddy field, with pools of standing water and a constant gale blowing.  To compensate for the hellish prospect of winter (yeah, another one), the wife and I have a number of mini-breaks planned to lighten the drizzly load.  We visiting several of England's provincial cities.

England is blessed with a good number of fascinating cities, but you'd be hard-pressed to know it.  The county is ridiculously London-centric.  People from the provinces blame Londoners for this, but in my experience, most cockneys just want to be left alone to enjoy their home town.  We don't want the place to be overrun every September by an army of recent graduates intent on making their fortune here.  Most of us would like nothing more than for the streets, tubes, buses and pubs of London to be slightly less frantic than they currently are.

This mania for all-things-London has reached its civil engineering apotheosis with the frankly ludicrous HS2 rail scheme.  For those of you unaware of this stunt, the plan is to build a high-speed railway link from London to Birmingham, and then onwards to the north.  This it's argued will rejuvenate the midlands and north by slightly reducing the time it takes company directors to travel to the capital...on expenses.

HS1, which passes very close to my home, is a wonderful example of elegant white elephantiasis.  It's spectacularly under-subscribed.  This is due to its being eye-wateringly expensive.  Now and again, Mrs O and I will treat ourselves to a jolly to the coast of Kent using it.  But it's really in the same category as a trip over the Malvern Hills in a hot air balloon might be.  I certainly wouldn't use it more than four times a year.  It's just too rich for my blood.

Still, I'm sure the second one will be much better than the first.  They'll have learnt their lessons from the first flawed stab.  Oh, yes.

Gathering winter fyoo-oo-ell

Summer in the city (London) is turning out to be a shit quibb this year (I think that's the expression I'm after).  This lamentable assessment extends to both the sporting British summer and the prevailing meterological conditions.  The weather in London yesterday was okay(ish) for a Wednesday in March.  And to top it all, Chris Froome abandoned the Tour after crashing about seventy times in the space of two-hundred yards.  Even his legendary phlegm ran dry at the atrocious conditions, and he looked heartily pissed-on-and-off as he leapt headfirst into the back of the womb-like Sky Jag.

The low cloud base last evening led to the inevitable gloomy speculation about the approach of winter in the nothern hemisphere.  It's coming, isn't it, the absolute bastard?  The evenings are definitely drawing in.  The actualité of winter is nothing compared with the anticipation of its arrival, as with most experiences in life.  We know this, but the brow can't help but furrow when the summer has been as underwhelming as this one.  Even bog-trotters like myself need sunlight.  I'm a surface-dwelling mammal after all.

Mrs O and I had decided initially to head to Israel later in the year as it stays hot and sunny there until at least Boxing Day, but the internecine brouhaha there means that that is not now going to happen.  I could go, but would have to do so sporting a beak and features.  I'm not scared, you understand, just concerned about being shot to ribbons in my prime.

Perhaps I should pop to Oz on me holidays, and get some courage.