end of year bike mileage

I've not done much cycling during December, although Sunday saw me clock up around 30 miles. My TSS and other sustained metrics have all nosedived although I'll be starting up again now that the mince pie obstacles have largely passed.

I've kept up with my various targets for the year, and my total mileage is somewhere over 6,000, which seems surprisingly high and will probably be difficult to replicate in 2014.

There's only a couple of days left now, so I'm idly looking at whether I can get the mileage on the reconstituted silver bike over 2,000 before year end. I know I'm close, and that is probably the only remaining vaguely attainable target.

It may well depend upon the amount of frost over the next couple of days.

another form of time machine

Time to sit down for a few minutes to read the once-a-year purchased Radio Times. Yes, The Christmas Double Edition. Already into the second week, like the countdown has started back to normality.

A curious aspect has been a glance at today's viewing. It's like a throwback to another era, at least on the main channels (once referred to as the terrestrial channels).

Unless I missed the memo, we seem to be stuck in a time warp. Some examples of the programming:

BBC2 Porridge : comedy prison series from 1976.
BBC2 Morecambe and Wise : comedy show from a long time ago.
BBC2 Top of The Pops Christmas Special : featuring Slade, Wizzard and various other 1970 acts.
ITV1 Agatha Christie's Miss Marple : Apparently this is new? but the main series is from ages ago.
C5 An Audience with Bruce Forsyth : Star of the 1970s+. New, but surely we have had enough over the last 13 weeks of SCD?
ITV2 The Empire Strikes Back : yes, from 1980.
ITV3 Agatha Christie's Poirot : ...you get the idea.

Around this there's a few quiz shows, a couple of 'behind the scenes' Doctor Who programmes and a couple of more recent light-hearted movies. An altogether strange mix of nostalgia and presumably economy programming.

BBC have been plugging Antiques Roadshow's Van Dyke discovery rather heavily, so maybe that's the main option?

2013 in rashbre vision

Time for one of my speedy looks through the year, using some of (mainly) my snaps that made it to flickr and the blog.

This includes London, Bicycles, Newcastle, Greggs Iced Buns, Majorca, Seattle, Home made guitars, Pacific Highway 101, miscellaneous events and a few pop tarts. No pummel vision so it's all edited together by dumping the pictures into Final Cut X and then setting a suitably brief frame duration.

It's probably sensible to have a paracetamol to hand whilst watching.

Last year below, as a reference:

It's fun going forward.

a state of flux

I've been enjoying the various presents from Christmas, some of which were quite consumable.

There's one item that I know was on a few lists, that seems to have a very long shelf life. I believe it is only half used in 4.5 billion years, so this one is a real keeper.

If I ever get around to completing the flux capacitor, this could be a useful addition.

Along with that book about how to avoid huge ships, it certainly gets interesting reviews on Amazon.

lemon drop pause

We're all taking a few minutes pause at the moment.

The Champagne lemon drop cocktails are in preparation. They've involved heating some kind of home made syrup and then cooling it again before adding to the fizz.

Actually it has just arrived and tastes astonishingly good. I'm hearing background chatter about the amount of vodka that was added, and that brown caster sugar was used as well as more lemon than in the normal mix.

The homemade parmesan and tomato bread has gone down well and there's some kind or surprise unveiling of a dessert soon.

Oops. Time for a few more party games.

unwrap party

Thumbs up from Santa. Job done.

Merry Christmas to all.

top of the (little) tree

It looks as if we are getting prepared. Even the small tree seems to have been visited.

a spot of severe weather

An interesting journey home in the wee small hours, in a swirling darkness and with trees strewn trickily across the country lanes.

We'd been on the M25, in a seldom seen empty condition as we joined a few other motorists cautiously driving through the spray.

On the side roads I had to navigate around fallen timber with much of the road surface covered with small shreds of trees battered by the high winds.

Even larger roads were tricky, because at this early morning time the services to clear the way hadn't really got mobilised for the area affected. The radio's weather forecast even featured a force 10 gale somewhere out at sea.

Earlier we'd been for a curry and somehow oblivious to the weather.

As we'd turned back into the street it was obvious that the whole evening had been battered by gale force winds and car wash intensity rain.

They say it will calm down for Christmas Eve. I hope so, in order for Santa's sleigh to make a good journey.

early television overload

I seemed to watch a surprisingly large amount of television on Sunday. Scrooged (obviously), but also The Snowman, Homeland, an episode of Harry Potter and Never Let Me Go.

It kind of snuck up. The fire was blazing, we'd got the tree ready for lights and decorations and there was warm soup and mince pies on offer.

So let's recap:

Scrooged: An essential view at Christmas. A 1980 take on 'A Christmas Carol', it's a Dicken's of a movie. Including the sing-along finale.

The Snowman: Probably 2-3 years since I last saw this, and I'd forgotten that it features David Bowie in the introduction. Fast flights from Brighton to visit Santa at the North Pole.

Homeland: The last of the current series, in a series that lapsed into soap drama in places. I suppose they didn't want to leave Brody's future role hanging, but there were some remarkable escape scenes preceding it. Walking out of the most secure complex in Iran during a coffee break? Driving Hummers to the cottage to stealthily surround Carrie and Brody? Re-employing the unstable Carrie a a prestigious station chief in a hot zone. I can already predict the plot line in the next series, when Saul and Carrie have to join forces to save Merca after a botch-up by the new Senator in charge of Homeland. Maybe they'll invite Jack Bauer along?

Harry Potter: One I'd not seen before. Shot in Pantone 455, dark forces threatened the future of Hogwarts, with striking scenery, wizardry, a bit of snogging and a great game of Hogbat.

Never Let Me Go: A thoughtful morality tale of raising clones to repair humans. Set in idyllic English countryside, sensitively directed and acted. I've read the book and even written about it here before. A bitter sweet thought provoker that tests the soul.

That's the television box ticked for the festive season. Tomorrow it's a gang of us at the pub.

Scottish fir tree acquired. Now for the dex.

Well, I've hunted down the Christmas tree. It was more difficult than I expected. I arrived at the usual place and instead of the typical trees stretching as far as the eye could see there were just five trees left.

I use the word 'trees' reservedly. They were being advertised as trees, but my ex-greengrocer instincts cut in and I decided that they should really be classed as stray collections of branches and twigs.

It was fascinating that they were all from different ranges too, as if the entire collections had been selected down to the last few whittles.

I had to leave empty handed. This would be problem if I returned home without a tree, so I moved along to the next place. A farm shop. They had a huge advertisement for trees.

But no trees at all. A nice line in mistletoe, but no trees. My inner greengrocer noticed that the mistletoe was on sale as well. Back in the day the mistletoe was given away free.

Next stop, a huge superstore. So huge that the entire car park was filled and people were double parking on yellow lines. I decided to give this one a miss. Surely any remaining trees in this establishment would have been snapped up but it would talk me a good half an hour to discover this. I moved on.

Instead to palatial garden centre, which had people marshalling the cars into the car park. They directed me to a parking spot, which I noticed was really for electric cars complete with the recharging points. This place would surely have trees?

It did.

Even the Nordman ones that don't drop their needles.

Mine was 'red 593414', which I looked up on the needlefresh.co.uk web site.

It was from near North Kessoch on The Black Isle at the Moray Firth. In shipping forecast terms it's Cromarty. There's a high rainfall and minimal frosts due to the Gulf Stream circulating round this peninsula-style island, and this produces vigorous growth in the trees.

Now to locate the decorations, from the depths of the garage.

spot the shopper

They are saying that this weekend is going to be the biggest shopping weekend for Christmas in the UK. Even by my standards, it seems a bit late.

I've noticed London already emptying out, although whilst in Newcastle for the last couple of days, there seemed to be quite a bustle in the shopping areas.

The advertisers are all copying one another in the final countdown. It kind of spoils the effect by removing any uniqueness. They might as well just say,"buy food".

And the sales appear to have started too. 20% then 30% and beyond. I thought the sales traditionally started around Boxing Day?

Perhaps my photograph above is a clue. A few days ago I was at one of the largest shopping malls in London (don't ask) but not only was it easy to get in, but the car park had vast empty areas. Yes, the shops were open, but the people seemed to be elsewhere.

I'll be tree hunting tomorrow, but that's about the limit of my planned retail experience for the day.

trashed noir festivities

Yes, we were out at the Christmas Noir yesterday evening. The initial images may be somewhat blurry, but it was a fine time.

Gangsters, molls, drunk tanks, a murder bear (the one that was upstair in the attic when Goldilocks visited). They all played a part.

Across W.N Herbert's ursine tales, the Macguffin of a noir tale, the stanza'd hexameter(?) from Sean O'Brien, a Mixtape special re-enactment of a slightly troubling Christmas moment or the full on swing country blues of Rob Heron & the Tea Pad Orchestra. Compered by Mr Drayton, the Trashed Organites has curated a fine festive and somewhat twisted Christmas Noir. Topped off with the audience participation of a Trashed Laureate Port prize.

We're waiting for the official pictures, but in the interim, here's a small and rather excellent tune from Rob Heron & the Tea Pad Orchestra, live from a shed.