topical – Page 11 – don't confuse the narrator

yet more weather

reindeer plush and daffodils — Looks like rain, dear

No one who lives in the UK needs to be told that the weather continues unabated, and I can’t be the only one who’s thinking that surely now February is here we might expect some proper winter weather rather than all this wind and rain.

The phrase February fill dike came to mind. Googling it I found this article from the Guardian two years ago, which reports that “southern, central and eastern regions […] are teetering on the brink of drought”. It also says, somewhat surprisingly, that February tends to be one of the driest months of the year.

Not wanting to get political, I’ll just mention that I was told as a child that “bad governments bring bad weather.”

Well, whether drought or flood, we seem to have been having bad weather for years. The poem below was written in January 2001:
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exits and entrances

It’s Noche Vieja – New Year’s Eve – and I am in Spain; so, as the Spanish would have it:

“Feliz salida y entrada”

And if you feel you are making your exit from 2013 “pursued by a bear”, I hope you discover that it’s really nothing more threatening than a teddy-bear.

words & weapons

We went for a drive yesterday and, as usual, I took my camera with me. But I wasn’t really in the mood for taking pictures; I wanted to see things for myself rather than look at them through a viewfinder. Sadly, that means that although I have a few nice pictures of a reservoir, I missed a really good shot of black cows straggling across the Spanish hillside and another of a herd of bracken-coloured goats grazing on the scrubby roadside.

We also saw an elderly rustic walking down the middle of the road carrying a seriously dangerous-looking rifle, apparently stalking something. I didn’t take a picture of him, either, but that was mainly because I think that pointing a camera at a man with a gun is not the wisest of acts.
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stereo-topical

students playing football, Midlands, England

I don’t often get involved with topical news stories on the blog, but this photo of lads playing football in the Midlands, taken on a glorious autumn afternoon a couple of weeks ago, seems doubly appropriate now as the Football Association celebrated their 150th anniversary yesterday and storms are forecast across the country today.

life, death and points arising

Lion, sovereign's entrance, Houses of Parliament, London

Despite all succeed-in-social-media advice, I don’t have a regular schedule for blog updates, but this hiatus of nearly a fortnight is not the norm.

While travelling last week, I found I was doing my own impersonation of the Seven Dwarfs: puffy, sniffy, whingey, dozy, grumpy, busy… well that’s only six, but I tagged coffee onto the list, and kept going.

I grew up thinking the seventh Disney dwarf was Dock – a very dwarf-like name; listing my symptoms in an email, though, I had a moment of clarity: I was missing Doc.

So I went to the doctor and discovered I was rather more poorly than just a “stinking cold”. Dosed up with three types of antibiotic, I am now beginning to get back on track.

This means I’ve been out of commission for most of the initial furore surrounding Thatcher’s death, but am still just in time for all the fun of the funeral.

Although there’s little to be added to all the keen online wit and repartee, I do want to raise a few points:
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