Friday 16th December 2022, 2.10pm (day 4,131)

I got out of the house, though as you can see, it isn’t getting any warmer. Winter 21-22 was nothing to speak of in the UK, but the 22-23 version has some bite.

I got out of the house, though as you can see, it isn’t getting any warmer. Winter 21-22 was nothing to speak of in the UK, but the 22-23 version has some bite.

What small part of the world can be seen from our house, all looked like this today. With no reason to leave the house, I did not; picture opportunities were limited to using the long zoom to see what might be going on over the other side of the valley. They had their fires burning, anyway. This is also one of those shots that looks like I’ve taken it monochrome, but really have not; if anything I have beefed up the saturation a little.

Had things turned out differently I might have been in the Balkans today, but even though they did not, I am not bothered by this — which would not have been the case ten years ago. I guess I am more attuned to the enjoyment that can be had from the local area these days. Yes, even Rochdale railway station — like the rest of the region, bathed in cold but magnificent weather.

A cold day today. Of course, ‘cold’ by British standards is not cold by, say, Canadian or central European standards, but we notice it in our own way. Look, someone in Royd Terrace has even lit a fire.

A day when it was hard to pick one single photo, but that is why — for such occasions — I have my other walking blog, where I don’t submit myself to such silly rules as one pic per day. The weather conditions for a walk in the Lake District were marvellous today, not just because of the blue skies above but the clouds below, filling up the valleys all day and allowing even the most humble of mountains to float above giant lakes of whipped cream for a while. The parts of Loughrigg Fell that are on the left cannot be more than about 400 feet above sea level, at the points where they emerge from the clouds. Wansfell Pike, the prominent rise in the background, is about 1,500 feet.

It’s that time of year when everyone looked outside at a particular point and said to each other — is it really only a quarter to five? We won’t be seeing daylight at that time again until about February. The rain was added atmosphere, but it is still needed. I like the ‘eye’ effect suggested by the lamp.

A dull day in every sense. The glorious sunshine that we experienced on Saturday has been replaced by grey mist and drizzle. This explains a lot about the British psyche. Don’t get used to it being nice, because within a couple of days it’ll all turn to crud again.

As with most of the rest of Europe, we haven’t had a great deal of rain in 2022, but it certainly came down today. Time to check the drainage…

Monday saw probably the highest temperatures in recorded British history, at least in some places. Today, it was chucking it down, and cool enough to need a jacket when out in the afternoon. The weather in Britain explains a great deal about the country’s psyche. “What comes, will come. Live with it.”

Yeah yeah, so I didn’t go more than 5 weeks without a dose of football, and travelled to North-East Wales to get it (specifically the village of Llandyrnog, near Denbigh). But the sport is incidental here to the rainbow, which was exemplary, one of the best I have ever seen — a double rainbow lasting at least 45 minutes (the second half, in other words). The price was that everyone got a bit wet earlier on, but it was worth it.