Tag Archives: bad weather

The Man Upstairs Just Can’t Please The British

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It Seems that The Man Upstairs Just Can’t Please The British these days, and as a result we are seeing some really odd weather patterns.  One thing is certain, it’s not typical weather for June!

I suppose it all began back in March when the national news was reporting that much of the UK was suffering from a shortage of water, due to low rainfall for the previous two winters.  Rivers and reservoirs were low and in some cases had practically dried up, and as well as issuing bans on hose-pipes in most of the south of England, the water authorities stressed the need to conserve water, to avoid the need to turn off the supplies and take emergency measures.

I remember one year back in the 1970′s when this happened, and the water was turned off to houses.  People had to queue at standpipes in the street to get water, and these were only turned on several times a day.  This meant using every container that you could to carry water back to the house, to limit flushing of toilets, and no baths or showers of course.

Things were looking rather dire, but I guess enough people offered up prayers to the man upstairs, and after a few weeks of glorious sunshine at the end of March, as Easter arrived the heavens opened, and the UK saw rain, plenty of it.

Not only did the drought situation end, but with it raining for practically a biblical 40 days and 40 nights in a row, the lakes, reservoirs and rivers filled up, in many cases to normal levels and above.

FInally, probably after lots of people complaining about all the rain, we had several weeks of nice weather, with lots of sunshine, and no rain, but then the ground dried up, making it hard to work in the garden, the grass grew tall making it an effort to cut, and I suspect that a lot of people were complaining about this, and finally the man upstairs had enough.

So when the Queen’s Jubilee weekend arrived, he had no doubt had enough of the complaining, and turned on the taps again, causing peoplewanting to go to the celebrations to get wet, and in some cases causing events to be cancelled.

The whining continued, and so in the past week we have seen almost continual rain, with the same forecast for the next seven days as well, and yesterday parts of the south of England saw a month’s rainfall in a matter of hours.

Is this just an unusual pattern of weather that we are experiencing, or is there really someone upstairs who has had enough of our complaining, and after thousands of years has come to the conclusion that mankind will never be happy and grateful, and it’s time to drown out yet another summer.

I know that over Easter we bought a lot of wood and built a deck in the back garden, and having completed it couldn’t even sit out there for the next month because of the rain. I am seriously thinking that we maybe ought to have thought about building an ark instead.  It might be more practical in the long run.

Do you enjoy seeing the funny side of religion? If so you might find this collection of Religious Jokes amusing.  I am sure that God (if he/she does exist) enjoys playing tricks on us mere mortals.  What do you think?

 

How Do You Fancy Going On A Cruise?

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Lots of people enjoy cruising, with many taking at least one cruise a year, because they enjoy life aboard ship so much.

There is so much to do on board a cruise ship, from the fine dining and all you can eat buffets, to the unlimited drinks, on board casino, and of course the shows and entertainment.

But maybe you are like me and haven’t experienced a cruise yet.   If so, take a look at these short video clips, and if you have been thinking about whether to take a cruise or not, see if these change your mind.

I know they changed my mind…

If that video didn’t convince you, then how about this one…

I know what I am going to be doing on my next vacation…

And it isn’t going to be taking a cruise…

The Snow Returned

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If you have been following the saga of the bad winter weather here in the UK through our blog, last night when I returned home from work, I was able to shovel the melting slushy snow and ice off the back path and steps up to the house with little difficulty.

I had hoped that the snow they forecast for southwest England overnight would miss us, but it didn’t, and we had between one and two inches fall by the time I woke up at 6:30am and looked out of the bedroom window.

Where I had cleared the garden path the night before it looked more like an inch or less, because the temperatures were slightly above freezing, and the snow was already a bit slushy.   However on the roads it was still deeper, where it lay on the previous compacted snow and ice.

The car was covered with about two inches of snow, which was easy to brush off, and the windows were not frozen, so I was soon able to start my journey, deciding to leave for work at 7:30am to try and beat most of thr traffic.

Our road, which is on a steep hill, was very slippery, and the main road just around the corner which goes up a very steep hill was slick, but fortunately I had enough traction to keep going, albeit slowly, and got to the top of the hill and over the other side.

It was then I hit the first problem, a solid queue of traffic towards the bottom of the hill, waiting to cross the bridge at Wood Mill (see below – click on the picture for a larger image).  

Wood Mill Bridge, Southampton. Click on the link for a larger image.

Wood Mill Bridge is only a single lane of traffic, with a double bend in the middle of the two parts of the bridge.   Normally, three cars will go from one end, stop in the middle section, where it is wide enough for three to four cars to pass each other, and then drive on.   If people adhere to this policy of only three cars at a time, then the traffic flows pretty well.

However, since the end of December there have been temporary traffic lights on either side of the bridge, and they keep jamming up, so that only one side shows green.  I am not sure if that is what happened this morning, but the traffic was already backed up to half a mile my side of the bridge at 7:30am.

For me to get to the last section of the road that runs past the park and leads to the bridge, I have to cross two mini-roundabouts, and the road coming from the right onto the first roundabout has priority, so if only one car moves forward at a time, invariably another takes it’s place, and my stream doesn’t move. 

This time of the morning, in the rush hour, there are very few cars going south across the bridge, most of the traffic heading north across the river.  Under normal conditions, the flow is constantly moving, albeit at a slow pace, but this morning it took me 35 minutes to get to the bridge, which is only a mile from home!  

The traffic lights were eventually working, letting about ten cars across from each direction at a time, but with a huge wait time in between, so most of the time the bridge was actually empty.   Oh the frustration, since the next bridge to the east is out of my way and usually very heavy under normal conditions, and the next to the west is blocked northbound for a few weeks as they work on it.  So I don’t really have any choice but to take this route to work.

Once across the bridge the traffic was light for a mile or so, until I came to Burgess Road, which runs west past the University, and this was by the time I got to it pretty heavy.  I decided therefore to not continue along there, but to take the back roads through “The Flowers”, a section of back roads that are named after flowers, and which are narrow but cut out a lot of the traffic.

Well these were slippery last week, but this morning it was like driving on a skating rink, with compacted ice under the wheels.  I drove very carefully around the bends and down a hill, but going up the otherside of the hill my wheels didn’t want to grip the road and I was sliding all over the place.  The car in front had managed to climb the hill ok, but I didn’t get enough grip at the bottom to take a run at it, and practically crawled up it, however fortune was on my side and the car kept going to the top.

Once there I hit the next main road, which only had light traffic, and zoomed onto the next hold up.

The last stage of the journey was also very slow, because the road that our office is located on is a two lane road, but there was a queue of traffic on it going in the opposite direction to me for most of the mile to the office, and I got stuck behind a cyclist who was struggling to keep the bike going at a horribly slow pace, and since he could not ride right close to the kerb, there was not enough room to overtake him, and so a stream of traffic just crawled along yet again.

At work there was a group of people shoveling snow off the driveways so that delivery trucks could get in and out.  The road goes all around the offices and warehouse, to the staff car park on the far side of the building, and even the ramp up to the car park was closed as it was too slippery.  I had to drive past the ramp, and up the down ramp to park.

I finally got to work five minutes late at 8:35am, the eight and a half miles having taken just over an hour to complete.

Whether I should have taken the back roads through “The Flowers” is debatable, however just before I arrived at work, they announced on the radio that the road which I would otherwise have taken, “The Avenue”, was partially blocked with a tree branch that had come down.  So, if I had taken that route, I would maybe have taken another 30 minutes to get to work.

Oh the joys of driving in England in the winter lol :)

I’m Back In The UK

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Finally I am back in the UK and with my Debbie after more than 3 months apart, way too long for both of us.

After many evenings of packing that frequently went beyond midnight, I finished packing about 1am on Wednesday, with the alarm set for 3:45am to give me enough time to get out and catch my flight in Miami at 8:30am.   I had a quick webcam chat with Debbie, showered and packed the last of my things, said goodbye to Tim my landlord with whom I have become very good friends, and drove down the highway to the train station in Hollywood where I had arranged to leave my car to be picked up.

I lugged my bags (2 to be checked in, my laptop bag and a backpack) up in the elevator, across the bridge, down the other side, and then realized the ticket machines were over the other side.  Fortunately the platform was almost empty, and the only person close to me asked if I was English – turns out he came over to Florida from Birmingham 10 years ago.  So I took a chance and left my 2 big bags where they were and legged it up the stairs, across the bridge, down across the other side, where I purchased my ticket.  Then it was back up across and down, by which time I was completely soaked in sweat.   Despite the fact that it was only 5:30am, the temperature was in the mid 80′s and it was extremely humid.  It took me most of the way to Miami before I cooled off.

The shuttle from the train station dropped me about 1/3 of the way along the terminals in the airport, but of course as luck would have it, United are in the new terminal at the far end, so I had to lug my bags well over 1/4 mile to check them in.  It was rather cool in the airport, and by this time I was desperate to go to the  bathroom, plus I was nervous in case my bags were overweight and I would have to repack or dump some things out.  However, I got checked in pretty quick, was within the weight limit, and got through the security without any problems either.

I had plenty of time to wait for the plane, managed to call Debbie to let her know I had checked in, called Tim as I had remembered I left a drawer of dirty laundry (the result of packing too late at night), and called my daughters before they went off to their swimming lessons.

Under normal circumstances I would have caught an evening flight direct to London, however direct flights at the end of July were about $1,000 and multiple legs weren’t much cheaper.  Debbie fortunately found a flight for $406 through Vayama, a company like Priceline, that offers discounted travel but you don’t find out the route until you purchase.  Fortunately with Vayama having purchased you have an hour to cancel, which swayed me over to trying this out.  I knew the flight left Miami at 8:30am and I didn’t get into London until 6:30am the following morning, but other than knowing it was 2 planes, I had no idea where my connection point would be.  The last thing I wanted was to fly to some place out west and have a short connection time, which might mean spending a day in some god-forsaken spot that I didn’t want to be.   I was lucky however, in that the flight from Miami went direct to Dulles (Washington DC) where I had a 7 hour layover before my flight to London.

The first flight went very smoothly, and there was plenty of legroom too.   In Washington I wandered around the terminals to try and find somewhere reasonable to eat, since by this time (midday) I was feeling a bit peckish.  The terminals are connected by shuttle buses, that look like lounges on wheels and drive all over the airport.    Having covered the rest of the terminals, I found out that the majority of the restaurants are in the terminal that I hadn’t covered.  Of course, the shuttle dropped me at gate 3, and the restaurant I wanted to eat at, Max & Erma’s was at gate 72, a good 1/4 mile hike at least!   I was hungry, but I also had a throbbing headache, which could be stress, tiredness and also the humidity.  I thought a good warm meal might help that.     I opted for a starter of Tortilla Soup, which wasn’t bad, then a Bacon Cheeseburger and Fries.  Not the healthiest item on the menu, but I really wanted something warming and filling, and it hit the spot.  That and 4 glasses of iced tea, which helped replenish the water I had sweat out so far.

I still had 5 more hours to kill in the airport before my next flight, and saw on one of the shuttles that I could take a bus to the Smithsonian Museum for 50cents, and there was free admission too.  On another day I would have jumped at this opportunity, but right then all I needed was to sit and try to relax before the next flight.    I found a seat close to the gate where my plane was due to depart from,  powered on the laptop, and settled down to watch a movie.  I selected “Miracle At Santa Ana” which turned out to be a WWII movie set in Italy with a company of Buffalo Soldiers.  Not a bad movie, but it helped kill 2 1/2 hours.   I had forgotten to copy any movies onto my flash drive before I packed my external hard drive away, so other than the movie all I had was a 1972 Genesis concert.  This got some strange looks from people sitting close, since back then the costumes and stage act from Peter Gabriel were rather odd to say the least.

I did get a lot of amusement from the fact that there was a small glass sided area set aside in the lounge for smokers with about 15 seats.  Not only were most of the seats taken most of the time, but often it was standing room only, with the occupants puffing and dragging away on their cigarettes like their life depended on it.  Really quite funny, but at the same time sad.

My 6pm flight to London Heathrow boarded on time, and I was very pleased to find that I had an Economy Plus seat with extra legroom.  All that for a bargain price, woo-hoo!   However, instead of landing 30 minutes early as we were supposed to, we ended up delayed an hour and a half due to bad weather in the Philadelphia area, which caused air traffic control to stop the take-off of any flights in the area for a while.   But eventually we got under way, and had a smooth flight.   Food wasn’t bad, with curried chicken to eat, and a quick snack for breakfast, and in between a few hours sleep while I listened to some of my favorite songs on my new MP3 player.  I also ended up sitting next to a lady from Fort Lauderdale who was originally from Devon and on her way back there for a visit, so we chatted for quite a while before we headed off to sleep.

Since I was supposed to arrive 30 minutes early and ended up landing over an hour late, Debbie was there to greet me, and I got the most wonderful hugs and kisses, two things that she excels at.  A little more than an hour later and we were home, where I had a much needed shower and cleaned up, then some yummy bacon rolls and off to bed.  We were both really tired, since I had hardly slept for two nights, and Debbie had to get up as well by 4am.

Well two days and lots of sleep later and I was feeling more human and also adjusting to the time difference in the UK.   I will update more on my adventures back in the UK in my future posts.  If you would like to be receive posts automatically, why not Register with us, we promise no spam and will keep your email addresses private.