The BeenThere-DoneThat Blog

We would like, as usual, to wish all our visitors a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I haven't posted much recently but that may change later in the new year when we have completed our current major personal project.

 

As you will no doubt know the shortest day is either the 21st or 22nd of December. Thereafter the days start to lengthen but although sunset gets later so does sunrise. In other words immediately after the shortest day the mornings continue to get darker and did so until about a week ago.

Sunrise then stayed at 08:04 AM for about another week until now. Today sunrise became earlier by one minute and was at 08:03. Hoorah! Another whole minute of daylight.

We now have to wait until Thursday to gain another whole minute in the morning but at least the days are lengthening at both ends. We had better start planning.

 

A happy Christmas and a happy new year to all our visitors.

We are now past the shortest day, either the 21st or the 22nd of December, and the days start getting longer although the mornings continue to get darker until the beginning of January. After that the days start to lengthen at both ends. Hoorah!

Weather is fairly mild at the moment. Last night's temperature was around 50F.

Can't be that long until the first trip of the year – can it?

 

Winter that is.

Yesterday it rained heavily.

I showed this photograph to Amanda and she thought it was a small stream somewhere but when I said that I had taken it in our garden a few minutes before she recognised that it was one of our garden paths and we live on top of a hill.

This morning we had our first frost of the winter. Not a heavy frost as the temperature went down to only 36 F. This was on the roof of Amanda's car.

Pretty ain't it?

Not long now to the shortest day. Boo. Hiss.

But only about 3 months to Spring. Can't wait.

 

We weren't able to get to Greenwich recently to see the tall ships but my brother did and you can see the video he made here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7OrrbaL2gI

 

I am not your average Englishman. I don't drink tea and have drunk coffee for most of my life and can remember drinking the coffee substitute Chickory Essence during world war II before I reached my teens.

I keep two sorts of coffee – caffeinated and decaffeinated. Caffeinated for the first half of the day and decaffeinated for the latter part. If I drink caffeinated coffee in the afternoon or later then I often wake during the night and find it difficult to get back to sleep. Decaffeinated coffee in the afternoon cures that problem.

You may remember that Amanda and I both caught a rather nasty viral infection about 5 weeks ago and although most of the symptons had gone I still felt way under par from time to time; very little energy and often very tired. I ascribed this to 'post viral syndrome'.

Then one morning recently as I was preparing some caffeinated coffee I noticed the word 'decaf' on the jar label as there was also on the other jar. Sometime in the recent past I had obviously managed to substitute decaffeinated coffee for the caffeinated coffee and was having decaffeinated coffee all day.

So I went back on to caffeinated coffee in the morning and the next day most of my symptoms had gone away and I felt much better. I had, of course, been suffering withdrawal symptoms after not having caffeine. I am a drug addict.

I wouldn't have believed the difference had I not experienced it myself.