Fall over the place

[j4]

Today began with a useful reminder that I never know who's reading when I'm ranting; so a cheery hello to anyone who's started reading since bjh21 passed my LiveJournal around the Computing Services staff.

Actually, depending on how you define the start of the day, today probably really began with picking up my bike from the oh-so-hilariously-named bike shop Blazing Saddles (no longer S&T Cycles, despite what our own web pages may tell you). Two new tyres and two new inner tubes, and suddenly it's as if I'm not fighting the bike and the road every step of the way any more; I made it to work from Cherry Hinton Road in the same time that I'd normally take from home. Marvellous.

The tree that I saw at work on Thursday, with the rainbow arching over it, has lost most of its leaves now. It occurred to me this morning (as I walked to the bike shop through streets full of new blue recycling boxes) that if we didn't have so many deciduous trees in the UK, autumn would be a very different thing: no gutters full of soggy leaves, no damp and rot-smelling pathways, but more crisp and coniferous, more like Christmas.

No point to any of this, though, just leaf-fall and vagueness. I've not really woken up properly today, to be honest. Is it next weekend the clocks go back? Ah, that'll be it.

Comments

[camellia-uk.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me this morning [...] that if we didn't have so many deciduous trees in the UK, autumn would be a very different thing: no gutters full of soggy leaves, no damp and rot-smelling pathways, but more crisp and coniferous, more like Christmas.

But autumn is lovely! I was walking (or limping) through the trees today and the leaves were falling all around me. It was like snow, but prettier and less cold and damp. As long as I don't have to sweep them up, I'm going to enjoy it :-)

[j4.livejournal.com]

less cold and damp

Round here, at the moment, it's sopping wet & the leaves are all rotting in the gutters -- smelly, messy to cycle through, and certainly not much to look at. We've just had a week or so of unexpected warmth and sun though, so I can't complain! (Well, okay, I can, but.)

Still limping? Hope the toe's getting better...

[lnr]

I always like kicking about piles of dry fallen leaves and jumping in them, but it's definitely less fun when it's wet and horrid like today.

[k425.livejournal.com]

YoungBloke hasn't discovered the joys of piles of dry fallen leaves because this is Wet Yorks, but he's very into piles of wet leaves...

[juliet]

The thing I found with bikes sometime this year is: a proper standing pump with a pressure gauge is really really really worth it. On acquiring ours, I discovered that "as hard as I can get it with a hand-pump" translated into about 45 psi, whereas my tyres are rated for 55-85psi, and should be closer to the 85 end for road riding. Getting them up to 85 psi was a whole new world of cycling enjoyment & knocked about 5 min off my usual 40-min cycle all by itself. I do them about weekly now, & have discovered that a week or so's riding is enough to drop them down to 65psi or so.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

Feh... yes. After yet another puncture this weekend, I discovered that the tube on my track pump has cracked through, so am currently riding on a tyre at about 3 bar (43.5 psi) that's all I can get with my mini hand pump. The bike shop had no spare, but suggested what I could buy from the hardware shop to fix it.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Friday night was our first frost of the year; fortunately, the couple of weeks of heavy rain seem to have got over and done with before we get to serious leaf-fall.

Doesn't look like it's going to replicate our first autumn here, though, when there was six inches of snow before the leaves began seriously to fall. Autumn-flame maple leaves all over the snow was a weird sight.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Also, there used to be a vegetarian sandwich place in Dublin called Blazing Salads. I have no idea whether it is still there.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Less deciduous trees would mean a lack of wet leaves to skip over when moving around - I can still remember my evil driving test where the examiner decided that making me do an emergency stop on wet leaves was a good idea, even had the fun of doing the work ABS should do - and this would a good thing, especially since the turning into work is currently covered with wet leaves surrounding a nice puddle of water.

However it would also mean that you wouldn't get those wonderful autumnal colours we've got at the moment.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Up here, in the Utter North, I feel that I've suddenly been dropped into deep winter. Not deep and crisp and even winter, but cold and dark and wet winter; not a leaf on any of the trees, and precious little light. And it was squally today, to damp even the highest of spirits. So we mostly stayed inside, reading, and making hallowe'en costumes (a cat, a witch, and a bat).

[k425.livejournal.com]

making hallowe'en costumes (a cat, a witch, and a bat).

Who's who?

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Small is both the witch and bat, and Smaller the cat.
Small wore the witch costume to her Brownie party last night.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was hoping you'd be one, but I couldn't work out which!

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

It's already too much like Christmas.

I was walking through Boots today, wired into edited highlights of the career of a curmudgeonly Englishman by the instant-personal-space-creator of an iPod, honing my hunter-gatherer instincts on some sandwiches, a litre of Coke and a bag of crisps, when I was assailed from above by the infernal glinting and glistening of shredded metal and cheap LEDs; a play of light which can only mean one thing.

Goodwill to all shop assistants; the Christmas decorations are up, a sixth of the year before the event which they subvert.

Christmas is a time of fakery, of excuses and self-deceit. It's an excuse for tokens of self-serving almost-love, of panicky cover-ups of self-loathing, of donations to ill-thought-out causes which somehow is meant to salve a conscience worn down by a year of petty small-mindedness.

It's a time for screaming kids of broken-down relationships and of alcohol as the solvent for all life's problems. It's a time for hatred and fear.

I wish it could be Christmas every day, in one specific place, somewhere in Croydon, so I never have to go near it.

yrs,
Ebenezer

[k425.livejournal.com]

I have no humbugs, would a mint ball suffice?