19 Hours to Get Home from Work

I had to abandon my car in the snow on the way home yesterday! First time in twenty years I've ever had to get out of my car and walk because I couldn't get it up a snow-bound hill. I set off into a hailstorm in my work trousers and trainers, and nothing passed me either way for an hour. The police called me a couple of times to make sure I was OK!

I eventually got to Torver, as a 4x4 driver turned his vehicle round to give me a lift, then a similar trek to Coniston, where I learned the rest of the road to Ambleside was closed, so I had to stay over the night in a hotel! In the morning, it was still snowing, so I set off again, and eventually got a lift to Ambleside. I purchased a new pair of walking boots, and set off up Dunmail Raise, the road that goes up my Helvellyn (a mountain) which was closed. At the top I almost got run off the road by a gritting lorry, as it was zero-visibility!

From the other side, I found a couple returning from a car-park in which they'd been stuck for twenty minutes turning their car away from the snow, and they gave me a lift back to Keswick, where I arrived at noon, 19 hours after setting off the day before!

Urk! Now I've got to work out how to get my car back (if it's not been towed by a tractor off the road or smashed to one side by any cars sliding down that particular hill). Time to get a Landrover.

We woke this Sunday to Flurries of Snow out the window. Beautiful. 

Study! Study! Moving! Study! Moving! My study as currently piled up with old magazines (the first issue of .NET heralding the public interest in this 'Internet' thing, with articles such as 'What can you do on the Internet?') and books for my research on 'Psychology and Ritual'. Urghhhh! Can't find anything. There's a pair of faded swimming trunks in the bottom right of the photo, which have been there for ages, but you probably didn't need to know that. 

It's Snowing! Keswick in the snow this Sunday, we woke up to flurries off the roof, and later walked down to the Lake where everything was white. The first shoots of Spring bulbs were poking out through the snow and people were sledging and building snowmen. It'll probably only last a day, so it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture a wintry day. 

It's like D&D ... for those who knew me from my D&D fanatical youth ...! 

OK, now I'll go do my real-world stuff. LOL. My Necromancer in the MMOG (Massive Multi-Player Online Game), Everquest II. Both B. and I play different characters ... this one is a Dark Elf Necromancer who I've been playing for a year, and is level 42 - currently in a place called LavaStorm, for obvious reasons! 

Why I should be Doing Something Else Now!

What am I doing posting Blogs?! LOL. I have several work-related contracts to go over for legal complexities, a number of e-mails to write, an essay to start (never mind, finish, for a deadline in three weeks), a son to schedule, a wife to consort with, a house-move to prepare, family to speak to, and ... I know what, I'll go play Everquest II for a while, get my Necromancer to level 43.

That'll sort everything out.

Priorities, huh ...

Seat Sandal. Another Wainwright ticked off the list, although this one involved rather too much ascent on ice and snow for anyone's comfort! B. is now a seasoned ice-walker, which is a major accomplishment for her, and opens up new opportunities for Skiing in the Winter Olympics, oh hum!!! 

Grisedale Tarn, frozen over. It snowed lightly on the walk back down. 

The Cottage in the Woods. We are renting the left-hand side of the cottage, and it's very big and light inside. It's up a lane with very little nearby, other than a stables and the river below. 

Cottage in the Woods

Well, Spring is often a time when my family move house, jobs or education, and this year is no exception; we're moving house in five weeks time!!! Our current rented property, which is really nice, large and in an excellent location, has always been a 'stop-gap' from when we moved back to Keswick. We knew from the family renting it out that they were planning to rennovate it at some point, but didn't know when. As it is likely to be over the next few years, we were excited to see another property, on the other side of the river, come up for long-term rent. In fact, if anything, it is even more secluded than the one we are in now. So, we decided to apply and found out last week that we were succesful. This gives us some long-term stability, and who knows, if/when our current property gets rennovated, we might actually buy it!

Photos to follow, although given the wonders of BloggerBot, and Hello! (picture service to Blogger) they could be above or below this text entry. It's also too risky to insert the photo into the text directly, as it's a little flaky (Blogger have only just introduced that facility) and sometimes you can loose all your carefully crafted text!

The City of Blades

It's amazing what goes on in one's unconscious mind. We'd been watching a design program about "Top Ten" British designs, in particular the London Underground Map, which gets my vote. I'd been pondering on how simple but practical the design is, and unbeknownst to me, my unconscious mind was also engaged. Several nights later, I dreamt about a vast underground city, composed of huge vertical shafts, many miles deep. In the dream I was following someone walking about their daily business, and knew that the shafts were full of fans; large rotating propellor blades circulating air throughout the city. However, because of the scale, they were rotating fairly slowly, so people could wait at a shaft entrance, step onto one of the passing blades, then get off at another exit.

As I followed the person who had stepped into one of the shaft entrances, I saw a symbol by the door, which was a numeric '5' coloured red, on a blue background. The '5' was tilted slightly to the right, and was designed with a number of 'spurs' coming off the '5' itself.

My very creative unconscious mind informed me that the symbol was a city standard to inform citizens as to the properties of the shaft they were entering. The '5' itself indicated the number of exits, and the spurs on the number indicated their position relative to the current entrance. The angle of the '5' indicated whether the propellor was moving clockwise or anti-clockwise. The colour indicated the relative speed of the blades (ranging from Green=Slow to Red=Faster) and the background indicated the strength of any air current in the shaft according to the scale of the visible spectrum (Red=Strong downdraft or updraft to Violet=Weak draft).

All this happened in a moment - a whole symbol system for a city that doesn't exist (yet). Simple and practical, but currently utterly useless! That's the unconscious for you!

(And for those Kabbalists reading this dream, yes, I know).