Colin Harvey – author

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Just like the picture of our deceptively cute dog, whose looks disguise an occasionally evil nature, the world outside looks lovely from in here, but appearances can deceive. It’s what Icelanders call ‘window weather.’

It’s nice for twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours, but the bitter weather that’s mantled much of Northern Europe for almost ten days  is starting to become a pain. Yesterday the temperature climbed above freezing for only the second day in the last eight or nine days.  Which should be good, except that it’s not going to last, but instead will snap cold again.

The problem is that the ground is so treacherous –despite salt and grit on the roads, though not the pavements– that it’s making any kind of going out extremely problematic. I fell last winter in a frozen field and had problems with my back for weeks, long after my bruised wrists had healed.  And it’s made me reluctant to repeat the experience.

I’m not the only one who feels like this. Several of my classmates didn’t make it into lectures last week. Given that some of them face two, even three hour journeys with the possibility of the campus being closed when they get there, I don’t blame them at all. But several of them –like me– are starting to get cabin fever after so long being cooped up, creating a Hobson’s Choice between stir craziness and accidents outside.

What makes it so tricky is that yesterday, as the temperature climbs, so rain falls, as was the case yesterday. But as the skies clear it freezes overnight, as it did last night. So walking Alice today is going to be especially tricky. But it needs to be done — I have the usual early Monday morning start, and she can’t be left alone for six hours without being walked; it gives her a chance to perform her ablutions.  And according to the forecast, it’s not going to be any better tomorrow…

So that’s the weather around here. How is with you, wherever you are?

With the eruption in Iceland knocking even the General Election off the headlines yesterday, I thought that I’d check that my friends up there were okay, since the BBC were making it sound as if the Four Horsemen were on the move — even checking with some rent-a-pundit whether we were at risk from all this flying ash (which begs the question; what are we expected to do if he says “Yes, we’re all going to die”?).

I got an interesting reply, which I’ve paraphrased here.

Then he added with typical Icelandic humour, “So now we are not just dealing with corrupted businessmen and politicians, but mother nature as well. But in some ways we are relieved having something else to talk about than Icesave.”

That last by the way, refers to the bank which Wee Gordy Brown decided to lock down using anti-terrorist legislation, which was clearly what it was designed for. Not. Of course you should trust us with these powers, the politicians say…we’d never dream of misusing them…

I realized as I got up this morning that I only have five more days of holiday. I have no idea where the time went, since we seem to have done very little, but it seems like only a day or two ago that I was waking up on the Friday before Easter and thinking, three whole weeks of no uni!

They, whoever the mysterious ‘they’ are –aliens perhaps, or tribal elders?– say that time passes faster as one gets older. What they don’t really hammer home is that it hurtles by as if you’re on the Cresta Run, so that the seasons seem in memory to become a series of stop-motion snapshots; flick! It’s winter and snow carpets the ground; flick! now it’s spring and leaves are shouldering their way out of the buds. flick! Now it’s summer, and heat and languor hover just above ground level. flick! Here comes autumn again…

But for now it’s spring, and out in the garden, the wildlife is stirring…

Another one of the weather/light related blog posts over at suite. Are you beginning to sense a recurring theme here? <g>

A view from chez Harvey this morning.