21 Jun 2017

21st JUne 2017 Pass the [gilded] cup of sugar, please?

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Wednesday 21st 55F, 13C, bright with a light breeze. The shortest day, including for bees, allegedly. The vital little creatures are under attack from all sides. Industrialized, mono-culture, sprayed to death, prairie farming is robbing them of wild plants and shelter hedges. The Head Gardener is doing her best to provide masses of different flowers which bees are known to enjoy. However it is but one garden in a truly vast wildflower desert. 

The gorgeous grasses on the verges are briefly allowed to flower. Before being cut down to avoid contaminating the fitted carpet of right-up-to-the-edge crops. The verges are now just paper thin skirting boards. The roadside hedges long gone to allow vast machines to effortlessly spray and harvest every last, square centimeter to comply with EU rules on soil exploitation for stashing offshore profits.
  
Meanwhile, Denmark has been voted the best country in the world to live in. Perhaps they just counted all the Audis and Denmark had more per-capita than everybody else put together? 👍 All joking aside, it does feel very safe here compared with the universal crime, grime and aggression of [forever going backwards] countries like Gravely Blighted. Conversely, I was reading an article yesterday about it being almost impossible, even for the Danes, to integrate into small, village societies as outsiders. Which is fine if you don't want the neighbors dropping round for endless cups of sugar. 

Obscene inequality and the resulting crime is becoming a problem in many places in Denmark. But it will probably take centuries of sustained effort before the universal crime level of GB is ever reached. I was reading that if Broxit forces retired ex-pats back to Blighted it will cost countless billions and literally hundreds more hospitals just to keep them all healthy under the constantly grey skies of the NHS. So, be careful what you vote for. Politics must surely be the most uncalled for calling. They give professional liars, con men and cheats a very bad name! Well, it is the oldest profession. 😎

Another busy day, not riding tricycles. Though I did tidy the tricycle shed. 

Thursday 22nd 55F, 13C, cloudy, light winds with rain on and off. I managed only a half a mile walk  before it started raining. So I made a quick about turn. Much cooler today but should warm up later. It did. Another, exhausting, rest day. More shed tidying.

Friday 23rd 60F, 16C, someone forgot to turn the lights on this morning! Lights, please? Showers possible.

I hear the Utterly Corrupt Illegitimates are changing the rules for the major cycling Tours. From now on only 176 motorcycles are allowed to ride in the peloton. At, least, I think that is what they are saying. I'm still waiting for a ban on petrol-engined media motorcycles. But the UCI is probably getting far too much from their motorcycle manufacturing sponsors. So they are  unable to stop petrol fumes belching into the faces of the riders on the high mountain climbs.

It only takes one motorcycle to pass me to be able to taste petrol in my mouth for the next five minutes. As I pant along on the three wheeled, freight carrying steamroller. So, does this mean there will continue to be more electric motors in the race than following it? There are other ways to thin the traffic jams on the tours. Ban wheel changes for punctures. Just for a start. Drop test CF frames to increase longevity. Disposable 10k machines are ridiculous. But what do you expect under the UCI?

Went for a walk in misty, fine drizzle. The wrong sort of mist and the wrong sort of rain for landscape photography.

Saturday 24th 60F, 16C, very heavy overcast, breezy with showers. Possible brightening after lunch. Walked down to the village in spitting rain and variable wind. No sign of ducks or coots on the ponds. Another idiot had overshot a blind corner and ploughed up the verge. The same willow has been knocked over three times now. It keeps getting bushier but flatter on the ground. With spots of rain on the windows it might be wise to wait until later for a ride. It wasn't. So I spent a while spreading half a ton of gravel by shovel just for the exercise. Followed by assorted pull-ups and general monkeying about on my climbing frame.

Sunday 25th 60F, 16C, rather cloudy with wind and showers. My walk was timed to perfection as huge drops started falling the moment my feet touched asphalt. Fortunately the sky was  moving so  rapidly there wasn't time for a soaking and it had moved on almost before it had started. It became quite warm, though breezy later, walking back in brief sunshine. The warblers dominated the soundscape again today. While lots of sparrows dashed about having untidy flying lessons. A gaudy pair of Goldfinches worked their way down the hedgerow. It looks as if I made it back just in time to miss a real shower.

Click on any image for an enlargement.
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