its a very nice day, but i think not everyone will agree with me. to me, it is nice if i dont get hay fever, and that means cloudy, rainy, haha. i just love those days like today because it means no hay fever for me. but i daresay plenty of people who dont suffer from hay fever will find this rather grey and wish it would be as hot as in europe.

london 11pm 18C dry tuesday 2019

it is forecast to be over 40C in europe next few days. to me it is too much. i bet a lot of europeans will agree with me, even those die hard sun lovers. there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. lucky for us in uk, those hot weather did not seem to penetrate further north than france and uk is saved from that plume of hot air. we got temperatures that are hot enough but not too much, enough to be comfortable. 

Digital StillCamera

this is the picture forecast for europe at 4pm thursday 27.6.19. a sea of red over southern europe. i am glad i am not there.

 

 

 

easy peelers

london 7.40pm 9C dry monday 2018

i thought yesterday was rather a warm day and it seems it is. i saw this article saying the hyde park ice rink had melted yesterday. the ice machine could not cope with the 16C air temperature. and yet tomorrow early morning is forecast to be 1C in central london. today has been raining a lot too. 

update 8am tuesday 4.12.18 5.1C cloudy . it seems the lowest it got is now. so it looks like the forecast got it wrong for central london again. i think central london is just warmer.though south london (new malden) is 1.2C now. 

the uk is right in the path of two conflicting weather systems. and the jet stream is the one influencing which one takes precedence. so depanding on how far north the jet stream swings , it pushes warm air up, or cold air down across the british isle. the jet stream is the border between these two fronts. i think they cannot predict what caused it to swing north or south. because if they can they would be able to make the weather  forecast  very accurate.

i managed to go shopping today. went to the tesco and bought lots of clementines, or so that is what i think they are.79p for 600mg. i think i know the difference between clementines and satsumas. clementines are larger. and i think i like the larger size ones. more fruit and more juice. tastewise they are all the same. they might have some difference in flavour, but  i dont notice it. google tells me clementines are the smallest mandarins on the market. so i wonder if i am wrong. tesco just labels it easy peelers, so i dont know what these ones i bought are called. but i dont think i mind what they are called, they are all the same as far as i am concerned.

added i found this article trying to show the difference, but i am no wiser after i look at it. maybe u can tell the difference.

cappuccino

london 3.38pm 0.1C slight snow didnt last long. friday 2018

london missed the big dump of snow , i think . i woke hoping to find a huge mass of snow on the ground, but nothing. most of it seem to have melted away in fact. all the drama seem to be up north in scotland. 

looking at the weather website showing the path of the storm emma, i can see that the east winds are driving it to the west , so that it missed london, and will dump its load in ireland. that makes dublin getting the worst of the storm. it makes all the predictions about england be false. most of the country will still carry the effect of the beast from the east. storm emma wont add to it. though that is not stopping the headlines blaming storm emma. haha. 

even the news reporting of the conditions in  the north in scotland where  the storm emma had no effect as it has not even advance up to the south of england, they are blaming emma. emmaggeddon. but it is all rather fun , and makes for every one practising on their headlines punning. 

i was out earlier, to near russel square, where there is a shop opening and offering free coffee. it is the best cappuccino i have tasted , so creamy and not like the usual, where half of it is just foamy milk and hardly any coffee;  this one, the foamy milk was spread evenly throughout the cup. what a joy to drink, and so good it does not need me to add suger at all. the name of the shop is fortitude at 35 colonade. go there for the cappuccino alone. haha. 

everyone is getting about without any trouble, as the pavements have almost all cleared of snow. but as i came out of the victoria library, which i went to after the coffee, it began to snow, but tiny snow and it coated the pavements again.

the lady sitting next to me at the bus stop was saying it is cold, and how horrid it was. i said it is pretty, like a snow globe effect; but she was not convinced. looking at her, she had gloves on but she only had a thin transparent veil over her head. my bus came so i did not have time to mention that to her. she would be warmer if she had a wool hat covering her head and a wool scarf. but then, you would not expect to have to tell a grown up adult that she is not dressed warmly, would you??

i would say almost as sure as sure if u hear someone say they are cold, it is because they are not dressed properly for it. it is like they are not aware; like someone looking for their glasses when it is perched on top of their head. 

but i can see that warm air from the south is now overcoming the beast from the east as spring keeps growing stronger, with the sun rising higher in the sky and staying longer. after all, the spring equinox is coming. even now, the forecast is no more minus C temperatures anymore.

 

 

 

 

neighbours

london 7.29am sunny -3.6C (the lowest reading near me). most are around -1C or -2C. tuesday 2018

well, we are  supposed to be hit by the beast from the east, the cold winds from siberia.  but it is a sunny day and blue sky out there now. so might be london is not going to be so disrupted with snow that blocks the buses and tubes.

as usual, the tubes and trains have put out warnings as they are bound to do, and if there had been rain, which would turn to snow by the cold, they would be proved right. too bad for them that there is no rain. haha. whatever they do, they will get scolded for it.

so far i dont see a lot of rain heading to london. maybe on friday. there is a big bunch of rain then , and maybe we will see a nice dump of snow to give us a white snow landscape in london. the weather website says most parts of london is below zero C. but the downstairs must be having their heating on all night, because my flat felt warm. 18C according to the nhs thermometer that i have. so it is very pleasant inside. maybe that is why i am rather calm about it all, and just look on this cold weather  with pleasure, rather than dread.

perhaps not everyone get their heating from downstairs flat, so my situation may be unique. who knows really. for all i know, the top flat may be the ones getting all this heat from the flats below them. and that is only possible if they have insulated the loft first.

i have noticed heat gets through the ceiling of the flats below you. my floor is made of concrete, and being built in 1889, they dont seal the spaces very well, because a lot of heat goes up through the floor from the flat below. most people have wall to wall carpets and this can act as a good insulation layer, but my carpets are still the original laid down when i first bought the flat 25yrs ago, and they are not thick carpets. i like the colour that is why i did not bother to replace them. it is a lovely deep green colour that i could not find in the modern carpets they have nowadays.

before the upstairs flat got sold they have wooden floors and i can tell you my heat goes up to them real quick so that it was cold in my flat a lot even with the heating on full blast. but luckily they sold it, this is about 10yrs ago, and the new owner promptly laid down carpets, and suddenly my flat got warm even without me putting on the heating. and it had been so since. and an added bonus is that we dont hear her upstairs clipclopping on the floor in her high heels anymore. haha. or the occasional rattle of something hitting the floor … i suspect it is a cat playing with its rattling toys. ever since then, i dont get any bother from the neighbours. which from what i hear can be a real pain. noise from the neighbour above you seem to be more noticeable than the noise from the downstairs flat below you.

there have been a time when the flat above have been rented out by airbnb, but i think the noise they made (they were playing very loud music)have brought on a blanket ban on airbnb in the estate because i saw a notice pasted on our communal board saying no airbnb allowed. 

snow flakes, the real thing not the millenials

london 7.54pm 0.4C snow shower. monday 2018

the weather website is stating different temperatures . one is saying -0.5C, and saying snow showers will end 11.30am. outside my window i can see small flakes of snow, so that must be the snow showers. not enough to amass on the ground. not even to wet it. its rather pretty, there is hardly any wind, (or rather the courtyard is well sheltered, so the wind dont get to come in ) so they float about and drift gently to the ground. 

inside my flat it is fairly warm. 15C . i still dont need to put on heaters. i think it must be i am getting enough heat from downstairs. 

added. 9am -0.1C snow showers. its got heavier and now coats the cars and shed roof.

added. 11.59am 1.4C sunshine now. that snowflakes did not last long. i was on the bus and saw some cherry trees along the route, with their buds  just coming up and they did look like snowflakes on the trees. 

 

what they say will happen

london 9.31am 9C drizzly tuesday 2018

 

 

 

the predicted weather outcome for the coming week. very unusual to see the uk in solid blue even for a day nevermind for a continuous 2 or 3 days like it looks like here. there seem to be a simultaneous warming of the arctic going on too. a strange anomaly. 

i must remember this is all computer simulation, using data that they have input in and using programmed software that assumes certain things. so it will be interesting to see if this simulation is anything like what will turn out for real. i had a look at the 7day forecast in this website showing the pattern and it shows that during the day , even at the height of the freeze, the day temperatures in the uk did rise above freezing, so it is not solid below- zero temperatures throughout. northern france, germany and the eastern european countries were all below freezing throughout… so they will get the brunt of all this cold weather. i had a look at the forecast for berlin, -3C/-9C for the coming monday 26.2.18. i guess they have cold winters every year, and most probably they dont have these screaming headlines that we have in uk. well we dont have these events that often, the last one was in jan 2013. so i guess u could excuse us for talking excitingly about it. haha. 

just a fried pork chop meal by simon to make you hungry. haha.

i enjoy just being in london

london 11.35am 6C sunny friday 2018 pimlico library

me just enjoying the simple life in london. everyone seem to think when in london you have to go everywhere, see everything, and not miss out, but to me it is just nice enjoying just being in london. haha.

i while away the time by going to the once weekly circuit class, which is now getting busier. the last one had 8 people attending. that is by far the most numbers since it started about a year ago, when only myself and another were there. since then it was about 3or4 people each time.

i was so used to such small numbers that when 8 came i was rather put off… it seems too crowded. but i got used to it after a while and adjust to it. it is one of those things really where u are used to one thing and when it changes you resist it. i think most people resist change.

anyway another way of enjoying myself is to go to the virgin lounge near piccadilly circus. it is very enjoyable to go there, not least because there is free unlimited amounts of coffee, tea, chocolate drinks, fruits, newspapers… haha. better than the library actually, which is another place i go to often, though nowadays less often than before. esp now that i have the virgin lounge.

oh, i remember another pastime is going to the various supermarkets for bargains. that reminds me  i should be going to the lidls for more pork. difficult to decide which branch to go to. its sunny today so going out is a pleasure.

they are saying it is going to get cold, and the weather website i trust seems to confirm it. -3C at one stage , on friday.

it seems to be all over europe this cold weather, extending down as far south as portugal. well, i shall see if it comes true. not that it will affect me much. i am confident my flat will be warm enough and it will be nice to go out as i am always wrapped up warm when i go out. 

2.26pm cloudy 

got back from shopping. went to the lidl at clapham junction, and bought a 1.39kg pork shoulder @£2.79/kg. it is the same cost as aldi, which is next door, but aldi only have very large 2kg packs. the thing about these cuts is that they are meant to be for roasting, so they put in a big layer of fat over it, whereas i stir fry so i prefer if they dont have that fat. still, i use the fat to make crackling, just fry it in oil till crisp, you can use the oil left over to cook to give it flavour, whilst storing the crackling for garnishing.

on the way back i passed a house that have jasmine growing over the fence in the front yard. and allready some of the buds are flowering and giving off its scent.now all i need is another house to plant honeysuckle . those two flowers and their heady scent signify summer to me. 

 

weather

london 11.51am sunny 13.4C tuesday 2017

really glorious morning , blue sky and sunny, and yet i just read in this article that there has been fog causing flights to be cancelled in heathrow. i live here and i dont see any fog. yet the news says there is. so who do u think to believe, my own eyes or what others say… now u can see why there are so much fake news about. we dont know what is fake news anymore… we cannot tell the difference. oh wait, maybe we are confusing predictions with fake news. forecasts are like predictions, and are a bit like predicting the outcome of brexit. nobody knows , that is the fact of the matter. we cannot predict the weather 7days ahead with any accuracy and that is true for a lot of things about human activities too. that is why nobody has ever predicted a stockmarket crash with any accuracy. they can warn us, but that is not much use really. stockmarket crashes seem to come in 10yr periods. so since the last one in 2008, we might expect one next year. 

with the weather it is not important, at least to us who are not involved with traffic. fog or not, our lives will be unaffected.

i woke up at about 6am this morning, but forgot to look out the window, haha. even if there is fog outside, i doubt i will notice even if i look out of the window. i am not going anywhere, so it does not matter to me if there is fog out there or not. then i went back to sleep and woke up now. and it is 12pm now. 

fog  is normal around this time. looking at the forecast, esp this website which is my favourite go- to website for predictions of the coming weather, i can see it will be mild over christmas. you can see a plume of warm air engulfing the united kingdom over this christmas period. 

added 4.37pm 8.9C dark now dry.

two supermarkets near me, in pimlico, have undergone drastic renovation. they have both closed the shop completely (losing all that business) to do the work and completely redesigned the premises.

one is sainsburys, a superstore, which have moved their what i call their ‘boots’ section (selling what boots the chemist would be selling) right to the front. they have moved the veg section to the front and enlarged it too. and moved the butchers to the back , got rid of the fishmongers, and added a sushi freshly prepared area, all pushed to the back. where the veg section used to be. they have moved the bakery section right to the back at the far end as far removed from the entrance as u can get. and they have enlarged the lunch time foods, which have been in the front, in a space right next to the entrance. the sandwiches shelf space is reduced,( interestingly they have completely removed their 3 items  -for -one- price lunch time sandwich -with -crisps -and a soft drink offers) but have enlarged the pizzas section with the oven, and even gave this section it’s own checkout tills, self service tills which only accept cards. they have removed the delicatessen area, and the hot food area, where they used to sell roast chicken, and hot curries with rice. 

they have completely removed the electrical goods, plates and pots and pans section. i guess because they have bought argos and it does those better.

also, they have got rid of their drinks section, the wine bottles etc… i would have thought that brings in big profits, so it is curious that they have removed it entirely. unless me not being a drinker, they have it still, but its possible i would not see it. even then, it is very unobtrusive, if i did not see it whilst wandering around the store.

 

the trend to increasing the fast food section is also apparent in the tesco  nearby. that was an express tesco, which used to sell veg, and basic goods, but now it has become smaller, almost half its original size, and sells almost only pre cooked foods. gone are the tesco basics, and the frozen section and the veg section. and their liquour section. it is a drastic change.

interesting if this is the future way they are heading. it looks like they are going to remove the basic range of goods from stock.

perhaps these central london stores are so expensive rent wise, that they want to maximise profits and so fill their shelves with high profit stuff. basic goods will by definition not yield such high profits. 

it will definitely affect the way i shop. for one thing, i wont be going to these stores. i shall go to the nine elms sainsburys and the kennington tesco. then again, i doubt i am their target customer haha. 

added . i just wrote all the above and then i saw in my email, sainsburys has sent me this

Things just got personal.

You’ve been handpicked for our SmartOffers app trial at your local Nine Elms Sainsbury’s.

SmartOffers gives you personalised and exclusive offers with bonus Nectar points* on your favourite products as you browse the aisles. In a nutshell, we are rewarding you for buying the things that you love. Sounds good, right? We think so too. Just follow the simple steps below and you can use SmartOffers in no time.

And, as we are always looking to improve our service, we’ll be asking for your feedback along the way so that we can make your experience second to none.

When you go to your Nine Elms store, turn on Bluetooth and open the app. We’ll send you personalised offers through the app that you can activate as you shop.

they have been always asking me to fill up a satisfaction survey regarding a branch of theirs near where i live; but i never do it, because i dont buy there, it is simon who does it using my nectar card.  now they are sending me this related to another branch, the nine elms one. even if i want to take up the offer i could not as i dont have a smartphone. 

it is how you look at it.

london 11.39am 5.5C brightcloudy thursday 2017

simon alerted me that it is snowing outside just now. and sure it is… strange, the sky is so bright , even though it is a cloudy day, but the sun is shining through it, and is very bright… and the weather website says 5.5C, so it is not raining, and it is not cold, so why do i see small bits of snowflakes falling? amazing isn’t it? it is not a heavy snow fall.

the forecast have been warning of cold weather. i dont believe them, and still dont even though i see snow falling here. haha. ok , you will say it is just me, refusing to believe what i see, even when it is right there in front of me… ah well, it does not matter, because i dont feel cold, so there. so what if it is -15C who cares,right? i only get bothered if it affects me, and i am not affected. so we should put it in perspective, so what if the forecast is -15C and it does hit -15C at one stage, somewhere. it will not affect us if we dont live there, or  are indoors and out of it. haha. or if it is snowing and hails, if u are not affected, it does not matter.

i read this article today by someone who is sad at the things that she sees happening in her neighbourhood. she sees homeless people and is sad, then one of the homeless people there make a rude remark about her, and she is sad. then she sees a hipster sipping coffee outside one of the gentrified coffee places and she is sad… hmm, it seems it is how one looks at things  that needs adjusting… you cant sympathise with all the homeless, and then get sad when one of them shouts rude words at you… one goes with the other.

just like you hate the new urbanisation and gentrification of your area, which will reduce the crime in the area, whilst getting upset that you have been mugged so often in the past in that same neighbourhood. what do u really want? keep the muggings? consider it a price well worth paying that the area has no coffee shops and up market shops? keep the area lawless, after all muggers must have some place free for them to mug…

you have to ask yourself what is it you want. there are consequences to your choice. it reminds me of all the celebrities campaigning for taking in all the refugees, whilst not considering how others will have to pay for it… they themselves dont pay for it, even those who say they will take into their homes some refugees, they never do. but everyone else pays, in over crowded schools, waiting lists for everything because of the heavy demand on these services by the influx of new people. and being sad because of all this is counter productive. does your being sad help them? or does it make u feel guilty for being happy when u see all these things happening around you? dont be, if being sad does not help them, why be sad? or perhaps u feel it is exercising empathy if u feel sad for them… it makes u feel you are a caring person. well, i guess if it makes u feel that, i suppose there is a purpose in being sad. if it makes u feel good…so i guess being sad is a small price to pay for that feeling.

added. 5.28pm i had a peek at the weather website to see what the lowest temp today. it was 1.9C at about 7am this morning. i woke at 9am, so did not experience it when it happened. 

my induction stove went wrong and righted itself without any help.

lolondon 12.05pm 20C sunny tuesday 2017 thunderstorms forecast, but does not look likely here. rain would be good as they have predicted a drought.

yesterday i went to lidl’s to buy their special , £1.29 for 500mg minced beef. i bought 3 packs and split them up into two 250mg bits and frozed them, so i would have 6 portions. used to be these packs were sold for £1 each. normal lowest price now is £1.70 (tesco basic minced beef 20% fat). it seems so long ago that they were 50p each(15%fat). (actually it was about 2-3yrs ago)we shall never see those days again. haha. but that is life, prices just rise all the time. partly due to inflation, and also exchange rates with the £ drifting lower as the years go by. money is slowly losing its value, and this is all over the world, not just in uk.

yesterday also i was resigned to my induction stove being kaput. i boiled spaghetti and left it on the stew button and on the timer (that timer is so useful), and the water spilled over (which it tends to do esp if u put the lid on) and it must be quite a lot of water, because it the induction hob was sitting on a lake of water on  top of the conventional hob, where i put the induction stove. i did not realise it at the time, but it flooded the bottom of the induction stove and must have affected the fan, because it stopped heating up the pan once the fan stopped working. it did not heat up even though everything else seems to work.

so i told  simon about it when he came back from his mum’s, intending to ask him if his mum has a spare induction hob;  with news that his mum is finally going to sell her house in essex, (she does not live there, preferring to live with her boyfriend of many years in his house). they assessed the house as worth £400,000. it has 3bedrooms and end of terrace. simon grew up in it and has fond memories of it, as he says it is surrounded by the countryside, whilst still 10mins between two tube stations. such a low price i thought, but than it is only relative. living in central london i am rather used to high prices, as central london prices are so inflated it is quite unreal. i mean my own two bed flat here is £700,000. u have to admit it is quite unreal, when i bought it for £85,000 (though that was 25yrs ago).

the maintainance of the house is high, simon says, her water rates are £1000 a year. which surprised me because mine is about £340 and i am not on a meter. 

 but guess what, this morning, i saw it was used to cook something, by simon. he had a frying pan on it, with oil inside.  so  it works now, but how did that happen? what did simon do i wonder to get it working again. (he tells me he did nothing).

 when i switched it on, i can hear the fan working and everything seems to get back to normal. so i cooked my breakfast of two eggs, and mushrooms on it and quite happy to have it working again, because i am so used to the quick way it cook things, that i would feel a bit bereft if i have to go back to the electric  stove of my conventional hob.

that is the funny thing about electrical appliances. it goes wrong, but u just have to leave it for a bit, and it seems to right itself. well, i am rather glad it got better without me having to bring it to the store. and as usual, it has just passed its 1 yr guarantee. i looked back on my weblog, and saw i bought it 22april last year. in fact, i went looking for the receipt, but could not find it, so i could not claim the guarantee even if it is within the year… so just as well the stove righted itself.