Category Archives: winter

196. In Shelley’s Sussex footsteps – running from Horsham to Warnham

Posted on 4 December, 2008 by | 2 comments

autumn-on-the-causeway-horsham-sussex-england-by-yoshi-san-virtual-tourist-comO Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing
Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley — 1819

A new season in a new town. Autumn has come and gone here in Horsham, scattering her falling leaves behind new footsteps across the park.

September laid a blank canvas all around this pretty Sussex town, and running set me free to paint. It’s invigorating, exciting and refreshing to explore anew.

Horsham is over a thousand years old. Standing calm beside the River Arun, amid green fields atop the Wealden Clay, historically this town gave birth to bricks, and beer and Catherine Howard.

Two centuries ago, Percy Bysshe Shelley set forth upon his life from here — a journey cut short before his 30th birthday in a shipwreck off the Italian coast. One of the great lyric poets and an unconventional and uncompromising radical, Shelley was expelled from Oxford for his atheist and anti-monarchist views.
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Posted in 2008, heroes, history, life and times, poetry, Surrey and Sussex, winter

180. Mountains of food – la cuisine savoyarde

Posted on 18 April, 2008 by | 17 comments

fresh-powder-flaine-france-april-2008-by-roadsofstone.jpg

I was in Haute-Savoie last week – part of the ancient kingdom of Savoy – that mountainous corner of France around Mont Blanc and south of the Swiss city of Geneva. The name Savoy comes from the latin sapaudia – fir forest – an origin still heard in the French word sapin (fir tree).

Long an independent duchy, the area was occupied by Napoleon’s troops from 1792-1815. After a period as part of Sardinia, Savoy was annexed by France in 1860.

en-avril-hiver-commence-flaine-france-by-roadsofstone

The region has strong associations with Piedmont in Italy, and with French-speaking Switzerland (Turin and Geneva are both much nearer than Paris). The local dialects reflect old mountain French with a smattering of Italian.

But the food doesn’t reflect Italy or France. Savoie is a stronghold of Alpine cuisine. Don’t expect delicate French dishes – this is the home of solidly calorific monster feasts to fuel any long day on the slopes.
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Posted in 2008, food, France, history, travel, winter

178. Full fathom five – on Elbow Beach, Bermuda

Posted on 13 March, 2008 by | 9 comments

night-landing-in-bermuda-by-haywards-heath.jpg“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground”
– The Tempest, Act 1, Sc.1

“Full fathom five thy father lies” – The Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2

The sky is falling all around me as the winter afternoon is fading. Down, down we glide, towards the North Atlantic. Three thousand miles of unforgiving sea are all behind us and ahead lies just a pinprick of green holding out against the blue-grey vastness of the ocean.

The rain lashes against the windows as our wings bank on the approach, the landing lights looming nearer in the dusk. A rugged landfall, but now we’re safe.

Outside the airport and across the causeway, a deluge is raging in sheets across the road, the palm trees swaying wildly in the storm. The evening washes itself wet and windswept upon the shore. Continue reading →

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Posted in 2008, Bermuda, divided by an ocean, heroes, history, training, travel, winter, world

177. From white box to empty shell – rebuilding the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on 5 March, 2008 by | 12 comments

royal-shakespeare-theatre-river-stratford-upon-avon-england-2008-by-roadsofstone.jpgThere’s a brick building at the end of the street where I grew up. I run past it every time I’m in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Today, it’s just an empty shell.

After more than seventy years, a new Royal Shakespeare Theatre is being built inside the framework of the old one.

It’s a constraining decision, architecturally – which limits the capacity and design of the new theatre, whilst still destroying the marvellous art deco foyer within. Just think – for £110 mm we could have had a Sydney Opera House instead of a revamped old blockhouse with only 1,000 seats – a third fewer than before.

royal-shakespeare-theatre-rebuild-stratford-upon-avon-england-2008-by-roadsofstone.jpgLooking across the river now, I can see empty space where the heart of the building should be.

And in a way, that’s just how it was in 1970 when I saw my first Shakespeare play here – Peter Brook’s famous ‘White Box’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, famously staged inside a chasm of blank white walls.
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Posted in 2008, history, life and times, poetry, Shakespeare Country, winter

176. Ashtead Common 2 – a winter’s trail to spring

Posted on 22 February, 2008 by | 14 comments

winter-dawn-epsom-downs-surrey-england-by-chilsta-flickr.jpgWinter drags in February. The lengthening evenings seem to pack a scary sharpness in their chill, and there’s an unexpected bleakness in these brightening days which makes me yearn for spring.

But it’s not the weather really. It’s my lack of patience for this place, which palls now with every passing week.

The soulless office above the shopping mall entombs me on shivering days like these. Days when inertia sucks the lifeblood of enthusiasm out from in me. Hours spent waiting for the gloom to lift and fall. Days when I don’t feel like running, and I wonder how I ever did.

epsom-crocus-by-osde-info-flickr.jpgThe crocuses in Epsom Park smile indulgently as I pass on my winter’s route towards the dry Chalk hills above the town. They remind me.
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Posted in 2008, environment, life and times, Surrey and Sussex, travel, winter, world

175. The price of oil: peak petroleum production and energy economics in a thirsty world

Posted on 7 February, 2008 by | 91 comments

NOTE: May 2009 — For further updates on the oil price, see also:
The price of oil: 3 — energy economics and the financial crisis;
The price of oil: 4 – a rising road ahead.

north-sea-oil-rig-and-helicopter-offshorepictures.jpgIt was a chilly evening in early February when the Managing Director called us all together. He paused a moment, glanced at the expectant faces all around him, and then he started.

Business is tough, he said, and we’re doing what we can. But finally, we’ve reached that moment when we’ve got to let some of you go.

A hundred of us stood there then, looking at each other, at the floor, and at the winter’s dusk outside.

There was silence. Some more explanation was required, and some more honesty was needed. And, to his credit, Mitch provided it. As ‘this company is going down the toilet’ talks go, it was pretty fairly done.

We’d had problems with one of our installations in the North Sea, he told us. We all knew that already. In the big money business of finding oil and gas and getting them to the beach, failing on either of those priorities was never good.

roustabouts-on-the-drill-floor.jpgAn asset team would miss its targets, and there’d be no bonuses or payrises for anyone ahead. Such is business, in any organisation. But this time, it was worse.

It’s the oil price, he said. February, 1999. Continue reading →

91 Comments

Posted in 2008, A1 - the best of roads of stone, environment, geology, history, peak oil, science, Scotland, winter, world