We made it to October 14th this year. And it was Mrs P who succumbed. Normally it’s me, suggesting – very sensibly – that we test it out to make sure everything is functioning correctly. But this year it was her. I got a text in the evening to tell me she’s put the heating on. I don’t blame her. We’ve had a fabulously warm Indian summer. Just a week ago we were strolling the streets of London in T-shirts basking in sunny 26C temperatures. This week, the temperature tumbled. Single digits. The heating has to come on.
I did my other autumnal ritual. I took out my winter jumpers and jackets from deep storage, replacing them with my summer gear. I won’t see that stuff for another six months at least. And then autumn inflicted one of its rituals on me. Sickness. It’s worse than a cold. Not bad enough to be proper flu. A rather old test kit from the days of the pandemic says Mr Covid is not to blame. Meh. A raging fever for two and a bit days wasn’t pleasant. I feel over the worst of it.
But I’m off work and resting. And taking in another ritual when the weather turns chilly. Curling up on the sofa under a blanker to watch a movie. Yesterday, I picked the new Indiana Jones movie, the Dial of Destiny. Was it any good? Don’t know. I dozed off twice. Party because of the illness I was suffering. Mostly because it’s two and a half hours long. I’m getting a bit cheesed off with the running times of movies. What’s wrong with these folk? A good movie needs just 90 to 100 minutes.
A really, really good movie can stretch to just under two hours. Tops. But it has to be really good. We saw Oppenheimer at the cinema recently. Was that good? No, because it’s 3 hours long. Yes, interesting story, good acting, blah blah. But way too much waffle. It was padded out to three hours. Totally unnecessary. And there’s not even an intermission. So I’m done. I’m not watching anything over 2 hours at the movie house again. There. Hollywood has been told.
The photo, taken on my morning walk to the pier. Which looked autumnal enough to be used for this post.
The Mexile 
We have not turned on the heat yet-I hope it still works…The inside temperature was 68 F this morning. I have the south facing blinds open, hoping for a little sun in the afternoon today. It is raining sideways at the current time. We had to hit the button in late September last year so we’re living on borrowed time. We made it to November one year, that will not be the case this year.
I still have the house plants outside. I’ve potted up a few of the nicest ones for winter color on the window sills. The vast majority are doomed to frost in the next few weeks.
Lake Erie is pushing lake effect rain onto our hillside most nights. The lake is still about 62F, like a steamy bowl of soup, lots of evaporation and inland condensation/rain every night.
The big maple tree outside my office window is a blaze of red, orange and yellow-it will be bare in a week.
We’ll be sledding in six weeks, that lake effect rain will turn to snow.
I like winter, hate the short days.
LikeLike
Norm: This might sound blasphemous or insane, but sometimes I miss waking up to beautiful cover of snow. My late dog Pooch loved tromping through snow right up to his belly. But then comes February, when the sun doesn’t want to come out, and March, when the snow melts and the sidewalks are suddenly covered with dog poop. But you know all that…
LikeLike
Our winters are not, of course, quite as harsh as yours. I’m quite fond of this time of year. Sure, it’s cooler. But I like my jumpers and jackets. All the Christmas lights will soon be out. The colours of autumn can be glorious. It’s all quite pleasant.
It’s from January 1st everything turns bleak and cold and dank and miserable. I don’t like that. That should be banned. Cancelled. Globally warmed to extinction. Whatever, I don’t care. Just get rid of it.
LikeLike
Gary: Let’s see, getting frequent colds and falling sleep in front of the tele when a movie goes on longer than 60 minutes? You’re just getting old, my man, never mind the change in the seasons.
As for Oppenheimer being too long? Whaddya expect? Someone to cover the whole A-bomb thing in a half hour?
Did the price of heating go down in the UK? I remember reading last year that the Tories were going to fix all that or did they let you down again? How did they fix it? Buy everyone a blanket?
LikeLike
Yes, I am indeed getting old! But I’m sticking to my guns. Two hours tops is all that’s needed to make a decent film. If a director has more to say, then it sounds to me like he’s got a sequel on his hands.
Did you see Oppenheimer?
As for the price of heating. It’s not too bad. Not for us anyway. We’re in a modern, fairly well insulated flat. We had been paying £64 a month for gas and leccy until Dec 2001. Then it jumped to about £100, and then after the invasion leapt to £130 or £140. But we got £150 back in a council tax rebate, and a £67 discount off our energy bills for six months. Bills have since settled and we now pay about £100pm. Taking into account inflation, it’s not a terrible rise.
LikeLike
I agree that Oppenheimer needed a pee break, like Gone with the Wind, for the folks to stretch their legs and visit the facilities. I saw it twice, once in Mexico and the other in San Antonio in Imax. I don’t think Imax added anything, except for very good sound. When the bomb went off, I think the theater shook. Both theaters were sold out, and curiously, both audiences remained seated and quiet through the credits, as if mesmerized, instead of dashing for the exits like people usually do.
I thought Robert Downey Jr. was the best. It’s amazing how people like him (and Elton John) can recover from addictions to every drug known to man and still walk a straight line.
I have a WordPress question: How did you set up a separate page (or whatever) to show your photos?
It’s turned cold (coldish) here now and the cost of liquid propane has gone up, but not terribly, except for the really poor folks like Felix, who just buy another cheap blanket.
LikeLike
I thought RDJ was excellent too. They all were. Cillian Murphy stood out for me. Have you ever gotten into Peaky Blinders? If not, there’s several binge worthy series awaiting your attention when it gets nippy outside.
What do you mean by my page for photos? The photos I display in WordPress? Or something else?
LikeLike
Was referring to “Portfolio” at the top of your blog, with links to your photos on Flicker and something called 500px. I looks like a blog within your blog.
LikeLike
I see what you mean. No, they are external links to photo websites. I stopped using Flickr when they doubled the subscription price in 2018. I still
upload to 500px now and then.
LikeLike
Ha! The chaps over at the Economist read my blog. They must do. No possible explanation for them publishing this today, other than to support my argument…! 🙂
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/10/14/why-films-have-become-so-ridiculously-long?utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry you’re feeling sickly Gary, oddly enough the last time I was really sick was at the very beginning of Covid and not my usual runny nose. Hopefully you will recover sufficiently enough to stagger over to turn up the heat. They say whiskey and honey are a good cure for colds but not good for staggering.
We turned on the heat this week a few times too but we don’t let it run all the time as we have a heat pump which is very effective. When we moved house we decided to get natural gas installed for our heating needs instead of baseboard heaters as in other homes we’ve lived in. Gas prices have risen in the past few years but it has still remained affordable for us. The only downside is that we pay for the equipment rental we haven’t used for the past seven months. The upside though is it’s there at the flick of a switch. For instance we used half a gigajoule last March for heating, a mere $2.58 but our actual bill was just under $21 due to equipment rental and green and environmental fee’s and taxes etc. The bill for February was ten bucks more. Now get this, that two dollars and fifty eight cents heated a nearly 3000 square foot house! A pal of mine in Dublin has oil central heating and his oil doubled in price since last year.
You could say the savings could go towards a new iPhone…
LikeLike
We’re hoping to move from our flat into a new property next year, if everything goes according to plan. I’d very much like a new build end-terraced or semi-detached with solar panels and a heat pump. And a charger for a new electric car. This is the future…
LikeLiked by 1 person
We moved, er downsized to a larger house in December of 2017, it wasn’t intentional as we were hoping to get a three bedroomed bungalow (rancher for our North American readers) but the usual suspects on offer were of dubious quality and I suspect as a last resort our real estate agent showed us a hole in a field offering a possible alternative and we viewed a show house. Modern houses have better insulation which is just as well because the rooms are much larger than European offerings well compared to our home in Dublin anyway.
At our last house I spent about four hours cutting grass a week sometimes more but this one has a much smaller footprint surrounded by gravel and a strip of grass I can cut in four minutes. I’m thinking of converting that to a European style patio next year.. I’d say semi detached would be quieter and better than a terrace, the rooms would be bigger and you might have a decent garden for entertaining if that’s your wont. A heat pump is a worthy expense but I’m not so sure about solar cells. They tend to deteriorate and lose their ability to generate useful current especially on cloudy days. Of course products are improving all the time.
LikeLike