Sarah Jane

First of all my grateful thanks to all who read and followed the instructions on my Blip yesterday, To those that dísobeyed, you are forgiven but don't expect any mercy in forthcoming years,,,, and years .... and

Have to start off the new year with another rule-breaking photo, this time from my son J, in Worthing or I think more exactly somewhere between Shoreham and Lancing. My hat off to him for getting out today on Mini-Beast-from-the-East day despite having celebrated St Patrick's Day well into the early hours.

I wouldn't put J in the fanatic sportsman, nor indeed the keen sportsman category but he does have quite a thing about getting out on his "Black Beauty" MTB several times a week and 52 weeks a year. Well excluding holidays abroad but even then he tends to grab a bike and do something as indeed he did here in the summer and up and down some volcanic island in the Atlantic in 2017. This week he has been out three times for around a total of 6 hours and clocked up a very, for him,  modest 100km, This year over a 1,000km and 10,000 metres of altitude,

I think he has had a target of around 4,300km/year which he achieved last year riding on 132 days of the year for an average of 2 hours a ride and up the equivalent of Everest 6.6 times.

Since getting my new phone in April last year, I see I have done about 1.7m steps (there are quite a few days missing) but I do have the motivation of dogs to get my lazy backside off the sofa from time to time.

In his shoes, I wouldn't have done the 40 odd kilometres today and certainly not taken off my gloves to take a photo. Leaning against "Sarah Jane" is his Black Beauty, Perhaps next time he should try Worthing beach and look out for boat "L193" or better known as "Lindy Lou". There are "Laura"s in Belfast and Scotland but for the moment I think a little too far even for him.

It's been icy cold here today, not getting above -3°C and on both morning and evening walks, the wind chill temperature was shown at -10°C. I hadn't realised there was a wind this morning but this evening we stayed in the forest for a bit of shelter from Ivan the horrible.

I nearly Bliped a very boring photo of our empty 6,000 kg wood pellet tank. Yesterday suddenly realised the motor doing the morning automatic refill was taking its time. I had hoped we would have enough to get us to April when we could rely solely on PV energy to heat boiler with free electricity. Will now use small 15kg sacks and order a full tank in summer when the prices ought to be cheaper. PV was doing good service this week but is now covered in snow again.

But as for all forms of energy, the suppliers will say the $ is high, the Nepalese Yak too low, global warming, Beast from the East, Dutch Elm disease... has forced them to increase the price.

I watched a wonderful, partly light-hearted, TV programme about the 70s in Germany and the world from a German perspective. For each and every problem we face today, there was an almost identical problem back then. The Palestinian terrorists were murdering Olympic Israeli athletes in Munich, hijacking planes, the neo-Nazis were assassinating the Far-Left 1968 student leaders, the neo-Communist German RAF gang were kidnapping and killing leading businessmen and politicians, the Syrians and Egyptians went to war against Israel, the Vietnam war raging, women not allowed to work without permission from their husbands, open sexist treatment of women that one simply cannot believe, even in these Weinstein days, open racism, abortion banned in Germany. The list goes on and on. BUT there were Clacker balls, Bonanza push bikes (those ET ones with gear shift on the crossbar and chopper handlebars), the very first electric calculator costing 1,250 DM (€600) and even TV programmes teaching one how to use them. Young female contestant on a Saturday night TV game show wearing  see-through top and no bra, platform shoes which were initially thought to be only for homosexuals, hippies, the sexual revolution, Playmobil (unless your parents were hippies and insisted you only played with wooden toys) and of course some great music as well as Abba and the start of "Disco" music ....

Crazy times. I guess every generation has these memories but somehow I think as a 16-year-old in 1970, I didn't have the pressure the equivalent youngsters have today. And maybe many of us misused this over the next 40+ years and created much of the problems today. Maybe not.