Statistics

7 January 2011 12:36

I used to work in an Information and Statistics department in the National Health Service,so I’m well aware that things are often very different from what they would first appear.

Which would explain why the Scottish Government is claiming that the influenza rates are much lower than they were at this time last year. The young people in my own family have been hit badly by the flu this year, from my sister’s grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to my own sons who were ill at Christmas and they are in their 20s. As none of the older folks have succumbed we’re presuming that it is the swine flu.

Duncan got it really badly and by Hogmanay most of his friends had it too. They crawled out of their beds to celebrate the New Year at ‘the bells’ but they didn’t have any energy and Duncan ended up coming home not long afterwards, clutching a bit of coal to bring us good luck for the coming year.

Due to the fact that it all happened over the Christmas period nobody has been to see a doctor, so they won’t appear in any statistics. It can take two weeks to get an appointment anyway, unless they think that you might die, so people tend just to stay at home and cosset themselves until they feel better.

So unless Fife has been more badly hit than the rest of Scotland I think we can take the statistics with a pinch of salt.

I’m also annoyed by the weather statistics because the weather people keep telling us that it should be about 2 or 3 Celsius here but my garden is telling me something very different. It’s still frozen solid and it has been like that since November. It was -12 C in Dunfermline during the day not long ago but according to the weather report it wasn’t anything like that cold.

Apparently it was the coldest December in Scotland since records began 100 years ago. I definitely believe that statistic!

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Categories: Current Affairs, Local interest, Rant, Weather

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Condensing gas boiler

16 December 2010 22:06

We had a new condensing gas boiler installed last year at great expense – £3,500 to be precise. We renewed our boiler because the old one was about 40 years old, very noisy and expensive to run. However when we opted for a condensing boiler (actually British Gas didn’t give us any choice) nobody told us that the damn things seize up in the cold. They sense a blockage and shut down.

Last week we were without heating and hot water for a day because the outlet pipe which drains water from the system to the outside froze up. This is what happens in cold weather apparently!

Have you ever heard of anything so daft? So on the very coldest days when you most need central heating it’s very likely that it won’t be working. There are actually people holding hot water bottles to their boiler pipes in an effort to stop them from freezing.

Despite the fact that the heating has been all day, it still froze up as the temperature plummeted even more this evening. We’re thankful that we have a gas fire in the living room and we’re wrapped in blankets sitting in front of it, taking turns on our Netbook.

At some point we’re going to have to brave our ice-box of a bedroom though. I’m tempted to buy an electric blanket or at least hot water bottles. Even if it does make me feel absolutely ancient.

We’ll be having the family back here for the Christmas/Hogmanay holidays and if the heating freezes up then – you’ll be able to hear me screaming, even if you’re on the other side of the world!

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Categories: Rant, Weather

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Scottish words: smirr

15 December 2010 23:46

We get a lot of rain in Scotland, of all different sorts. I think that smirr is the most annoying kind because when you look out of the window it’s very difficult to see it. It doesn’t really fall like ordinary rain and so it has no sound and if you aren’t careful it’ll fool you into thinking that it’s just another grey, dreich day. But if you venture outside in smirry rain and you aren’t dressed for wet weather – before you know it you’ll be drookit, drenched, right through to your knickers! It reaches places that ordinary rain doesn’t reach.

Smirr seems to be a Scottish phenomenon, my eldest brother has lived in the Netherlands for the whole of his adult life and although it’s damp there too, smirry rain is unknown to them.

In Ian Rankin’s book Black and Blue he describes smirr as being a fine spray-mist, which is a fair description I suppose. I’ve always thought of it as very low transparent cloud. Whatever it is – it’s very wet.

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Categories: Scottish words, Weather

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Winter garden

12 December 2010 23:44

This is how my garden looked after the first heavy snowfall, as you can see I had hoped to hang some washing out, hence the annoying washing line. I like to get the fresh air at stuff but in the past I’ve had to prise the clothes from the line and prop the stiff as a board washing up against furniture until it thaws.

I think it’s about 6 inches deep here but it did reach about 15 inches and I didn’t venture out in it again after nearly breaking my neck just going out to the bin with rubbish. The snow was solid ice by then. Speaking of which – none of our bins has been emptied for weeks now because of the roads, so fingers crossed that they can get to us this week before the snow hits us again. The forecasters are promising us more snow at the end of the week, and it’s below freezing again.

My greenhouse door is frozen shut. The same thing happened last year and the cold weather went on so long that my oldest cactus plant died. It was quite sad really because I bought it when I was only 11 so it was about 40 years old. The cacti had been fine in there over the whole winter in previous years.

This is a photograph of a local school. If you look carefully at the lower roof you can see the damage which was caused when a lot of thawing snow slipped onto it – £80,000 worth of damage apparently!

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Categories: Gardening, Weather

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Weather update

7 December 2010 12:13

I realised that the schools were going to be shut again yesterday (Monday) when I had to make a freezing foray to the loo at 6 o’clock in the morning, and discovered that it was snowing heavily again. We had had very little snow during the whole weekend and hoped that the worst was over, but no such luck. So the schools in Fife were closed for a week and a day. They opened today though which is just as well, it’s all very well having to be closed for a wee while but there are exams coming up and a teaching schedule to work through.

Last night we made our last trip through to Dundee with yet more stuff from Duncan’s room, it’s amazing how much there was. I wasn’t looking forward to the journey, remembering the last time. But D. was back living with us because he didn’t have his computer and needed help with putting his new tv together. He’s sorted out now thankfully.

The roads to Dundee were still ridiculous and we haven’t seen a gritter yet this year. The councils ran out of salt and grit last year because of the very cold and long winter and it looks like they are determined not to run out of them again, in fact they’re just not using the stuff.

The worst of this new snow has fallen on the central region and there have been hundreds of people stranded on the main motorway through Scotland. People have been stuck in their cars for over 24 hours in some places. The problem seems to have started with articulated lorries which jack-knifed in the ice, blocking the roads. I think they’re planning to get the army out there to give a helping hand, I certainly hope so anyway.

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Categories: Local interest, Weather

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A Snowy Beveridge Park

5 December 2010 00:31

We managed to get a wee bit of a walk around this park today and for some reason it was almost deserted. What has happened to all the kids?

Maybe they’ve been busy playing in the park all week as the schools were closed and they’re fed up with it all now, but there wasn’t any evidence of them, no snowmen at all. Had they all been dragged to the shops by parents keen to get Christmas shopping done?

As you can see, the pond has frozen over and there were footprints in the snow which is on top of the ice but it really isn’t safe to walk on it as I’m sure it isn’t thick enough.

The weather forecast is predicting another very cold week ahead for us so it might be as bad as last year was. You can see here a photograph of the park which was taken during the Christmas holidays last year.

This is the refurbished fountain which had to be taken apart during the so called summer because somebody forgot to turn the water off last year and the resulting ice must have damaged it. It doesn’t look nearly so nice now and I suppose it’ll take a few years for it to weather nicely.

Strangely there doesn’t seem to be nearly so much snow in the park as there is in the streets and gardens.

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Categories: Local interest, Weather

Weather update

2 December 2010 23:44

According to the news report tonight it’s colder here than it is in Iceland and Scandinavia, we seem to have got all their snow, but it doesn’t feel too bad when you’re out walking in it. By the time we trudged through the snow from the town today we actually felt too hot, we were laden with more household necessities for Duncan’s new place.

There hasn’t been much snow today and we’re hoping that we’ll be able to drive through to Dundee tomorrow with more stuff and maybe order ‘white goods’ – the most boring things, to my mind anyway.

However, the temperature here is set to plummet to -6 degrees Celsius which I believe is 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit. So the roads are just going to ice up completely and it might be too dodgy to venture out in the car.

The schools are still closed and I’m sure they won’t be open tomorrow, they’ve only ever been closed for two days in a row before but we have had it a lot colder, in the past we’ve suffered -18 degrees Celsius and the fact that there isn’t much wind at the moment is good but on the other hand I suppose that’s why we’ve got this weather front stuck over us and going nowhere.

I’m glad that we aren’t any further north though because it’s going to be -27 degrees Celsius tonight, which is -16.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m sure a lot of people have to cope with weather a lot worse than this but we just aren’t used to snow which stays around for a while. When I was a wee girl we didn’t have snow for years and years, which I was quite happy about because on the rare occasion when it did snow – it turned to slush in about half an hour.

This is the fourth bad winter that we’ve had in a row so it looks like we’re going to have to get used to it in the future.

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Categories: Local interest, Weather

Win-terrrrr

1 December 2010 22:51

We just had to bite the bullet yesterday and despite the horrendous weather we hired a van and made our way to the flat pack furniture shop beloved by many that is Ikea. The journey there was pretty hairy because so much snow had fallen. Duncan has taken the week off work and as luck would have it all of the schools in Fife are closed so my husband was able to drive the van. The worst nasty moment was when we crashed into a roundabout and ended up spinning around and pointing in the wrong direction but we managed to get out of that situation and carried on to Edinburgh.

Our plans for a leisurely look around the store and having a late lunch there before buying everything required were shot to bits when they announced that the store was closing in one hour not long after we got there. So it was a mad dash roung gathering up beds and bookcases and such before being chucked out and having to brave the roads again.

It was a slow journey back to Kirkcaldy with the snow coming at us, on and off. Then when we got back home we just threw some food down our necks, loaded some more stuff into the van and set off for Dundee and Duncan’s new flat.

I hate roundabouts. We skated around them and at times it was really terrifying as the van didn’t really like any change in direction, it’s just lucky that there was hardly anybody else on the roads. The snow was even worse when we got to Dundee and the van got stuck in the entrance road to Duncan’s place so we just had to unload all the stuff and trudge through the snow which was about a foot deep. Then up to the second floor flat – no fun at all.

My husband said we’re getting too old for such shenanigans, and I think he might be right. We had to dig ourselves out in the end, with the help of some very good neighbours and a dog.

The journey back to Kirkcaldy was very scary especially when a blizzard hit us and we couldn’t even see the road at times. I dreaded seeing the lights of up-coming roundabouts in the distance. But we made it, and returned the hired van unscathed.

During that marathon journey in three different counties we only saw one snow plough and it had the plough bit raised so it wasn’t doing anything. We saw no gritters at all.

We had to travel across the scary Forth Road Bridge twice yesterday, but today it has been closed for the first time since it was opened in 1962 – which just shows you how bad the weather has been. It’s quite depressing really as we have a long way to go till the end of the winter. It used to be very rare for us to get snow before Christmas but winter seems to come earlier each year now – and stays with us longer, and summer is non-existent.

This is a photo of a very disgruntled bird which appeared in my garden after our first fall of snow. I think it’s a snipe, but I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a bird like this here before, it’s definitely some sort of wading bird and the poor thing seemed to think that the snow was sand because it kept poking its enormous bill into it and was very disappointed to find nothing it could eat.

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Categories: Local interest, Weather

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Weather update

16 September 2010 23:49

We’ve been struggling against really high winds for the last week or so. The big problem for ‘the high heid yins’ was- How are we going to stop the red carpet from blowing away when the Pope lands at Edinburgh airport for his state visit?

In the end they had to give up the idea of a red carpet altogether. The wind had died down a lot by the time the Pope got here although I heard recently that Britain is the windiest place in the world, so it probably seemed bad to people used to a more moderate climate.

The week before last we had lovely sunny weather and it only rained during the night and early in the morning, in fact it was nearly that mythical ‘Indian summer’ that we’re all always hoping for.

But tonight we were out and about in Dundee, helping our eldest with his hunt for a flat there and it was absolutely freezing, there’s a ground frost expected in places. Hopefully not here though because I haven’t got the tender plants in from the garden yet.

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Categories: Weather

Weather update

30 August 2010 13:33

The weather forecaster is saying that there is a chance of a ground frost tomorrow. If that is the case then it means that there hasn’t been a frost free month during the whole of the last year.

It’s feeling distinctly chilly now and the trees in my garden are all beginning to look autumnal. I like autumn, in fact it’s my favourite season, but when we’ve had hardly any summer weather at all it’s only natural that you hope for a bit of an ‘Indian Summer’ in September.

I think it’s a bit of a forlorn hope though and I’m beginning to wonder why I bothered to change from the winter duvet to the summer one. Maybe next year I won’t do it and that will guarantee us a sweltering summer! By sweltering I mean about 70F.

Nowadays autumn seems to last for only a few days and then we go straight into winter with a BANG. But I always think of John Keats now and his Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Ode to Autumn

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