Under leaden skies.

The Milky Way - Incredible isn't it?

Having no weekend isn't very good prep for the week and I've been lost all this week. On Tuesday I thought it was going to be Saturday the next day and confused people by saying so. It was a good enough week. I had two enjoyable early morning cycles to work in a twinkling frosty wonder-land - and rather hesitant cycles home in the dark on icy paths, watching out for ice and also for ropes.

Some numpties strung a rope across the cycle path last week and took a woman off her bike. Fortunately there was no major harm done but it breaks the trust - you know. My immediate reaction on hearing this was to think we should hunt down the perpetrators and either string them up with their own rope or drag them behind a car with the same rope until they looked like a beef in a butcher's shop window.

Oops. Easy girl. That's how wars are started.

It's hard to really see what anyone would get out of that though. You know. Lets take someone off their bike and hurt them. Maybe it'll damage their bike too. Then they'll be sore for a few weeks and it'll be inconvenient. If they don't have much money maybe they won't be able to get their bike fixed. Then they can start taking public transport to work. They'll become a bit less fit. Maybe they'll have to use the failing NHS a bit more. The waiting times at the GPs will go up a bit. Maybe they'll take some time off sick and their colleagues will start to feel the strain too. Maybe someone else will go off sick too from trying to cover two jobs at the same time. Happy days.
Or maybe they'll just lose confidence and feel like the world isn't a safe place and stop cycling for that reason. I need to stop. I'm getting back to my "string them up" as a solution.

So anyway. I actually think quite a few of the cyclists on the cycle path behave pretty badly too. Since I'm telling the world off, I might as well say about that too. Some of the cyclists get way aggressive. Their style of cycling is bullying. There are families with small children also using the cycle-paths and I've seen cyclists cycle far too fast, far too close, presumably out of some sense of entitlement that it's their path. I don't like that either. And I have a hypothesis that whoever put up that stupid rope had been harassed in some way by a cyclist and didn't have the sense to realise that not all cyclists are the same.

"Thanks for telling us off."

You're welcome.

Anyway. I was in something of a woolly dwam all week. Blogger is underlining that, questioning my integrity as a speller but I've googled it, and it's in the Oxford English Dictionary. I was in a state of semi-consciousness or reverie for much of the week. Something about the cold and not being out in the light and the long hours of darkness, and no time off pulling me underground.

So it was good to get out to the beach today. We were both sleepy. Dawdled along. Talked rubbish. It didn't seem that dark when we were out but looking at the photos you can see that it was. It's really just a glorified twilight.

I've handed in all my essay stuff so I can relax for a little while.

Evening things call.