The Weather - What's it Doing?

Temperatures in Southern Europe have been almost bursting the thermometers. US scientists have confirmed the commencement of an El Niño weather event, fearing it could push the world through the 1.5-degree milestone. In the meantime, our moderate climate has produced nothing but storm clouds and rain. It's not fair. Isn't it?

The jet stream is the cause of our mid-summer woes here in the UK. After one of the hottest Junes on record, the Jet Stream has been stuck in the same position, and we cannot see that changing in the coming weeks.

The Jet Stream is what gives the UK and Ireland our moderate climate. Should you draw a line through the middle of the UK on a globe, you will find that we are on a similar latitude to Moscow. We have seen the sort of winter weather that Moscow had. If we had that weather here, it would bring the country to a complete stop for months.

During our summer months, we get warmer weather courtesy of the Jet Stream. 

Temperature differences in the atmosphere cause weather patterns. Those lead to pressure differences and, when combined with the rotation of the Earth, move air around the globe, which we perceive as wind. The prevailing jet stream runs from West to East and shifts North to South according to the seasons. High and Low pressures are what cause our weather. Unfortunately, recently, the weather depression has meant that a low weather depression has dominated our weather system. Hopefully, they will get moving soon to bring better weather to us.  

With the confirmation of the El Niño event, we can look forward to many strange and unsettled weather events in the future. Australia could experience more significant drought risks, more rain to the southern US states and a weakening of subcontinental monsoons. All of which will affect economies.

It's a British tradition to talk about the weather. I'm sure other countries talk about it too, just about different problems with the weather. 

Still, I'm optimistic; I'm taking my bathers and sunnies on holiday. 

Do we need a 'Dig for Victory' campaign in the 21st Century?

A gentle knock on our front door at home causes Murphy, our Westie, Poo, to create such a racket; it would drown out a Black Sabbath concert. He then dashes upstairs and takes post on his usual perch, a sofa and that's another story.

This time it is our lovely neighbour opposite our house, Jack, who has popped around with a box of veggies and fruits from his allotment. Murphy is his friend and soon gets his obligatory tickles at the front door. Jack is a talented gardener and is pleased to share the results of his labours despite struggling with his dodgy hip, now thankfully replaced and pain-free...ish. We have had all sorts of beautiful vegetables, and they are so full of flavour and so much fresher than you can buy at the supermarkets.

Jack was proud earlier in the season when he bought us some asparagus, his first time growing them. They were delicious, and they are a vegetable that we quite often have when they are in season. And therein lies the secret, Jack's produce is in the season as it should be.

At the moment, flood inflation for the weeks to July 9th 2023, is 14.9%. That means anything bought for £1 last year will cost you almost £1.15 now. The Government tries to temper that by claiming that food inflation has slowed over the previous four months. However, that still equates to roughly a yearly increase of £300 for your food shopping alone this year. It's still incredibly high.

My Father, throughout his married life, was a gardener. Dad always tended the vegetable garden in the 60s and 70s, an extremely tight time for our family. Mum rarely had to buy many vegetables during the weekly shop; everything was seasonal and tasted terrific. Dad even supplemented our protein input by breading rabbits at the bottom of the garden that were undoubtedly not fluffy pets.

Those memories also bring to mind the wartime years in this country, and, no, I'm not that old before you ask. 'Dig for Victory' was the well-known cry. Food production and encouraged in all available spaces. The Public left behind after mobilisation dug gardens. The Government ordered that all available land be turned over for food production. Even then, there was a significant reliance on imported food, especially grain from North America. The Battle of the Atlantic was an immense problem for shipping. Rationing improved the country's health, a statistic kept quiet for some time. By the end of the war and rationing, food prices had risen by 20%. Considering five years of war and the rebuilding of the economy afterwards, it puts to shame the effects of barely three years of Brexit.

This summer, we have had a couple of troughs of salad leaves, which has saved a couple of trips to the supermarket. When I lived in Dartmouth, I did manage, one summer, to grow a large selection of vegetables in containers on a veranda outside of my flat. That kept me going all through that summer. Although an amusing story, one day, I found that my dog Molly had buried her bone underneath my onion sets. 

I'm sure that the ground in our small back garden is nutrient rich enough for a good crop of vegetables, but if things don't improve, we will all be considering containing growing next spring.

There's so much writing...I'd better get on with it

 

I wrote back in April about the demise of a Writers Forum magazine. That magazine was my favourite of the two that I was subscribing to. 

The remaining magazine took up the 'slack' for the Writers Forum subscribers. I was a little upset by the editor's column the following month as it was a little triumphal, in my opinion.

In this month's edition, which I received this week, it is interesting that they have run several articles about freelance writing. It is an attempt to open up the opportunities available for writers. 

My writing focus of late had been towards my novel (more later), and my efforts for magazine and website articles have taken to a period of purdah. These articles have once again piqued my interest in pieces, and I already have some ideas in mind. I need to dig around for places where I might pitch these ideas, so that's another writing task to put onto the productivity spreadsheet.

Getting to Thursday evenings with an idea of what to write about for this blog has become a habit over the last month. I must sit down and list subjects for the coming weeks. I need to write two further blog pieces this week and schedule them for publication whilst I am on holiday, in case I don't have sufficient internet access.

My novel Beasting Dartmoor is coming into a critical phase, for me at least. I'm in the middle of the final word count I aim to achieve. A floppy middle of the story is something that I don't wish. I'm writing slower than usual because I'm trying to achieve the correct pace for the story and inject more intrigue and excitement.

There's still no light at the end of the tunnel just yet for the story. However, I'm starting to think about what I need to be doing towards the end of the year when, hopefully, it's the editing and proofreading stages getting ready for publication. And there's lots more to do too!

I started this year by promising to move this blog across to a more suitable blogging platform. I want to be able to start using the Mars Edit app to write and publish a blog each time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Blogger. My current bedtime read is SEO for Dummies, also for this project.

After a Three Biscuit post by William Gallagher last week and an online chat with him, I'm considering producing a Youtube promotional video for my novel.

There we are. That's my writing thoughts this week. I have a lot to do in the next week. My first target is to get through an exciting bit for the middle of the story and bust the 35k word count. One way I can do that this weekend is to join William's Write-in hour on Sunday. Then I've got those blogs written. I'd better get on with it.

It's only spelling, isn't it?

 

A few days ago, an article on the BBC website caused my 'shock horror' gene to get a little workout this week.

'Only Fans Account billboards in London streets spark complaints' 

See what I mean? Probably not what you are thinking either!

Only Fans, Not that one, each to their own and all that, change the parental settings on your router will sort any problems with that particular problem.

No, it is the word billboards that has got me rankled. It first reminds me of that great film 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That also got me thinking, 'That's an American word.'

Off I went to check, and sure enough, billboard is an Americanism dating back to 1850 to 1855. In this country, we usually refer to them as advertising hoardings.

English is an ever-evolving language. We can see how it has evolved by following Suzi Dent, the famous lexicographer, on Twitter. The root of nearly all our words comes from such references as Latin, greek and, quite a few, Germanic.

It does annoy me when I see spellings such as color, favor and harbor turning up in writing that purports to have come from Britain.

I'm not against American spellings or American English as I have often heard it referred to; I have submitted pieces to American websites. It's a bit of a job to do that. After outlining the piece and getting the go-ahead to write it, I have to change the settings on my spell checker and run it through again. That's not so bad with a 500-word article, but I'd hate to do that for a 90-100k word novel.

I really like my U's in the correct place, and I am not a frequent user of Z'. It's maths (from mathematics), not math, and while we're at it, it's zed, not zee.

Links:

BBC Story - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66097347

Dictionary  - www.dictionary.com

How Beasting Dartmoor is progressing and a few secrets...maybe ;)

 

I thought about the blog for this week, and this week I am giving you an update on how my Novel in a Year stuff is going.

Beasting Dartmoor has reached a significant milestone in getting to thirty thousand words. I'm now ahead of where I expected to be, enabling me to take a bit of a breather.

I say breather, but not quite, as you may imagine. I will continue to write daily, especially during my weekly Zoom session with William and other writers on Sunday afternoons. I will now have time to flesh out a plan for the story to go forward and catch up with the admin-type things that happen behind the scenes while writing a book. That's something readers only ever partly hear about.

I've been able to have 5000 words of the first three chapters edited. It is the first time I have had my prose looked at in this way, and it was very daunting too. I'm used to magazine editors going through my articles. That is a very different process. I have gone through the edits for the Prologue, and I was astounded that my words could start to look like a proper book. Whether it reads like one is another matter. I will now edit the rest of the 5k words.

One of the tasks I shall catch up on is the character sheets. I have long teased colleagues at work that I'm writing them all into the characters, and I always leave my notebook in view. I have a secluded place on the grounds of the community hospital where I work, where I write for half an hour at lunchtime if the weather is nice. The other day I was sitting at the table I use, and a couple of walkers asked if they could join me. They were getting their picnic out of their rucksacks, and I popped out my notebook and warned them that I was a writer and there was a possibility that they may appear in my book. Thankfully, they did see the funny side. Will my colleagues recognise themselves as characters?  

Although there is still a long way to go with the book, I aim to be finished and ready for editing and proofreading towards the end of the year or early in 2024.

Thank you to all of you who take the time to read these blogs. A few people have reached out to me and told me that they do, and I find that very humbling.

We are going camping again this weekend, and I hope to spend a relaxing weekend writing…fingers crossed.

My Limited Take On This Years Apple World Wide Developers Conference

Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) took place in the first week of this month. This much anticipated annual event from Apple is where they announce new products and software updates that will be upcoming in the rest of the year. For weeks prior, rumour abounds, and invariably, there quite wide of the mark, except this year. The word on the street was that Apple would announce their Vision Pro Headset, a first for the company, and sure enough, they did!

Before I comment too much about the Vision Pro headset, I need to tell you about the update in Operating Systems, which will be available from around October this year.

The new Mac OS is called Sonoma (it could be a joke somewhere). It's currently out for Beta Testing, and from what I have picked up, the reaction is quietly positive. I know problems have rendered some machines dead in the water, but that is what beta testing is all about. Sonoma will only be available for older Macs and seems aimed at their newer silicon versions. It would be worth a check before downloading to see if your Mac is compatible.

 One of the new apps that has come to my attention is Journal. It is a new Apple journalling app. It will hit the Day One journaling app that I use pretty hard, although one professional freelance writer that I know will not use Day One after a severe issue with it losing a lot of his data. It has made me consider saving my journals to another source before the update. 

Of course, there will be many updates and new features.

For IOS users, there will be IOS17. There are over forty plus updates and enhancements. The list of iPhones that will be able to take this update must be dwindling, and my 5SE will need help to handle the update.

Before WWDC, there was the long-wished-for announcement of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. I've seen mixed opinions of both of these. They are slightly stripped-down versions of those available on MacBooks and seem different from what users had wished for. Newcomers to both apps on the iPad will see things differently.

Ok, now to the elephant in the room, the Vision Pro Headset. A totally new direction for Apple, and as always, they have come up with something different. They are not your run-of-the-mill VR headsets, certainly not at the price point of £3500. They will do all the VR things, and you can even immerse yourself in Apple TV (can't you just watch the TV for that). Their strangest feature is the eyes you can see on the front of them. They're your eyes too. Not that you are looking through the headset, It's some clever engineering that's using cameras inside the headset. It's pretty strange

To round up, then. A lot is coming up for developers to get their teeth into. There will be the usual refreshing of Apple's current lines, a new 15-inch MacBook Pro. There isn't any advanced chatter about new silicon chips. The M1 and M2, and their Pro versions, continue to give remarkable performance. Unfortunately, latency built into the Intel versions of MacBooks and iPads will likely see them consigned to history over the next 12 months.

Thank you for reading. I will now go back to writing the novel and maybe a cup of coffee to wake me up. 

A Weekends Camping.

After teasing you with my camping prospects last week, this week's blog had to be inevitable. I had some other ideas for this week's post, and this came out as the best one to write. I'll drop a line or two at the end of this piece about next week's post.

We are having a reasonable period of sunny weather in this country. The one thing spoiling it is that the high-pressure system has been high up in the Irish Sea, which has allowed winds to come in from the east, making it somewhat cooler, certainly on the East Coast.

The winds didn't deter us, and last Friday afternoon, we set off to the campsite with the car laden to the gunnels with gear. With our family guests delayed by traffic on the way down from Hampshire, this would give us the time to put up our newly acquired tent without too much attention.

I had spent many hours pouring over several YouTube posts on how to pitch the Kampa Hayling 4 Air tent and felt quietly confident that I could have assembled it by the time anybody arrived. That confidence took a bit of a knock when we opened up the footprint to find two pieces. I pegged one down with all the bravado of a seasoned camper. However, my wife wasn't so sure. She wasn't convinced even when I explained my thoughts. 

We got the tent out for the first time and pegged it down on top of the footprint, still needing to be convinced we were doing the right thing. We then started to pump the tent up after a couple of aborted attempts because we had the valve the wrong way around (can you see how this is going?), we pumped the tent up successfully and managed to guy it out reasonably quickly despite the rocky ground underneath the surface. Most of all, our guests were impressed when they eventually arrived.

All was going well until bedtime. It was starting to get chilly, as it does this time of year, something that we weren't prepared for. Also, some bright spark had suggested that we shouldn't pump the bed up so far, which would stop us from bouncing around when either of us turned over. Both accounts lead to an uncomfortable night, and for me to have an exceptionally aching back. A trip down into Sidmouth, purchasing a mattress topper, and blowing up said mattress fully gave us a much better night's sleep on Saturday.

All in all, we had an enjoyable first outing with our new camping gear. So much so we have booked to return in a couple of weeks; we should then be fully up to speed before our ten days in Cornwall next month.

That's this week's piece. I hope you have enjoyed it. It might be a bit mundane for some, but it certainly was an adventure for us.

This week Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) took place. It is a much anticipated annual occurrence, and there was much speculation about what Apple would announce and launch later this year. 

You may have seen a few things about WWDC online and in the press. Next week, I plan to have a blog about my view of this year's announcements for you to read.

Have a great week. Whatever you do, try to read more and write more. It's great for the well-being. Go on and give it a go.