Summertime….

…and the living is – decidedly iffy up north.

That little puppy on the south coast of Ireland is what is going to be bringing more wet and windy weather to the UK this weekend on top of the flooding they have already had.

Ordinarily, the prevailing meteorological conditions 6000 miles… away would have little or no effect on my psyche, but this time next week, I’ll be there and I would appreciate it if things could sort themselves out by then.

Kthxbye.

UPDATE: The poor start to the British summer is due to the jetstream “a fast-moving ribbon of air about six miles above the surface of the Earth, which varies in position and speed throughout the year due to large temperature contrasts”, being too far south. I have also found myself being too far south at times, a situation I remedied by going further north. I would thus implore the jetstream to please consider doing the same.

Weather news from afar

While we are having a rather wet and windy day in Cape Town, according to Sky News it seems that the UK is bracing itself for equally nasty weather over the days ahead.

Gale force winds and heavy rain are forecast to lash many parts of the country today as stormy conditions, usually only experienced in the autumn and winter, hit the UK.
The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for south-west England from early afternoon, with gusts of up to 70mph expected on exposed coasts and headlands in Devon and Cornwall.
Through tonight and Friday the centre of the storm will move slowly north east to south Wales and many parts of southern England as well as the South West, again with a risk of gales. Many places could see gusts of between 55 and 65mph, while as far north as Northumberland could be hit by the Atlantic storm.
Heavy rain is also due to fall over much of England over the next 48 hours.

Sounds divine. Glad I’m not headed there anytime soon.

Wait. What?

I’m no fan of seeing summers ruined, but some of the comments did make me smile:

Here’s coronakid with his/her take on it:

Nothing new here,the seasons are changing and have been over time.

The seasons are changing? Really? Hoodathunkit?
But you’re right – it seems like they’ve been doing that forever.

Strega weighs in with:

I put all this down to the volcano erupting in Iceland last year. Unusually hot summer but when all the hot air rises and cools the ash becomes cold and rain and wind occur.

That’ll be last year as in 2010, presumably? Did you perhaps fall asleep and miss 2011 completely?
And look, I’m no meteorologist, but I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and I can find completely no scientific evidence that cold ash causes rain and wind to occur. I think you’re talking utter pants.

But what does the so called scientific world know anyway?
Hit us with it, Joseph Bennett:

The globel warming lot will no dought blame it on us again but no one in the so called scientific world have never thought of the positions of the planets in the last few years they have been closer to us which will affect our planet

Where. To. Begin.

Well, for starters, I’m pretty sure that no astronomers (part of the so called scientific world last time I checked) have never thought of the positions of the planets in the last few years. That’s their job and I can’t believe that they’d be so remiss as to not not never think of the positions of the planets in the last few years. That’s an awfully long time span not to do your job for.

But, that aside, I’m also struggling with the link between the proximity (noted or not by the so call scientific world) of the planets and a bit of wind and rain sweeping across southern England. Could they not find somewhere else to make it happen? Or maybe even do something a little more significant? Massive galactic explosions? Alien invasion?
Come now, if they’re going to make all the effort of being closer to us, I’d expect to see something a bit more spectacular than some gusty drizzle in Exeter.

Sky News comments could just be the new Southern Suburbs Tatler

Secrets of the fixture computer

After a question from @chickenruby yesterday evening, I found myself wandering back onto Paul Fletcher’s 2009 blog post, detailing the immense amount of thought that has to go into organising the fixtures for the English football leagues. Thankfully, Paul did the work so we don’t have to:

I wanted to find out exactly how the fixture list is put together and just how difficult a job it is. Needless to say, I spent a large chunk of last weekend in a dark and cool room as my brain tried to come to terms with its most serious case of information overload since I asked my wife to point out my most obvious flaws.

There’s a bit more to it than simply ensuring that The Mighty Blades and the snort-beasts from S6 don’t end up playing at home on the same day:

Putting the fixture list together is incredibly complex – with a whole series of factors ensuring it is an increasingly difficult task.

Just to give you one example; every club is paired with another in regard to when they play their home and away fixtures. This is done for a number of reasons, one being so that clubs like Everton and Liverpool do not play at home on the same weekend.

West Ham, it turns out, are paired with Dagenham and Redbridge. But for reasons of revenue Southend request they do not play at home on the same day as the Hammers as they believe it impacts upon their attendance.

Southend, though, are in Essex, as are Colchester, so they cannot play together on the same weekend. Colchester share stewards with Ipswich so those two clubs also request they do not play home games on the same weekend. Transport links dictate Ipswich and Norwich do not play together on the same weekend either. In other words, when West Ham play at home can have an impact on when a club as far away as Norwich (108.8 miles) play their home fixtures.

And there are 12 other professional clubs in London…

But if you think that that describes the full complexity of the system, think again. Because then you have to avoid fixtures clashing with European games, International friendlies, World Cup qualifiers, English cup competitions, big local events and the like. Then you want to limit the amount of distance fans have to travel on public holidays when public transport options may be limited.

And then there’s the individual requests of each club.

As Fletcher notes:

…it must be an agonising, head-scratching process that slowly strips you of the will to live.

For instance, every time a fixture is changed it affects at least seven other fixtures and can easily impact on as many as 48.

The whole article carefully details the entire process and is well worth a read, even if you’re not a big footy fan.

Searching, for that something that I’ll never find…

(with apologies to China Black)

Just occasionally, I check to see what serach terms have been used to find 6000 miles… over the last few weeks. They’re usually pretty obvious – this time there was a lot of stuff about load-shedding, that concert “next year”, the inevitable weeing on your bougainvillea and, as ever, some queries on who will be playing at Kirstenbosch this Sunday (it’s Zahara (TBC) with Claire Phillips, by the way).

And then, amongst all the one and two-word search terms, this:

lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, fairtrade, brown-stained, mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere

It sounds like some sort of Jeremy Clarkson diatribe that he’ll get into trouble for.

And then I remembered, that’s because it is and he did.

Political Soundbite of the Day

We don’t do politics very often on 6000 miles…, but we are more than happy to share excellent political soundbites like this one whenever they come along:

So all the UK is isolated from is an impending disaster: the eurozone will fragment with countries leaving and debt defaults. It is like being as isolated as a man who failed to get onto the Titanic before it sailed.

That’s from Terry Smith in The Telegraph and comes via Perry de Havilland at Samizdata and is a good reminder that being the odd man out isn’t always a bad thing.