Another grey day

It seems to have been a particularly grim start to 2011.

There are lots of reasons for me in this, but it is not helped by the continued grey weather, interspersed with drizzle and heavier rain. Last Thursday was an exception - a beautiful, bright day, almost Spring-like, and it was noticeable just how everyone's spirits were lifted.

This is unusual for Brighton, in my experience; one of the reasons I like the place is because it has a higher than average sunny day count compared with much of the UK.

Sorry for a grey post. Roll on Spring...

A jolly Christmas tree

OK, so this about our new home and not much about Brighton, but I thought that now we are in the gloomy and cold post-Christmas period, I would recall some festive cheer with a posting of our Christmas tree, from our first Christmas in the new place.

We had meant to get a real, living tree this year but, with the snow and other commitments, I couldn't find one in time, so we reverted to our trusty artificial tree. I read somewhere that the carbon footprint of an artificial tree is only lower than a real tree after it has been used for 10-12 years, so we're quids in as it is much more venerable than that.

And, having combined two households into one, we ended up with rather a lot of baubles, so it is definitely not what you'd call designer or restrained...

More on the snow

Despite all the complaints about the snow, I witnessed a very encouraging example of good neighbourliness in the street where I live; two people who live further down cleared the pavement of snow along one side of the road, from one end of the street to the other. They were helped by the young son of one them, who put a bag of grit on his sled, happily scattering it along the way.

There has been a lot of debate about what the Tory policy of the 'Big Society' might mean, but it strikes me this is a perfect example of it; an unrequested, altruistic act of practical help.

A second year of snow

Just when you thought it was safe to put away the thermals, we get a second year of freezing, snowy weather. This one seems to have taken public transport more by surprise than last year, with trains badly disrupted, although to be fair Brighton got their buses back on the streets quicker than before.

Temperatures in this normally mild coastal city dropped to a chilly -8.7C before a rapid thaw last weekend, although the mercury has dropped well below freezing again today.

Moving home...

Regular followers will have noticed something of an interruption to this blog, for which many apologies. But we have been moving house. Now, this is something I hadn't done properly for 17 years, (not counting moving into my other half's flat last winter when most of my stuff went into storage).

They say that moving home is one of the most stressful things you can do, up there with losing your job, getting divorced and even bereavement. But I confess that I'd never found it that difficult - until now. Perhaps it's an age thing. When I last moved I was still in my early 30s and had the enthusiasm of fresh starts and all that (not to mention lots of energy, unproblematic knees and no bad back).

I am now firmly in middle age, and one of the things I am slowly finding out is how my tolerance of disturbance (of any kind) is diminishing. Perhaps I really am turning into my father...

It didn't help that on our first morning, when still surrounded by boxes up to chest height in just about every room, my partner had a shower, only for a good portion of the water to cascade into the lounge which I had spent the best part of the previous week painting. It turns out the seal around the bath was failing, and the bath itself sinking gradually into floorboards softened by being periodically soaked.

On the positive side, my Vicar recommended a good plumber who came to the rescue that day. (Definitely a prayer answered). After a lot of huffing and puffing, he and his mate built a new platform to support the bath, replaced the seal, and split the tiled bath panel in half so that, in future, getting access under the bath will not require removing the washbasin and shower screen.

After a start like that, it's hardly suprising the next few weeks were stressful. My other half took one day off work, leaving me to sort out the house, as I'd cleared my work diary for most of August in the anticipation that I'd not get much work done anyway. That turned out to be much truer than I had thought possible, thanks - or rather, no thanks - to BT.

All we had requested was our old number and account to be switched to our new address - a simple and regular enough task, you would have thought?

Oh no. No - no, no, no, no.

It has taken two months, and 14 phone calls to 11 different staff to sort out the total mess that was created: no line at all for a week after we moved in; a grand total of 4 other numbers allocated to us before we got the one we wanted; two separate accounts and a byzantine puzzle of payments (that I am still not sure are finally correct, although we now have approaching £100 of repayments, corrections and compensation on various of the 8 bills we have been sent); and, to cap it all, no broadband for 6 weeks. (Hence no blog).

And that's the short version: one of the biggest problems has been trying to explain the ever worsening situation to a succession of hapless staff who, despite their best efforts, have usually managed to take me two steps forward and one (or two) steps back, so at each turn something else has gone wrong and the tale has become yet more complicated. Theseus had an easier time negotiating the Cretan Labyrinth. Unbelievable.

Still, 2 months on, we're now almost settled; we have broadband; just 4 more boxes to unpack, some minor building work timetabled before Christmas; and we're looking forward to our first Christmas in our new home.

Watch this space...

Devil's Dyke

The other weekend I did a wonderful walk starting out from Devil's Dyke, situated on the South Downs, north of Brighton.

Although this time I walked down and away from the Dyke, it makes for a great afternoon out in its own right: superb views, good walks, and (the least good bit) a pub. It’s a great place to fly a kite as it’s almost always windy (though sometimes too windy for flimsy modern kites…), although you’ll be competing for air-space with hang-gliders and micro-light aircraft. The whole hilltop is classified as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The Dyke itself is a natural geological feature, formed by melt water at the end of the last Ice Age: it’s a short, very steeply sided V-shaped valley, which cuts into the north face of the South Downs, above the village of Poynings. The Dyke is only 1km long and narrows from 400m to a blind point, but is over 200m deep, making it the deepest true dry valley in Britain (ie, with no waterway) and, some say, in the world.

The name comes from a wonderful (and more entertaining) legend. Apparently furious at the conversion of the peoples of the Weald to Christianity, the Devil decided to dig a dyke through the South Downs, so the sea could flow in and drown their villages. To ensure his efforts were not discovered until it was too late, he decided to dig it over a single night. However, his toils woke an old woman, who lit a candle: this then woke her cockerel, who began to crow. Seeing the light and hearing the cockerel, the Devil was fooled into thinking it was dawn, and rushed off with his work uncompleted, and the Weald was saved.

The adjacent hilltop was first settled by Iron Age fort builders, who found the natural spur formed by the Dyke to be a superb defensive site. The remains of their earth ramparts can still be traced, albeit with some difficulty. But the beauty of the place gradually attracted more visitors, and in 1887 a railway was built from Brighton to bring visitors up to the Dyke. This proved a runaway success – an astounding 30,000 of them visited the Dyke on Whit Monday in 1893, and over a million during 1897.

By the turn of the 19th century, the Dyke had a hotel, a 360m aerial cable-car across the Dyke, and a two-tracked funicular railway 250m down to Poynings. Alas, the short season and high costs forced the closure of these attractions by 1910, although the railway from Brighton survived until 1938. The faint remains of the cable-car and funicular can also be found at the site if you look closely. The hotel survived, later to be replaced by a refreshment room, the predecessor of to-day’s pub.

You can get there by road (it's well signposted off the A27) or by an open-topped bus service from Brighton (daily in the summer), or for the more energetic, via the South Downs Way.

Arlington Reservoir

I recently did a walk around Arlington reservoir, as part of a longer walk from Berwick station to Eastbourne. I am constantly surprised at what I find near Brighton - Berwick is less than half an hour away by train, and yet this is a lovely spot, with great views, lots of wildlife, and nice cooling breezes on a hot day. It's also easily accessible by car, with a good car park, picnic tables and toilets.

Strongly recommended for a good family day out.