The cold is cometh.  It is only about 12 degrees, so not a bitter cold.  (It will probably get colder, although the next couple of days are forecast as sunny.  Poor Sutherland:  they’ll be having -6 next week, if the forecast is correct.)  I even took my beanie and gloves — usually reserved for Finland — out to go shopping today.

No, the problem is that it is also 12 degrees inside my house.  Heating is expensive and luckily my little office is the smallest room in the house, so there is a little heater going here.  But the other rooms…  Someone suggested I light the fireplace, but since I don’t have one, it is not easy.  Of course, it is a good pain.  It is terrible to be cold most of the time, but then after spending a little while in bed and getting warm and snugly — that is the payoff!  I feel really sorry for the homeless.  There are plenty around the Cape; the shelters are apparently overflowing.

More weather news:  some farmers measured rainfall of 180mm for the past week.  There is a little snow on some remote mountains, but this was more of a rain-and-wind cold front.  There 25 film students stranded on Dassenisland who can’t get home because the sea is too stormy.  Apparently they have two onions, five tomatoes, some instant soup and noodles, and a couple of tins of boiled beef.  Not quite what sure what they are doing on the island.  The newspaper says they are filming a documentary called “The Light”.  It should be good.

And lastly, there are always someone worse off than yourself:  A Polish couple living in Germany fell out after tying the knot and decided to end their marriage on the same day.  “He said he never wanted to see her again and wanted an immediate annulment, and she said the same thing,” a spokesperson for police in the northern city of Hanover said on Thursday.