Friday, December 18, 2009

White X

Maybe we'll have a white Christmas for the first time in I don't remember when. Winter has arrived in UK: it's white outside, and brutally cold. Brrrr.
Well, it's relatively brutally cold. Compared to the winter they get in Russia or Canada, this is very mild indeed, even though it is frost. Always a good thing to attempt to get or hold a bigger perspective.

Ray said:
I have lived in some remote places, mostly at hydro-electric power dams, where it was often 50 or 100 miles to town. I've had a moose walk through the back yard, while I was five miles away in the bush, hunting for one. I've been bitten by a baby red fox, after I caught him one morning near the den, and as a result, I ended up feeding the young ones all one summer, instead of going 90 miles to town for rabies shots. Those were the healthiest little foxes I ever saw, and they just loved canned fish-flavour cat food.
I was also bitten by a young seal while in the Arctic, after I decided to rescue it it from where it fell asleep on a rock at high tide, and then by low tide, was too far from the water. You wouldn't believe how many needle-pointed little teeth they have, and those are angled inward, so that their dinner doesn't escape.
Fortunately, my leg did. The kids at the settlement's boarding school
had a great time with my seal until it found its way back to the
ocean from the fresh water pond we put it in. Believe it or not, those Eskimo kids told me they'd never seen a live seal close up - only dead ones - so they had a lot of fun watching this one.

22 comments:

Timo Lehtinen said...

Yes, it's always nice to have a white Yule. We have
-11° celcius here at the moment. Mild, I know, but better than 0°!

Ray said...

In Vancouver, it's +9C right now, and raining lightly. Looks like maybe another green Christmas...

Anonymous said...

How did I know Ray was from B.C.? They're all pussies out there. Those wimps wouldn't know what to do if they ever got any real snow.

Why aren't you dead yet, Ray? I thought maybe the reason we hadn't heard from you was that you'd finally had that massive heart attack or stroke.

CalgaryMark said...

Hi Eolake - I emigrated from the UK in 1971, left London on a glorious Spring day (1971/03/24) and arrived in Saskatchewan in the middle of a blizzard & -30°C. Quickly got to know that it is the *relative humidity* that counts, not the *temperature*. The coldest I have ever *felt* was near Chester (near you!) at Christmas 1992, the temperature just on 0°C but the RH must have been around 90%.

BTW Anonymous' gratuitous insult of Ray has no place here and you should delete it - in my opinion.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, Mark. I've only ever lived in Northern Europe, so I don't know much about the humidity factor.

Anon (aka Hank) is an old friend of the blog, and I think we'd all miss him if he went away.

A couple of years ago I turned on Comments Moderation for a week or two, but many people got very upset. I'm not sure I understood why, but if people don't want moderation, they'll just have to live with outspoken people.

Anonymous said...

Besides, it's not gratuitous at all. If you stick around here for a while you'll understand the abuse directed at the likes of Ray, Kent, Bron, and a few other douches is definitely justified.

Anonymous said...

Btw, humidity has nothing at all to do with how cold it feels. Nothing at all. There is something called wind chill factor that does play a part however.

Ray said...

Dear Anonymous:

It's guys like you that have me convinced there isn't a hope in hell for the survival of the human race over the long term, because there's just too goddamned many idiots loose among us.

CalgaryMark said...

To Anonymous Hank: Of course wind chill factor has a part to play in the overall picture; but only when the wind is blowing. Humidity does indeed have a role. If the air is humid, the skin is humid as are clothes and body heat can be leached away very effectively by the moisture. Hence feeling cold in Britain. I also lived in Abbotsford BC where there is a considerable humidity factor as well; I spoke of Chester as a place Eolake would be familiar with. I suggest that if you wish to pontificate, you should first self-educate.

I apologize for not realizing there was a group who choose to insult one another in public - the rest of us just don't hear the 'tone of voice'. I'll shut up now.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

No, I didn't mean a group.

Ray said...

Mark, old chap....

Thanks for your support. You're right about the moisture creating heat-loss. The fishermen up on our North Coast, around prince Rupert,
made a habit of wearing a lot of woollen clothing, because even when wet it held the heat in, because of its texture and how it's made.

And up in the Arctic, where I spent some time years ago, the natives wear layers of clothing, some of which had the hair on the inside of the skins, along with layers of woollen clothing for the
insulating value. Even if they accidently got wet, they could still stay warm. And if you saw some of their canoes, you'd know what I mean about getting wet. One we used to visit ships offshore had twelve ribs in a row busted out, and the canvas flapping with the movement of the canoe as our old outboard pushed it along. Its owner and I were constantly bailing
with a bucket in one hand while we
navigated it along.

One ship's Captain, heading ashore to use our radio station, passed us in his cute little speedboat, and yelled, "Turn back! You're sinking!" We waved and I replied,
"Yes, we know - we do this all the time!" We tied the canoe to the boarding ladder when we got to the ship, after I asked the Mate at the rail for persmission to come aboard. He said, "And hurry - you're sinking! I said, "Funny you should say that - that's what the Captain said too." Three hours later, when we were ready to go back to shore, the canoe was completely under water. We had to climb down the ladder, and drag it up enough to dump it out, and then get the old outboard going again. Amazingly, it did start after a while, and we got home without problems.

Monsieur Beep! said...

Darn it, my comment comes like straight from the field: I work on dairy farms, and since I'm a scarecrow with no fat as insulation I experience the cold first-hand I can tell you! It was minus twelve Celsius this morning (int shadow, but there was no sun anyways haha), and I put on some more layers of clothing. Alas, I found out later that I was almost going to sweat, the cold was, well, like "comfortable", because it was DRY.
I already once froze my ass off at zero or even above zero, plus WET.
Nevertheless, wind chill has an immense cooling capability too.

Aha, and please don't worry about Ray. I'll keep his clock ticking with my biting comments which I make on his blog posts - he's got a blog spot of his own, he's the world's best erm oldest blogger, did you now?).

Uncle Ron said...

Gee Ray
What a great story about that canoe...I 've had few harrowing experiences in them myself...

Ray said...

My first blog, on a now-defunct site,
was in fact titled 'Oldest Living Blogger', but that started a whole flap over who really was, and it wasn't me as it turned out. So my present blog is called 'Ray's Blogging Again' and can be found at
http://raysbloggingagain.blogspot.com

That 'Oldest Living Blogger' thing
got me interviewed by a gal from the Associated Press, based in Chicago, and the article she did was published in 'USA Today', so it helps if you can find a catchy name for your blog, but that's not easy with so many of them.

Monsieur Beep! said...

I'd love to visit Ray in his cabin and listen to his stories about The North. Up to now, I've only been Reading about them (Kathrene and Robert Pinkerton). A strange thing is, I don't love the cold- but in combination with the bush...well, then so.

Ray said...

Monsieur Beep, my old friend...

I hate to have to tell you this, but my 'cabin' is a 535 square-foot studio unit on the 16th floor of a 20-floor residential highrise, which
is one of six on this property, and
we're in near the trans-Canada highway, where there's steady noise from the traffic. Not exactly your typical cabin in the woods.

But I have lived in some remote places, mostly at hydro-electric power dams, where it was often 50 or 100 miles to town. I've had a moose walk through the back yard, while I was five miles away in the bush, hunting for one. I've been bitten by a baby red fox, after I caught him one morning near the den, and as a result, I ended up feeding the young ones all one summer, instead of going 90 miles to town for rabies shots. Those were the healthiest little foxes I ever saw, and they just loved canned fish-flavour cat food.

I was also bitten by a young seal while in the Arctic, after I decided to rescue it it from where it fell asleep on a rock at high tide, and then by low tide, was too far from the water. You wouldn't believe how many needle-pointed little teeth they have, and those are angled inward, so that their dinner doesn't escape.
Fortunately, my leg did. The kids at the settlement's boarding school
had a great time with my seal until it found its way back to the
ocean from the fresh water pond we put it in. Believe it or not, those Eskimo kids told me they'd never seen a live seal close up - only dead ones - so they had a lot of fun watching this one.

Anonymous said...

I've had a moose walk through the back yard, while I was five miles away in the bush, hunting for one.

I can't be the only one surprised you'd be a hunter. What a loser.

Anonymous said...

I mean not surprised. Of course. That's a mistake worthy of you.

Ray said...

I was a hunter mostly because I enjoyed the drinking and the lying about it afterward. Some of the best liars on the planet are fishermen and hunters, and I've met quite a few.

Monsieur Beep! said...

Ha! Aaaannnnd pilots: they always find excuses for their bad landings, be it adverse crosswinds, temperatures too high, not enough alc in their blood hahaha! Ok I'm joking, you gotta accept my terribly bad landings ok???
Well it's strange: although I'm a child of the sun I must admit I love the present weather conditions with temps far below zero Cel, an increasing fresh breeze and snowfalls setting in.
I really would love a life as a logger in the cold and snowy Northern bush! Maybe I'll book a cabin-building course in the not so distant future.

Now weren't this cozy stories for the festive season?

Ray said...

Monsieur Beep...

Being a logger is a lot more hazardous than being in the dairy business, or piloting a plane for that matter. It's a risky business.

Monsieur Beep! said...

... yes u r right, Ray. I know. Not first-hand, but from reading the books of people who started a new living in the bush. And through those books I can also imagine that being a logger or a hunter or whatever in the bush can give you a fulfilled live, despite all the hardships.
I'm also happy to be in the dairyfarm business, which puts me into a working environment which is "a bit" different from a normal and regulated life, if only for cursing those shitting and peeing critters haha. G'day! (;-))