Heating Your Greenhouse in Europe This Winter

[Bern]

"Old bloke losing his rag"

Healthy emotional management is a good habit to cultivate.  Pity it is so difficult to do......  Bad habits are so much easier to acquire and maintain.

I've had to add air pressure to my car's tires with a bicycle pump.  It takes 10 to 20 vigorous "pumps" with the handle to put a pound of pressure in the tire. It's good exercise and it does work, but it's not ideal for sure.

[Bern]

John Cleese beat me to it

Cleese has had his moments for sure. He had a very funny TV show called Fawlty Towers that was well done and highly enjoyable. Much of the humor would not make it on regular American TV at the time. I think it was shown on the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS).

Another great English favorite was Are You Being Served.  It had no connection to the Monty Python gang, but it was very funny and entertaining. 

Finally, there was a series called The Irish Resident Magistrate on PBS that was very worthwhile.

Ah, the good old days.....................

[David Pilling]

Ah, the good old days...

In my case "Bewitched", "Gilligans Isle", "The Beverley Hillbillies", "Mr Ed."

Quotas were introduced and robbed me of that entertainment.

Connie Booth (a US citizen) co-wrote/starred in Fawlty Towers and went on to be a psychoanalyst - meaning the writers had some sort of insight into people's minds.

There are many 100s of hotels in Blackpool, on Google "Blackpool Fawlty Towers" scores 150K hits. You can stop in tribute hotels, only some of them intentional. The original was set in another seaside town, Torquay.

[Randy Linke]

John Cleese beat me to it

Cleese has had his moments for sure. He had a very funny TV show called Fawlty Towers that was well done and highly enjoyable. Much of the humor would not make it on regular American TV at the time. I think it was shown on the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS).

Another great English favorite was Are You Being Served.  It had no connection to the Monty Python gang, but it was very funny and entertaining. 

Finally, there was a series called The Irish Resident Magistrate on PBS that was very worthwhile.

Ah, the good old days.....................

Loved all of these, and many more from the good old days of British humor.  I would add "To the Manor Born". "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", the "Black Adder" series and so many more.  We brought many of these on DVD with us when we moved to Spain from the US, with our region free EU DVD player not being sure how accessible some might be.  We did not realize our DVD player was an EU model until we unplugged it when we moved and found it had an adapter for the US.  Got lucky when I bought it before we ever contemplated the move as it automatically detects input current and output format.

[David Pilling]

Very often DVD players have 'secret' ways of enabling multi-region support - look up the model number on Google.

Not sure about British humor, there does not seem to be much to laugh about anymore. Might be to do with getting older. There was a strand that ran through British comedy, each generation was linked to the one before, and that seems to have died out. It was also new, unlike what had gone before.

Most of the classic programs are deemed unsuitable to be shown again. The only one that is repeated endlessly is "Dad's Army", which by some fluke contains nothing offensive. (It is set in WW2, follows the exploits of the bungling old men in the 'Home Guard', there was a US version which flopped).

Comedy now has to not offend and be educational.

[Martin Bohnet]

Well, you can still have fun with the British - maybe just not comedy-wise. I've been to a concert of "the Prodigy" a week ago and had the time of my life. Even without Keith they just wrecked the hall (can you say that in English? meaning the crowd was so heated up and jumping around you wonder how the static of the building dealt with it?)

[David Pilling]

"wrecked the hall" - sounds like something people say, maybe they say that. At the moment it is common for people to say "you smashed it", meaning you succeeded in a task.

Tragically, back in the 60s, there was a form of popular music where the crowd stamped their feet in time to the music and this really did do damage to some buildings

(
The Dave Clark Five 'bits and pieces'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoRLIJJSG4o
)

Wrecked is also a synonym for having drunk too much alcohol. "He was wrecked".

[Bern]

there does not seem to be much to laugh about anymore. Might be to do with getting older.

Very true, but it is best to keep trying.........

Q: How do you fit 4 elephants in a Volkwagen Beetle?
A: Put two in the front and 2 in the back.

Problem solved.  A bit of efficiency that Germany is renowned for perhaps?

And on another note - the Christmas shopping rush is upon us and the stores are packed with shoppers. Every store is playing the same annoying holiday music.  It seems that everywhere you go it's the same Dolly Parton song over and over again.  By the time you get home it's stuck in your head for a few hours. 

Finally, today is the local caged bird club's annual Christmas party and everyone will have a very enjoyable time.  Earlier this year I had to amend the club's bylaws to prohibit the open carry of handguns at the monthly meetings because it was disconcerting to many members.  There will always be members with concealed handguns at club functions, but that cannot be prevented.  'Tis the season......................

You just have to laugh it off.........

[Martin Bohnet]

Q: How do you fit 4 elephants in a Volkwagen Beetle?
A: Put two in the front and 2 in the back.

A bit of efficiency that Germany if renowned for perhaps?

Don't. I love my car.

Besides, living here I guess putting "Germany" and "efficiency" in the same sentence is the true joke here...

[David Pilling]

I enjoyed the Elephant joke 

[Bern]

The winter solstice is fast approaching, marking the official beginning of winter with the shortest day of the year. The Royal Observatory in Greenwich marks the actual moment of the solstice in 2023 on December 22nd at 3:27am GMT in the UK. Dr. Google marks the time in the USA at 10:27 PM EST on December 21st. Around the world, many people will be visiting various archeoastronomy sites to witness the event. The Druids and Pagans should be well represented at Stonehenge this year.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/when-winter-solstice-shortest-day

Cheer up, the days get longer from here for another six months!

[Martin Bohnet]

And it is about time... too bad the minimum of the insolation is only the turning point of the temperature gradient, meaning the speed of things getting colder is slowing down. Thanks to the thermal inertia of the athmosphere it will take about another 6 weeks until we're past the coldest point.. Winter. Not a fan.

[Ron]

Hi Martin,

Interesting, I had never heard about the thermal inertia of the earth before, but it makes sense.

If I lived where you do, I would probably not like winter either.  But living in Los Angeles, I don't like summer.  Give me the other 3 seasons any time.  I have not had a light frost here in over 30 years, and never a hard one.  I don't know if you ever see pictures of the Rose Bowl stadium on New Year's Day.  It's the site of a major American football college game, between the PAC-12 (Pacific coast) and Big 10 (the upper midwest and points east) college conference champions.  The joke here is we can have gloomy, rainy weather up through December 31st, and again starting January 2nd, but the first is always clear, sunny, and 70 degrees F (21 C).  This causes people in the midwest, with their many degrees of frost, to want to move out here.  Little do they know that on smoggy days in summer you cannot see those mountains, even though the air is mostly much better now than it was in 1960s - 1980s.

[janemcgary]

The solstices were interesting during the years I lived in interior Alaska. We traveled a little north to see the midnight sun on the summer solstice (usually from a great plant site). As the winter solstice approached, each day's weather report on the radio included a downer like this: "Today will have 2 hours and 15 minutes of sunlight, seven minutes less than yesterday." The traditional stories I worked with at the Language Center were usually told in the short days of winter, and Koyukon narrators ended with the formula, "I told this story all winter, and now I hear water dripping outside the door." No wonder I cherish my winter flowers now!

[Martin Bohnet]

To me it's really my gardener's passion what defines my feelings about the seasons - while I feel the pressure from summer heat and do lose plants to it (Tropaeolum speciosum

died away the first summer and the Pleiones are suffering), as long as we're not getting irrigation bans (for now a hypothetical threat), frost will always be the more traumatic event. Colleagues at work dread cold times because my mood will drop with every Kelvin below -5°C at night and every day with an average below 0°C.