Since this has developed into a thread about the weather (a fitting subject
when considering birds), I'll share mine. Looks like we'll have something
akin to an Australian Christmas this year. No snow. Warm weather, the grass
still GREEN (I'll decorate my evergreen lawn if this holds up), the trees
have gone crazy and think this is spring but the dark throws them. If we
have real winter weather in January or February, as one can expect, the poor
trees will be castrated. It's really very curious. Taking my daily hour-long
walk at twilight these days (around three in the afternoon these days), I
see the most curious sight of Christmas decorations through continental type
fog, the sun setting leaving a sad aftertaste above it all and throwing a
pinkish glow way up onto God's cyclorama. And the weather is so incredibly
calm! Of the European countries, only Spain's been warmer than Iceland
during the last week or so. Global warning ... Seems too that this trend
will continue for at least a decade, as the sea way north of us is as warm
as it was during the 1940s, which gave my childhood in the 1950s great
summers. Many Icelanders cannot celebrate Christmas properly without snow,
but, I don't mind it at all being elsewhere. On top of it all the ptarmigan
stock is so low they've baned shooting them, another blow for an Icelandic
Christmas for many, so now we're importing dead Scottish grouse as a
substitude.
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
on 12/18/02 1:53 PM, Robin Hamilton at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:57 PM
> Subject: Re: THIS HAPPENED TO ME, NO QUESTIONS ASKED
>
>
>> At 7:50 AM -0700 12/17/02, Douglas Barbour wrote:
>>> So how is it to have returned from rainy blighty to fire ridden Oz?
>>
>> Melbourne wasn't that much warmer than London when I arrived, though
>> I'm told next Saturday it will be 40 degrees - ugh. There are no
>> fires here. Yet. Well, I _think_ I'm finally back, though I'm still
>> absorbing my time away - it will take a while to sort through all
>> these impressions and stimuli. The first couple of days I kept
>> waking up thinking I was in Paris (a problem I only had when I was in
>> Paris) - as soon as I was home I didn't know where I was.
>>
>> It's really nice to be home with my rambunctious family. But I'm
>> cowering before a huge pile of work: the next Masthead; and then The
>> Riddle, the sequel to The Gift; and in between setting up Company of
>> Fools, a theatre company which is planned to be like a virus. And
>> there's all these other things I want to do too - poems, for
>> instance. And meanwhile Christmas is a week away, and I'm not even
>> ready! Eeek!
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Alison
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>> Alison Croggon
>> Home page
>> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>>
>> Masthead Online
>> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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