Sun And Strewn Seaweed

I thought maybe you'd like to be kept up-to-date with the weather and associated matters here on the island. And while I'm at it, yes thank you I'm getting to grips with poor old Walter Bagehot's alleged scientific racism. One should not, of course, minimise these things but I can honestly bring myself to forgive him and not lose any more sleep over it. I hope you will believe me when I say that I really did have some misgivings.

Anyway, the weather. Reports from back in Brum confirm that they have had a shit-load of snow (that's a climatological term - I've got Geography A Level you know) but, despite some flurries, nothing has settled here on the coast. I did however pull back the curtains this morning to the stunning sight of the Great Orme snow-clad on the horizon. I took myself down to the beach where things were a deal calmer than yesterday - one could actually get down to the beach-front. I took a photo, intending to put it up as a comparator to yesterday's but unfortunately I find that a quarter of the picture is taken up by my unfocused finger. Sorry. I was going to take a further picture of the piles of seaweed that had been cast onto the road in the storm but by the time I came out of the cafe (Americano and a nice piece of carrot cake) some efficient soul had cleared it away. Such efficiency might even make me feel sanguine about the licensed larceny that is our penal Council Tax, assuming always that it was a public servant who had done the cleaning-up.

Another film a - very good one. The Killing Fields relates a true story within the context of America's dubious history in Cambodia. The structure of the film is risky - the first narrative arc concerns the build-up to the shambolic vacating of the country by the West. The second arc largely (and you might think riskily) abandons its American and European protagonists in favour of a chilling depiction of the Khmer Rouge regime that filled the power vacuum. Powerful and important. 83/100.