Playtime is over

It was bound to happen: the year is dead; long live the year! (I don't give it much more than twelve months). Today was back-to-York day, and being back it is high time to restart some other things, such as this blog.

The weather keeps trying to hit me with storms on my travelling days, but so far it's been one strike and two misses. You might recall my adventures in crossing the Netherlands from east to west on 29 October (see Gone with the Wind). Well, two days after I flew to the Netherlands before Christmas (which was 20 December), England was hit by a major rainstorm, causing rivers to flood and trains to stop running; and these days the same is happening again, but only in the south, the west and the north of the British Isles. Guess where York is to be found?

Flooding in the southwest (Tewkesbury Abbey, today)

I had a very smooth trip; though the plane was delayed both at the start (by the very slow security check at Schiphol) and at the end (by the fact that a bird flew into a predecessor plane, causing the Manchester runway to be shut down for about 15 minutes), I then got onto a train that left after one minute, making good all those precious lost minutes by a single happy accident of timing. In any case I was at my laptop all the while, I hardly noticed time passing.

I did announce that I would not be writing much over the holidays. That has turned out to be an overstatement: not even a last post summarising the lessons learned in 2013 has materialised. I found that I could not motivate myself to take the time for this blog. Too much to do! Or putting it more bluntly: too many ruts to get stuck in again. Add to this the end-of-year rituals, and two weeks have just disappeared into thin air. At least that's what it feels like. Looking back with a bit more charity to myself, I spent several days in getting a submission for Graphite 2014 up to shape (that should get met to Grenoble in April), and a lot more days in programming extensions and improvement to GROOVE. In fact that is what I was doing on the way here. It's just that all this takes so effing much time... I am sure that days used to last longer when I was younger.

Also home
(Ground floor: bike shed; first floor: me)

From this side of the dateline, time suddenly seems awfully short. Barely four weeks left to make a mark! Subtract from that the unavoidable overhead of packing and leaving, not to mention preparing my lectures which will pretty much start the day I get back. It's really scary!

In the meanwhile, I'm back home. My bike was waiting faithfully at the station. To get something to eat for tomorrow I went by Morrisons, which however was closed for the first time I got there. I've finally discovered one of the boundaries of their opening times: 19:30 on Sunday is too much too ask! I am sorry I even tried, now I missed the chance to take a look at the level of the Ouse. I'll just have to go running tomorrow - another of those things that have to be restarted after Christmas holidays. The smell of the hallway welcomed me in, and a Mulligatawny soup went down just fine. Tomorrow morning I might just try out the breakfast at the Edge. Yes, this is also home!