January was the wettest winter month since records began, in the 1750s. Apparently all the snow and ice in North America is meeting warmer air from the south and causing rainstorm after rainstorm ( Read more... )

The human remains found under a car park in Leicester are "beyond reasonable doubt" those of Richard III, last Plantagenet King of England.

I read Daughter of Time at an impressionable age. I'm not a rabid Ricardian, but I am rather pleased that the evidence shows he was not a deformed monster but a lightly-built youngish man with scoliosis - ( Read more... )

You'd think it never snowed in England from the reactions to it. On Monday it was very cute to see all the FaceBook squee from my postgrad friends who had never seen it before. At the writing session there were three for whom it was a first - and, I have to admit, it was very touching to see the wonder on their faces.

( OTOH, too much snow gets old... )

Today it's "Red". Here's the tree in front of the house across the road, taken about three weeks ago.


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The view from our front door - most of the trees are yew, but there's a sequoia, a "nice, young tree" of around 140 years old.


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I didn't think we would bother with the Olympic torch as it passed through our town, but in the end it seemed like a little bit of history worth seeing. The fact that we could park easily at our friends' place just a hundred yards or so from the route helped a little too.

( So we parked in their drive and walked up to the Coventry Road. )