or more accurately here in Brizzle, Fahrenheit 32!

The former, of course, is a tale of a dystopian future where government and media do their best to suppress the masses by denying them knowledge by destroying books that don't promote their agenda. Of course it was written over 70 years ago, long before the internet, Musk and Trump but is nevertheless quite prophetic, we should all be alert to the intentional dumbing down of the media and the huge threat that AI is to democracy,

The latter is the temperature, 0c, here in Cabot Town. It is January so we should expect the cold, grey weather, snow even but watching/listening to the media, you'd think we'd never had this weather before. Having been born during the big freeze of '62/3 and lived through hard winters in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's and even the 10's, i can attest to there having been similar or worse weather throughout the 60 plus years of my time on this planet (other planets are available and may have different weather). It's the same in summer, 'the hottest on record', well i'm not sure when their records started but a single spot temperature on one day hardly compares to summers of my youth when hot weather would persist for weeks/months or even years!

Low temperatures (on a local, UK level) have coloured my activities so far in 2025 and its looking like that will continue for a while yet. I suppose Monday was quite mild, maybe 5c at its warmest hereabouts, after waiting most of the day for a parcel (mudguards if you must know), i headed down into the city to start the weeks 'chores'. Yep, it was time to remove my lovely Christmas nails.

Sadly, for practical reasons these lovelies had to go, it was surprising how much they had grown in three weeks, exacerbating matters! A return to the nail bar and twenty minutes of cutting, soaking and grinding later, they were gone.

Oh well, maybe i'll get them done again at some point.

The forecast for Tuesday was quite cold, we woke to a fresh dusting of snow so whilst i wanted to go for a ride, first job was to fit the new mudguards. These things are never as straightforward as you'd like, I've fitted hundreds of the things over the years but even so, different bikes throw up new challenges. In this case it was frame design and fixing points, the guards (fenders) are designed to be easily demountable, using various straps to fix in place, problem is, some of those supplied weren't suitable on this bike so i resorted to a couple of trusty zip ties.

Fitting done, i headed out into the (slightly) warmer great outdoors for another ride down the bike path. The guards did their job, keeping me clean and dry, they might need a little adjustment but that's easy enough and i might add the extra tail piece at some point. Of course, i had to stop for refreshment even on a short two hour ride - it just has to be done, being cold i went for bacon and egg in a breadcake with my mug of tea, eaten al fresco on the bank of the River Avon. That sounds a lot better than the reality!

Today, well we started with some frost but i'm parcel waiting again so up to now it's been indoor activities, laundry and a session with Henry hoover! Once this latest parcel arrives i'll be off to the shops for some milk then i'll be cracking on with some writing. I did start on Monday but the nail trip threw me off a bit so where i had hoped to have the current tale finished by now, it'll be a couple of days late.

The rest of the week looks just as cold or colder, more snow as we go into the weekend so i'll likely not be wandering far from the heat engine!

So there we go, i'll be back on Sunday with more Gaby, but for now,
Tschussie,
Madeline Anafrid

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