I’m still up North at home and it’s really cold. It’s normally cold, but the temperature hasn’t got above freezing since Christmas day and I’ve even had to resort to wearing gloves for the first time since I was 6. I’ve had ice on the window inside my car and the roads around here have a permanent layer of ice on them. What ever happened to global warming?

Last night we were meant to be going to watch Blackburn play Sunderland, but they cancelled the game as the pitch was frozen. The ground has undersoil heating and so they never normally have to cancel the games. I can’t remember it happening since I started going about twenty years ago, but they said it was just too cold for the undersoil heating to defrost the grass. I hope it gets warmer before Monday or they may cancel the Portsmouth game too.

The last few years I’ve always made my own Christmas cards. It started as I couldn’t find any in the shops that I actually liked, but now it’s sort of turned into a bit of a tradition. I hope everyone who I sent it to has already got this.

I was planning on cutting the people out completely and arranging them on a white background, but I just ran out of time and had to take a bit of a shortcut. I think it looks alright, though some people have missed that it was meant to be spelling out “HAPPY XMAS”. I need to think of what to do for next year now.

I’m not sure what it is with people who live near me. I think maybe they have a lot of free time or just don’t need to sleep. We are always getting newsletters and flyers for different community groups that we should get involved in. Some are set up for specific purposes, like the “build a skate park” and “we don’t want a skate park” ones from last year.

Last night’s community newsletter flyer was from the Whiteley Conservation Group. They plant trees, recycle things, drive electric cars and grow their own vegetables. Or something like that. Least their newsletter was kinda fun. Shame they had to go use Comic Sans as their typeface. I’m thinking of setting up a local community group against the use of Comic Sans in newsletters. Maybe I could get a petition together?

They’re all very well meaning and its great that so many people are interested in things effecting where we live. I just wish they’d give my letterbox a rest.

I walked to my local Tesco this morning for some breakfast, milk and the Sunday papers. It’s cold, but sunny, so I went the long way via the football pitches to see a bit of Sunday League action.

One of the linesmen was getting a couple of decisions wrong and the forward who the decisions were going against was giving him a lot of abuse. The linesman put his flag up for offside again, I think he was actually right this time, but the forward shouted what he thought of it. So the linesman put his flag down and set off towards the player shouting, “Come on then, I’ll see you afterwards”. The referee came over and was telling the linesman to calm down and get back on the line. It was great, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the officials get in trouble for trying to start a fight before. I left before there was a twenty man punch up.

I went to do a bit of Christmas shopping in London today. I’m normally only there for work, so it was kinda nice not to have to carry a laptop with me. I don’t normally like big cities that much, I don’t think I’d like to live in one. I do, however, really like underground train systems, even at 26, they still seem exciting. They’re all slightly different. I like how the New York one is always steaming hot and noisy and that it has slow and express trains. It’s typical of being in New York, everything comes with a choice. I like how London’s tube trains are really far under the ground. Some of the deep lines, are over 200ft down.

The underground also has really good buskers, they’re actually allowed to be there and beer companies sponsor the sites where they play. I was going down towards Waterloo station and I was thinking they must have started playing music over the PA system. A few escalators later and I realised the music was coming from this guy at the bottom playing his keyboard. He was doing a really nice version of Coldplay’s Clocks. When he finished he got a massive round of applause from the couple of hundred people stood on the escalators. People were putting £5 and £10 notes in his hat and standing waiting for the next song. He was great!

I managed to do some shopping along Oxford street, it was pretty cold and wet, but it did feel a little Christmasy once it went dark with the festive lights. With all the security in London, I was a bit surprised by a tannoy annoucement they made in Selfridges, “Attention! All shoppers are entitled to a free KNIFE, no purchase necessary. Oh, Errrrr knifes only available to those over 21″. It turned out it was some new fangled kitchen knife, still seems a bit of a strange thing to hand out to everyone in the shop. I made a quick exit before it all got a bit nasty.

I have a couple of days holiday, which I had to take before Christmas. Today I went in to Winchester. It’s only a few miles from where I work, but I don’t go there very often. It really wasn’t designed for cars, so the traffic and lack of parking make it hard to pop in during a lunch time.

King Alfred the Great probably didn’t have to deal with Land Rover drivers or traffic wardens when he had his throne there in 827. There’s a statue of him at the bottom of the city that I really like. Leaders that have statues or portraits made these days always look thoughtful and calm. They want to be seen as kind, caring people, who don’t hurt animals and protect the environment. Not King Alfred. He is stood there with his sword and shield out ready to take a swipe at anyone who got in his way. He looks like a proper king, the sort of king you get in fairy stories.

Lots of tourists visiting England go to Winchester as it has quite a lot of history associated with it (about 1000 years ago it was the capital of England). It also claims to have England’s oldest bar, the Royal Oak. It’s quite reassuring to see that England’s oldest bar now has wi-fi and loads of 18 year olds trying to get as drunk as possible.

Lots of people were walking around the cathedral, there’s been extra interest in it as they filmed some of the new The Da Vinci Code film there. There seemed to be a bit of an argument going on between two Americans on which type of arches the cathedral has. I’m pretty sure they’re gothic arches, but I didn’t want to get involved.