Matthew: An ice age is always due, as a cyclic fact of earth's geology, about every 8000 years, and they last very much longer than the brief warm spells. But don't worry, we're still in the warming stage of the current inter-glacial age, with the next ice age, we hope, still thousands of years away.
John: I read Newby's book* you recommended, and dipped into a couple of others he wrote. The fellow was quite nuts to come here when he did. I guess his generation were hardier men than ours, present company excepted, of course.
I ordered the two Farley Mowat books you recommended. He has an impressive bibliography, many books still in print. Thank you for all the spot-on recommendations.
*In these parts possibly not an uncommon experience, though there are so few cyclists, most probably are in their cars, and the unkempt peasants with scythes are being replaced by commercial firms' huge spiky agrimachines dashing around dangerously in the lanes. I certainly had the same experience as Newby on my bike, long before I ever heard of Newby: I was riding down a hill on a narrow, steep country road into town, clearly marked 50kph, with a sharpish bend by the house of a retired policeman from whose kennel of hounds I saved the ancestors of the fox family that still lives in the gully below the orchard behind my house. At 55kph I was paying attention to the road and cursing the sun low on the horizon blinding me, even with the near-black polarizing lenses clipped over my prescription cycling glasses. Suddenly I saw the silhouette of Lucifer coming for me, forked goatbeard sticking out to both sides of his face, sceptred scythe over his shoulder. I thought, 'Oh dear, another stroke. [I'd fallen off my bike and into the ditch on that road before, but I recovered consciousness before the people who'd been standing talking up the road reached me. My neurologist defined a transient ischemic attack.] When did I last tell my family I love them? But the Teflon Kid doesn't go into the flames without at least trying to talk his way out of it.' I screeched to a halt right before him, saying preemptively, 'Nonsense. My bike computer will prove I was travelling at only 50kph, which I'll use in court to make a fool of you. Perhaps the magistrate, after walking past my camera team on his way in, will bung you up for wasting his time.' I flicked up the Polaroids to give him one hundred percent of my best thousand yard stare before demanding what the devil he was laughing at. It was an old farmer who always had a cheery greeting for me, walking home from one of his fields after a day of cutting silage for his horses.
