A cold start to winter

 Officially, June 1st is the first day of winter in Australia. 

Normally it's just another day in the slow slide from late autumn to mid winter cold but this year it came roaring out of the southern ocean with sleet and even a little snow.

And so it has continued. Dull dreich overcast days with continual showers of cold sleety rain.

I had hoped to get work done in the garden, but no, games are off. Similarly for winter bike rides, too cold, too wet with the afternoon temperatures struggling to reach five celsius some days.

Similarly for my retro photography project - while in theory I could have done some work, and I have some sites lined up it's simply too dull, with uniformly grey skies and flat light that does not pick up shades for decent landscape photography.

As for the documentation of Dow's pharmacy, I've managed to get some work done despite the cold. Winter has always been a tough time due to the cold and damp in the old building and this year it started to be trying in mid May, but you could work if you rugged up a bit.

The last two weeks have been particularly cold and certainly feel as if they have been the coldest over the whole life of the project, it's certainly the first time its been so cold I've resorted to long johns, a thermal layer, fleece jumper and a puffer jacket to keep warm. 

Fortunately I still have my thermals from when I we used to go ski-ing as well as from when I used to ride my bike to work in a Canberra winter, and despite their age (some of my biking thermals date from when I lived in England over twenty years ago) they still work well enough.

And while I've been warm enough working away, I've had to abandon ship early the last two sessions as even with fingerless gloves, by early afternoon my hands were simply getting too cold to type accurately, which has slowed things down a little.

Hopefully things will warm up a little next week and give me a chance to do a little work outside as well as maybe even managing a bike ride ...