Eunice

For what might be the first time ever, I have decided to reschedule to accommodate the storm warnings for the middle of Friday coming out of the Met Office, now located in far away Exeter.

Having had a near serious fall while cycling on ice something more than ten years ago, I decided this morning to actually heed the warnings and not pedal around London in the middle of the red alert. Not least because in the event of mishap, I might be mistaken for a prat! That said, bicycles do much better than you might expect on ice, perhaps because the high pressure of modern tyres means that the area of contact is small, with local melting giving the ridges of the tyre something to grip on. Contrariwise, the local melting underneath an ice skating blade is what provides the lubrication. For some of which see reference 2.

I also remember that on the last occasion, I was able to get home OK, with pain only kicking in when I was safe indoors. Somehow, the body seemed to know that, in the short term, getting to safety, getting home was important. Worry about the back later. Since then, I have come across similar anecdotes, although I cannot presently call one of them to mind.

References

Reference 1: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/. Which might be an official site, but one which, this morning, is putting out advertisements for holiday cottages and for Waitrose. A bit poor that a rich country like ours needs to do such stuff. But that's the Tories for you, ever so patriotic that they might claim to be.

Reference 2: https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1593.