I knew it was going to be slippery this morning and I wasn't disappointed. There was a glass surface on the pavement outside my home. As it happens I was able to avoid a life and death struggle with gravity walking down the hill this morning because someone had thoughtfully cleared the pavement on the other side of the road. Normally that would be a hassle, but with traffic diverted I need only stroll across and around the roadworks. Job done.

Unfortunately not all the ice is cleared in the town center. You might be thinking at this point that I finally fell victim to my clumsy sense of balance allied to a frictionless surface. Whatever made you think that? As it happens, you're right. Earn yorself a silver star.

Why not a gold one? Because I managed to stay on my feet, and cavorted across the ice like a skater in the throes of an epilectic fit. The young blonde walking the other way was most amused. How she managed to stay on her feet in high heels in these conditions is beyond me. The woman has talent. Sadly my Gene kelly impression wasn't quite that impressive.

On A Sobre Note

Every year you things said about how pensioners struggle with winter. As I get increasingly old and clumsy I'm beginning to see what they mean. I really am feeling the cold far more than I did as a youth. Back then I would walk to school in a tee-shirt and jacket, thinking nothing of the freezing temperatures. these days I go out in so many layers I'm in danger of falling over and bouncing back to feet unpeturbed. Unless it's icy of course.

This year though the sudden arctic snap has caught people out. I see the death count is rising. Old people especially are vulnerable and I can think of better ways of departing this world than freezing to death. It's very easy to get irritated with older people - I'm as prone to that as anyone - but apart from accidents and ill-health the cost of heating must be bringing some pensioners closer to the edge.

A New Discovery

That's quite enough about the trials and tribulationas of Britain in the grip of slightly colder weather. NASA have made a discovery. Not, I notice, strange new worlds and new civilisations, but a bug in a lake in California. Which kind of indicates how spaced out some of them must be over there.

Anyway, to quote Yahoo News,

All "known" life requires six fundamental elements - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and sulphur - which provide the building materials for DNA, proteins and fats. Phosphorous, normally obtained from inorganic phosphate, is a key member of this group and found in many of the components of cells. Without it, life should not be able to exist. But the bugs studied by Dr Wolfe-Simon's team have the extraordinary ability to swap phosphorous for arsenic.

How about that? Proof that life can adapt to different chemical systems and therefore broadening the possibility that life exists on other planet. Thing is though, why has it taken NASA so long to find that out? I mean, arsenic is poisonous, right? I know lots of poisonous people.