Exciting rail journey this morning!
Being surprisingly organised this morning I set off for work in the hope of catching the earlier train to work just incase there were any hold ups. I slipped and slid my way to the station in good time, but Lo! the train was running 8 minutes late. Nevermind I thought, 8 mins is not bad considering the conditions. Anyway, 8 mins later my train arrived and I was particularly chuffed (excuse the pun) to get a table seat on which to spread out my paper. The train sped through the glorious frost festooned countryside until…. bang, flash, bump, bump, bump, bump, grind…….halt. We were plunged into darkness (and it was really dark at 7.10am!) Then nothing but silence. Then a very jovial ticket master strode along the train informing passengers (in a tone that was not fitting for the circumstances) that ice water, yes ice water, had got into the electrics! So, there we stayed for over an hour fruitlessly checking our mobiles for reception to call work/loved ones/a chemist (to explain the phenomenon that is ice water). After a while the train driver was able to bunny hop the train 500 yards into the next station. Fully expecting to have to alight the train, I was most pleasantly surprised to find everything had returned to normal in the space of 500 yards and we were now able to continue our journey. Maybe the dreaded ice water had only affected a small portion of track?

Door to door time: 3 hours.

CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere. Plants thrive as a result of having it available for photosynthesis. Man’s CO2 addition is about 2 to 3% of that very small trace and any regulating we might do will amount to nothing in terms of changing the CO2 quantity. Basically, the 2 to 3% of a trace means little, even if CO2 has an effect on climate, which seems unlikely, as the release of CO2 in nature is caused by climate (temperature) change, rather than the other way round.

Heavy frost in Toulouse this morning – snow in the north bringing motorways to a halt.

Bitterly cold with frost possibly persisting through the day. Heavy snowfall may push down from the north.