Coal, shortbread, whisky, or silver

Hope you all had a happy Hogmanay everybody.

I don't go in much for reflection and resolution making at this time of year. The changeover of the year just means that it is time to buy a new calendar. This year the pickings at the Calendar Club half price sale were slim. Lots of celebs, lots of cute animals and lots of scantily clad women with cars but not many options that I would want to hang on my wall for a year. In the end I bought a Dali calendar because I'm always a sucker for surrealist art even if Dali isn't my favourite.

Wishing y'all a good 2006.

Woosh

Its getting quite windy out there today. So windy even a Wellingtonian notices it, which I guess means its probably classified as "strong gale force".

The whole thing about Welly being so windy comes up quite often. Claims about it being one of the most windy cities in the world - if not the most windy abound. I thought I'd do a bit of research to take my mind off the fact that the power cable leading into my house has been snagged in the branches of my Pohutukawa tree. Right now, I'm not happy that I'm in one of the few places where power cables have not been moved completely underground.

This article by James Court is a good indicator of just how windy things really are here. Nice if you are a wind surfer as he is.

Its all quite complicated. What do you mean by windiest? - strongest, average speed, most gale days etc. Also, what do you mean by city - according to US figures, a place called Mt Washington (NH) has a much higher average windspeed than Welly. But it seems to be a ski resort on top of a mountain. Does that compare to a city?

Just by the way - Chicago does not really rate as a windy city. It got the nickname for the volumes of hot air coming from its supporters' mouths.

Since I started writing, it has started raining and so the wind speed seems to have dropped to a much more comfortable gale force.