And the first post of the new year......

Wherein I express the extent of my flabberghastness. And I do know that is not and never could be a real word, but it does, I hope, convey something of how I am feeling.

We were warned, and they were right. This is what we woke up to this morning....



Yeah, ok, same old, same old. How many years is it since we could have said that? Many, many. I am reminded, although barely, because it was such a long time ago, I was so much younger then and I am definitely older than that now - of the winter of '63 when Maud and Gwen came for Christmas and couldn't get back to Harrogate until Easter. Or so family legend has it. I do remember that there was a lot of snow.

I was amused to hear on the news last night that one of the local schools had been closed yesterday because the playground was too icy to be safe. Excuse me? When I was a gel, that was one of the great treats of the winter, teetering across the icy wastes, making slides (which I have to admit even then we were not supposed to do), enjoying the strange sensation of losing most feeling from our fingers and then the agonies of regaining it huddled up against the solid fuel stove in our classroom. Ah, those were the days! Liberty bodices (which I never had), chilblains (which I never had), ice on the insides of the windows every morning (which I did), chestnuts roasting on an open fire (sorry about that, but I did) and I will stop with the odious nostalgia now.

We have several inches and it is still snowing. Temperatures are not forecast to rise until at least after the weekend. We will venture out in the Jimny at some point (and yes, the DSM is at home, but for other reasons) but we have some food, soup bubbling on the hob, enough cat food for a siege, I am thankful to say, because I think our ravening lot of beasts would simply eat us if we ran out. I'm just going to relax and enjoy it.

A silly photograph, but it amused me....



The new pots we bought at the Garden Centre sale before we went down to Somerset, from which we returned safely, I should say. Just. A little snow there, a bit more when we got home, and two extremely tired people as we didn't sleep much. The hotel was very good, liked it a lot, and an excellent meal, but we should have remembered to ask for twin beds! Still, I got to enjoy the view of the blue moon shining on the fresh icing of the white stuff.

One of my New Year Thoughts is to stop letting the ironing beat me (have we been here before?) so, after lunch, I take the first step towards that before indulging in other activities. I am approaching FO status with a couple of things, and this is just the weather to hole up in the warm and concentrate on the essentials of life...