Happy New Year

It is still snowing.
This is the view onto the street from the sitting-room window, showing my car being covered with snow again. It is blowing side-on at the moment and has been at it for a couple of hours since I took this pic. Cleaning off the snow and de-icing the windows is a fairly new procedure for me although I have faint memories of getting a car ready for trips from Leeds to Skipton during my teaching rounds at Skipton Girls High School back in the early seventies. I had an intensive course in handling "black ice", "deep snow" and "iced up car-parts" and often followed the snow plough over the Pennines to school only to find that the student buses had not made it, so classes were cancelled and I then had to follow the snow plough back to Leeds.


The Snug has a wood-burning-stove and so DJ cleaned the fireplace and grate and loaded it up. It is terrific sitting in here with it roaring away and the snow blowing horizontally outside. It cheers up the place as well as warming it. It burns paper, firelighters, kindling, logs and smokeless lumps. It goes from cold to red hot in an hour.

You can just detect the flames reflected in the bottom half of the french windows, just above the cat-flap. But Tigger's access to the outside world and her toilet has been ignored. She couldn't face the blizzard and got more and more distressed until I relented and gave her an indoor litter tray. She dived into the litter before I had finished pouring it into the tray and then used it thoroughly.

Luckily we have plenty of supplies to see us through in case we get snowed in and neither will we want for much. We won't starve and will have cheerful warmth, music, wine and TV.

BUT it is getting less and less of a novelty as each snowflake falls.

Happy New Year to you all,

Cheers Gillian