WINTER TYRES

The bad weather has encouraged us to be grateful for our ability to get around. We are agile enough to put on boots and walk to the farm shop for meat. The last time we did, however, a blizzard made us detour inside the cafe for a lovely homemade bowl of soup. The trudge home was very wearying.
So we have had winter tyres put on the drive axle of the Meriva, and will park it round the corner from the front of the house but facing the main road. That way there will only be a meter or two of ungritted road between us and the cleared main road. More bad weather is predicted by next weekend.
We have a HiQ garage across the road and they are very good to us. They will change the tyres and store the others till it is time to change them back.
Thankfully we have not needed to rely on Hindles! They are somewhere near the Tees estuary and I'm sure they do a great job whatever it is. We went down that way for some sea breezes and gathered another big bag of sea-coal and watched the shipping enter port. Then we went to the main seafront and plodged along the tide line. These sandstone rocks have been worn into smooth folds of chocolate blancmange by the waves and the seaweed grows on top like a green velvet table cloth.

I've enrolled for some classes in art photography for next term. I have done all the painting classes and shan't give up the day job. I like pointing a camera and would love to know a bit more about how it all works and how to do better pics.

We had a lovely couple of days away seeing friends and rels, eating, drinking and driving. All went without a hitch. Christmas will be at home and we plan to shop till we drop this week and then retire while the bad weather hits.

We are having great fun with Kinect and have supplies of fuel, food, drink, jigsaws etc to see out a siege.

Hope you are all going to be having much of the same.

Cheers and Happy Christmas to you all, Gillian