Friday Saturday 8th February - English Winter

And English winter really just means rain, here in the South. If I were an Eeyore, I would say it was just like the English Spring, and Summer, and Autumn too. But I'm not. (And yes, I am thinking it, even if I am saying it.)

Here's what outside looks like

The only saving grace is that wonderful, wonderful amaryllis. Both flower spikes are fully open now.

The best Eeyore is Geoffrey Palmer. With Judi Dench as the Narrator and Kanga. Here they are, on youtube. These stories, with this cast, are on my mp3 player for when I am not sleeping in the middle of the night. Although I am listening to Ngaio Marsh 'Death in Ecstasy' which is one of the very silliest of all of her 'Inspector Alleyn' stories. It is taking me a long time, as I fall asleep after a couple of tracks and wake up several hours later to silence. Then, the next evening, I find the last bit that I can remember and listen to the next ten minutes.

The cats are learning to share the settee. It has to be done carefully, making sure each cat knows that the other one is there. and No Sudden Movements allowed by anyone. Leo likes to be wrapped up, and McCavity likes to be on top of the pile of blanket.

It's not an entirely satisfactory result because now I have nowhere to sit. So I am blogging instead, and listening to the story 'In which Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents'.

This morning, He took the Panda to the vet tyre depot, as the front right tyre is leaking air. This was problematic, as I needed to go to a village school to demonstrate what a fun instrument the descant recorder is, to recruit some more pupils. Luckily a friend was willing to provide a taxi service, and lurk in the school car park while I went from class to class, and bring me home. I need to recruit at least two, and preferably about six children to make up my hours.

The tyre depot were very inconclusive, their unconsidered  advice being that we should take to Panda to their contacts in the next town and have the alloy rims refurbished. We'll get a second opinion before we go down that route, and meanwhile just keep on pumping up the tyre.

I'm testing the recipe for Slovenian honey biscuits for the Women's World Day of Prayer coffee morning at the end of the month.

 So far, so good, apart from forgetting to glaze the second batch with beaten white of egg. I'm too impatient to roll the dough out and play with cookie cutters, so I just formed the dough into a long sausage and cut off slices. The final result is supposed to look like this;

The line missing off the bottom is 'bake for 10-15 minutes, leave to cool on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack'. Then you ice them - I'm wondering if that would be a fun interactive activity for the people attending the coffee morning? No, I thought not. The biscuits are supposed to keep for a fortnight in an airtight tin, or longer in the freezer. I reckon I'll get around 30 biscuits from my sausages. 

Right, that's all for now, folks - I'll save the adventure of 'not enough petrol and I haven't brought my purse out with me' for another day - the moral of that tale is that it is not a bad plan to stash some cash somewhere out of sight in your car. Which I had. (Stashed some cash, for car parking). So I didn't. (Run out of petrol). So it wasn't. (An adventure).

Friday 18th January - flowers

I've dragged myself through this week - the cumulative events of this month have had their cumulative effect... I feel as though

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Book club on Monday - this was the Church one where we read a book of the Bible over the course of a month, then meet over supper to discuss. The other table was busily flipping through the pages of a Bible and clearly having an animated discussion about St John and the Gospel. Our table dispatched the topic quite quickly, and then we three ladies fell silent in amusement as the two gentlemen discovered their mutual passion for model railways...



I'm following the www.futurelearn course 'How to read a novel' (there's a lot more to reading a book than just starting at Chapter One and carrying on until the end, it seems!) - last week's topic was on the different types of narrator, and 'unreliable narrators' in particular; perhaps I shouldn't have opened the discussion by asking of John could be considered an 'unreliable narrator'... 

What has kept me going, as I plodded home, staggering under the weight of my back pack, after a day of teaching at the local primary school, like the Ploughman who

  homeward plods his weary way, 

has been spotting the flowers; I have seen anenomes, camelias, narcissus, hebe and heather. All a bit unseasonal for mid-January, and all very welcome. I am sure that a Weeping Willow on the road into the town has actually come into leaf all already.

I need to check the weeping willow next time I tootle past; but I can't give as much attention to the verges as I used to, now that I am driving the Panda instead of the Alfa. It is a sweet little car, even though I keep thinking that there is a dinette and kitchenette behind me, rather than just a back seat, but it is not as good at driving itself in a straight line as the Alfa was. I've been caught out when trying to get a good look at something interesting, and then finding that the car is taking the opportunity to try and have a look too, instead of following the road.

The amaryllis is growing at a prodigious rate; it was just a bulb two weeks ago.

And these iris bulbs were Very Dormant when I put them in the cupboard at the same time; they have to stay there for ten weeks, poor things.

These little kalanchoe rootlings, planted up before Christmas, look as though they are going to burst into cheerfulness soon too.

Monday 13th November - 7th November

Autumn... the season of mists - I've driven through a few in the past few weeks - and red-bronze leaves - I've driven through whirling clusters of these too - and fireworks - the best of these I've seen is the silver birch at the end of our road with the little golden petal shaped leaves falling from the thin twiggy branches like "Golden Rain" without the fizzy noises....

But it isn't Autumn anymore.

The 7th November is the first day of Winter.

See here for details;

 http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/after-that-comes-winters-day.html

I'm trying to remember; the 7th was, ah yes, last Tuesday. Can't remember what the weather was like back then -too long ago. I think there was ice on the roof of my car one day last week...

But today, as far as I am concerned, was the first properly cold day of Winter. Himself had to scrape the car when he set off to take daughter to work (trains? or something? dunno, wasn't really awake).

Ok, Canadian friends, I know you've already had snow. That what comes of living in a more southerly latitude to us. You should try living in the frozen northern latitudes like us poor beggars. You might get snow and degrees of frost, but we get seeping English shivery-ness that creeps through to the skin...

Ginger wine. That's the right medicine for today.

Wednesday 30th November - It's still cold out there

There were frost patterns on the shed windows this morning. I tried to quickly take a photograph before leaving for my first school, the results weren't very good. They looked a bit like this:

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/02/window-frost-patterns.html

I've taken this from the internet (and cropped it to remove the frozen spider...)

If you google "images for frost patterns on windows" you can arrive here  and be totally amazed at the variety of patterns. Here's a snap-shot:

Such variety.

Tuesday 29th November - It's cold

Last night, today, and tonight are to be the coldest days/nights so far this season. Bearing in mind that Winter starts on 7th November, there's probably a lot more even colder days and nights to come.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gijsbrecht_Leytens_-_A_winter_landscape_with_a_woodsman_and_travellers.jpg

Determined car scraping was necessary before I could set off for work, and the same will be needed tomorrow, I don't doubt. I spent a few minutes searching out his gloves for him, because one of his (many) kindnesses is scraping the ice off the windows for me before I leave.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Versoix,_Frozen_car_due_to_%5Equot,bise%5Equot,_wind_-_panoramio.jpg

Last week the gloves he used were a tight fit - I suspect they below to Number 1 Son. (I could wrap them up for Christmas as an extra present, except I know he reads this blog)

My car's thermometer claimed the temperature was -3C at 8:30 am, and then an amazing 23C when I left the first school at lunchtime to head off to the next educational establishment. I think that's because my car was sitting in full sun. The later reading of 6C as I turned for home at 3:30 pm seemed more likely. But when I was travelling through a road which had been in shadow all day, with the frost still gripping the grass, there was a sudden beep and a warning that the temperature had dropped to 3C so there could be ice on the road. Not too likely at four o'clock in the afternoon, but I was a little cautious just in case.

Well, I'm home, and the day's work has ended, and I've had my supper, and I'm sitting by the radiator, and I'm wearing a thermal vest, and my fingers are cold and I'm still not properly warm.

Time to sign off and make hot chocolate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_chocolate

Saturday 19th November 2016 - Early this morning

As in Very Early....

Woke up at 3 am (why? wish I knew).

After spending a little while trying to get back to sleep, I decided to wake up properly. There was a odd brightness to the light coming through the gaps in the curtains, not entirely due to the neighbours ridiculously bright security light that comes on at random times of the day or night.

I peered out of the window - SNOW! When I put my glasses on to inspect the scene outside properly, it turned out to be a wondrous white frost, so that the grass and the shed roof, and the remaining leaves on the big oak tree were all a shimmering silver.

Still very beautiful.



And I was still awake. I finished my book, dozed, the alarm went off, and the real day began.

It is half past eight in the evening now and I am more than ready for bed after such an early start.

Monday 7th November - First Day of Winter

Not feeling great today...

BB has, in his generous style, shared his lurgy. Luckily he's on the mend, so he can bring me cups of tea and breakfast in bed. I've just about survived today, and cancelled nearly everything for tomorrow.

The cat will be pleased - she likes it when I take a duvet day.

I've swiped the following from a blog I follow called www.aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk; here's the link;

http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/winters-day.html

Winter's Day

11th-century calendar from Christ Church, Canterbury (BL Arundel 155, f. 7) 

with the beginning of winter marked on 7 November

In some Anglo-Saxon calendars, such as the one above, 7 November is considered to be the first day of winter. The Old English Menologium calls today 'Winter's Day', imagining winter as a warrior who comes to enslave the earth with frost's fetters:

And þy ylcan dæge ealra we healdað

sancta symbel þara þe sið oððe ær
worhtan in worulde willan drihtnes.
Syþþan wintres dæg wide gangeð
on syx nihtum, sigelbeortne genimð
hærfest mid herige hrimes and snawes,
forste gefeterad, be frean hæse,
þæt us wunian ne moton wangas grene,
foldan frætuwe.

And on the same day [November 1] we keep
the feast of All Saints, of those who recently or long ago
worked in the world the will of the Lord.
After that comes Winter’s Day, far and wide,
after six nights, and seizes sun-bright autumn
with its army of ice and snow,
fettered with frost by the Lord's command,
so that the green fields may no longer stay with us,
the ornaments of the earth.

It has been bitterly cold today - not exactly below freezing but pretty close. I've had to scrape my car a couple of times this week, and I'm hoping I remembered to leave the handbrake off and the car in gear when I came home this afternoon. It is massively inconvenient to try and go to work only to discover that the handbrake is frozen on.

Friday 23rd January - Bright Frosty Morning

I thought that the coldest day of the year was meant to be a couple of days ago. That's a maybe; this morning, our super-blackout-lined curtains worked well enough that there was ice on the inside of our bedroom windows.

I haven't seen that since I was at my fearsomely expensive (and unheated) boarding school - our flannels and toothbrushes, kept in our dormitories, regularly froze overnight. Coming from a properly centrally heated home, and in view of the huge termly boarding fees, I thought that was pretty poor show.

I've take the whole of this past week off work; downed by a chest infection. I've not felt ill, but incredibly breathless and tired, and it has felt as though my head and chest were - still are - full of glue. We ventured out on Wednesday to see if returning to work was a possibility, but by the time I had staggered from the car park to the Post Office I was completely convinced that I was not ready to deliver full-on samba and ukulele lessons for longer than 3 minutes at a stretch. I guess if I was just sitting at a desk in front of a computer, cherry picking the easy tasks (rather as I am doing now) I could have gone in today. But today's schedule would have started with recorders at 12:40 and continued with three successive ukulele lessons, without a minute's pause in between. So that's a "no", then.

I spent the day pottering about, finally completing my tax return, tidying this, shuffling papers from one heap to another, watering houseplants, eyeing up tasks and deciding not to do them. You know the kind of thing.

Just now I went out to take pictures of our completed drive; it's beautiful. The cat isn't sure about walking on it yet.

The garden without the garage, and it's accompanying jungle, still takes some getting used to.

One casualty has been the old-fashioned washing line which used to stretch down the garden.

The sensible thing would be to replace it with a rotary line. Somehow, the sight of the washing dangling from loopy and over-stretched segments of a rotary line doesn't lift my heart in the same way as a proper line of washing, dancing in the sun.

I think it's probably to do with a half-remembered illustration or maybe story from when I was very, very young.

Thursday December 5th - Pale winter morning

8 am

Opened the curtains just now to a pale blue/ dove grey/ rose pink/ golden clear sky, grass, trees, hedges white with frost.

Beautiful. The leaves on the huge oak trees at the bottom of the garden are such an amazing russet colour.

This is the kind of winter weather that I love - well, to be truthful, I love Looking at from the warmth of indoors. Not so keen on being out in it - cold feet, cold nose, cold fingers.