Storm Eunice - 18th February 2022

 We have been having a certain amount of weather. Which,of course, gives us something to talk about..

The Met Office issued an unusual 'Red' warning, and while I live just out of the red zone, even an amber warning is pretty serious.

Our local council recommended tht all the schools should close on Friday, the local bus company cancelled all services, and (true sign that it was serious) the council cancelled our rubbish and recycling collections, depriving us of the opportunity to spend the evening hunting our bins and recycling boxes throughout the village, to wherever the storm might take them.

It was due reach us mid-morning but was a little delayed. 

It seemed to be worst mid afternoon ,when we were enjoying hail and localised power cuts; little tiny one at work, and longer ones at the house - I was discouraged rather, when I checked the power company website and found that (at 4.30 on Friday) they were hoping that they would be able to get the power back on by 6 p.m. on Saturday...

Under the circumstances, I headed home (avoiding fallen trees)where I found that (a) the electricity was, indeed, off, although happily I have a gas hob so could at least heat things up, and (b) I had rather less than the recommended amount of garden fence. Well, I  suppose I had nearly the same amount of fence as I had first thing, it's just that rather less of it was attached to the fence posts and rather more of it was on the lawn, than is the norm in the best regulated gardens!

I also lost some felting from my garden she's roof, but that was unsurprising as it's been on it's last legs for a while.

Several of my neighbours lost roof tiles, and there are a lot of trees down. My next door neighbours lost the board thy'd put up to cover their shed's missing window..

We got our power back much sooner than expected,which was nice - I had dug out my stash of candles but was happy not to have to use them! 

So it felt as though we got off pretty lightly. The weekend was cold and wet and breezy - I didn't go for much of a walk at the weekend as it was not very pleasant,but I did take the long way round when I went for my paper, ad found a few more fallen trees and branches.

 Then on Monday Storm Franklin arrived, and took down part of my neighbour's fence. But, somewhat to my surprise, my temporary botched props, to stop the rest of my fence blowing  down seemed to work,and hardy any more of fence fell down,although some of it did end up all over the grass again. 

So, not the most enjoyable weekend I've ever had, but I'm very glad it wasn't worse.

Snow

I always feel as though the end of January ought to mean the beginning of spring, and always tend to be a bit disappointed when, generally, it isn't.

This was no exception, and we ended the month with a surprising amount of snow. It started falling late afternoon on Thursday 31st and carried on snowing without stopping for almost 24 hours.



I spent some time in the back garden, watching Loki playing, and hunting snowflakes, which was cold but fun. 


Things got less fun, although no less cold, the following morning, when I spent a long time digging out my driveway, and had a cold and windy walk to check whether the main road was passable, before discovering that I had a flat tyre so couldn't go anywhere. ..   

(I do know how to change a tyre,  but due to the physical issues I have with my back, neck and shoulder, I can't,  now, do it  without causing myself significant pain, and I am not at all sure that I would be able to do it safely, and the middle of a snowstorm didn't seem to be the time to find out)

This meant that I wasn't able to get into work, so I did what I could from home, and in between,  watched the snow continuing to fall. By the time it finally stopped, we had had 11", which is unusual. It was also very cold - around -4 C during the day, and -7 overnight, and (presumably because of this) the snow was very soft and powdery.

By Saturday the main road was clear so despite being car-less I was able to get to London to meet a friend, via a walk, a long bus trip and a train. 

Sunrise over snow

Parade Gardens, Bath

I had about an hour to kill in Bath, which was looking rather nice, although there was a lot of compacted ice on the pavements.

Sunday involved a lot more digging, as the snow on the road had compacted into thick ice, assisting my neighbour change my tyre.



But there was also time to play with Loki in the snow. He was undeterred by the fact that it came up beyond his armpits, and he chose to go out even when he wasn't just following me. 

It was all very pretty, but I must be getting old, as when I woke up on Monday morning to find that it had rained all night, and that nearly all the sow was gone, I was relieved rather than disappointed!

A Quiet Weekend

Life has been somewhat stressful recently, and in addition, I do not really approve of the heatwave we have been enduring (or enjoying, depending on your point of view),so I was glad to take a long weekend last week to visit my parents and catch up with some other family members.

Having arranged to spend the weekend at (near) the seaside, it was perhaps inevitable that the weather would break and that 3 out of the 4 days I was there would see torrential rain and passing thunderstorms, and the 4th, intermittent rain.

However, since I was mostly going in order to unwind a little, and see my family, that wasn't too much of an issue! 

My aunt and uncle live near my parents, and it just so happened that they, with both of my cousins on that side of the family, had rented a house on the beach, for a family holiday starting that weekend, so on the Sunday, we went over for lunch and to spend time with them.

The beach is one which we as a family have been going to for years, and the house was literally right on the beach, so we were able to sit out on the patio looking out over the beach, and enjoying fizz and food, and retreat inside every time it started to rain! 

Which was handy.

The younger members of the party (aged 3 to 14) braved the sea and did some body boarding while a rotating selection of parents and cousins supervised them, and the older members of the party paddled and chatted , and a good time was had by all.

The rest of the weekend was very low key, and restful, which was good . I did a lot of very undemanding reading, a little baking, and some high quality lazing around!

And of course, as I drove home, the sun came out again!

Obligatory Snowmageddon Post

Living in the South West of England, as I do, I don't often have to deal with snow - since I moved house  years ago, we've had  couple of light dustings of snow, but nothing more. I think the last time we had any worth speaking of was in 2010, when we had a white christmas.

This week was rather different, however!

The news and weather forecasts were full of the 'Beast from the East' , and we were forecast to have light snow on Thursday, getting worse on Friday.



There was a little light snow on Thursday morning, which Loki found quite interesting! It was very cold (about -3, I think)

Then during the day we had flurries of snow, getting worse, and in light of this and the warnings from the police and Met office we closed our offices and sent all the staff home at 3, with one or two who live further away leaving sooner.

By the time I got home, after driving a couple of colleagues who had walked in, home, there was quite a lot of snow even on the main road, which of course had not yet been gritted. Fortunately my commute is short, and everyone was driving sensibly, although there were several vehicles with spinning wheels, and I saw a couple of minor skids.

It continued to snow all afternoon and evening, and was also bitterly cold (so the snow was much dryer and more powdery than we're used to) and very windy, which meant that the snow was drifting - I ended up with patches of my driveway that were almost clear.

Thursday afternoon

As it got dark the wind got up further - I was reminded of the quote from Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising' "Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining" - I would have got quite worried if I'd seen any dark riders or large numbers of rooks!

And I got to watch Loki experiencing deep snow for the first time.


We'd made the choice to close the office on Friday, on the basis that the police and local council were both were advising against any but essential travel, so I spent Friday doing some work from home, and admiring the pretty white stuff outside the windows. 

The wind made it hard to judge exactly how much snow fell - I have a small drift (about 2' tall) outside the back door, and others by my front and side fences, all with beautiful curves and shapes. I think in places where the snow wasn't drifting it was about 6 inches deep.

I also walked down to the village shop, which had run out of bread and milk, and had no papers (the wine aisle looked pretty bare, too!) The main road wasn't clear, and I was very glad I didn't need to drive on it, or on my own road. I met lots of my neighbours, and lots of excited dogs and small children, but I think during the whole day, I only saw or heard about 3 vehicles go past the house, all of them either tractors or 4x4s.

And of course, working from home had the advantage that I could make a nice slow-cooked casserole, and bake some bread, in between other jobs!

Not far from here, people spent all night trapped in their cars on the A303. I decided not to try to drive into Bristol to go to the theatre, as planned! 

Today (Saturday) has been much milder - I think between 0 and 1 degrees Celsius - I went for a short, but picturesque walk after getting the papers.  (The main road was clear this morning, although ours, being less busy, and  was still mostly compacted snow and ice) 

And Loki continued to explore, periodically. He is a daft cat. 

This afternoon, it's become milder again -the last showers have been rain, not snow. Hopefully, if it doesn't freeze tonight, everything will be back to normal by Monday! 

I shall be curious to see how long it takes for the drifts to go.

Bank Holiday Weekend

This weekend is a bank holiday weekend, which means 3 days off. It is also traditional for the weather to be terrible!

It's been very hot over the last couple of days (you know, the days we've been spending in the office) so of course at around 3 a.m. on Saturday morning there was a massive thunderstorm, with torrential rain, and lots of very loud thunder. 

I'm sure that the rain will be good for the garden and fields, but I could have done without being woken at that time of night!

The forecast suggested that we were likely to get more rain over the weekend, but other than a very brief shower, Saturday was dry (although very warm and muggy a lot of the time) so I was able to cut the grass both at the front and back.  

I had turf laid at the back, when I had the gravel removed last year. The front, where I had tarmac removed, was just replaced with topsoil, and I wasn't quick enough to plant it so have an awful lot of docks and nettles and other things I don't really want,but am gradually working on getting rid of the weeds, and getting grass to grow. 

I also planted some young hydrangeas (grown from cuttings from my parents' garden) earlier in the year, which seem to be doing reasonably well. I hope, eventually, that I will have a selection of bushes and flowers - and maybe even a vegetable patch.

The clematis I planted last year is thriving, and has just started to flower, and my tomato plants (in pots and grow bags) and peas (also in pots and grow bags) seem to be doing well; the tomatoes are starting to flower, and the peas have both flowers and little baby mange-tout pods. 

Given that my track record on growing things to eat hasn't been great, and mostly seems to consist of growing things to be eaten by slugs, or to die for no apparent reason, it is very gratifying! I'm really hoping that this year I will get a reasonable crop of tomatoes. The last few years I've grown them, the fruit has't had time to ripen before it gets too cold, but I started the seedlings off earlier this year, and I'm keeping some of them in pots indoors, so hopefully those will ripen, even if the outdoors ones don't!

So, I've been pottering around, doing a bit of weeding and pruning and re-potting, and I also did various bits of housework, because sometimes you run out of excuses not to! 

Wind and Weather

As an English person I am, of course, accustomed to talking about the weather, and am also familiar with the fact that people who live in places which have real extremes of weather mock us for thinking we have extreme weather...

But this week was pretty exciting . ..

We've had some very wild and windy weather.

Storm Imogen hit the UK, and while we weren't in the worst hit areas, we were forecast to have winds gusting at up to 62 mph, and while I don't have a weather station on my roof so can't be sure, I suspect we got them - it was certainly very wild and noisy,and there were a lot of floods, although fortunately none which directly affected me, although a couple of colleagues had to make detours around fallen trees and blocked roads.

Things have calmed down a little now, but it's still breezy and wet. Although we have had one very bright and frosty morning.

The Season of Goodwill

The house is feeling surprisingly quiet and empty this afternoon, as my Christmas guests have departed, and so after a week, it's back to being just me and the cats!

But it has been lovely! 

My parents arrived on Wednesday, after I finished work, and so were here to help me put the tree and other decorations up on Christmas Eve.

We had a very civilised, relaxed day on Christmas Day itself, with lots of nice gifts (including several books I wanted! Which was delightful!

Then a couple of days after Christmas we went to see my younger sister and her partner, and our brother and his girlfriend, and one of my aunts, and my uncle,and one of their sons, all also came, so we enjoyed a pub lunch (albeit with somewhat hit-and-miss service) and lots of catching up.And some more gifts. 

Then yesterday, my sister and brother-in-law, her in-laws and step-daughter (and dog) all came over for lunch, so all in all, I got to see my entire immediate family over the holidays.

I have a couple more days off work, and am going to London to the theatre at the weekend, before heading back to work on Monday.

I am planning, therefore, to be extremely lazy for the next day or two, in the hope of being well-rested before returning to work.

I'm lucky that, at least so far, we have escaped the worst of the storms and floods. It's been very wet and windy, and my back fence has collapsed,which is annoying, but the house remains warm and dry. (The fence was already in a bad way, but I was hoping it would last another few months until I could get it replaced at the same time as the other work I want to have done in the garden.) However, a fallen fence is nothing compared with what people in York and other parts of the country have been suffering!

Car Troubles, Bees, Summer, and Friends

Last week was mostly distinguished by being very, very hot. At least by English standards.

It was an mixed week for me - on Monday, the exhaust pipe (or at least the back half of it) fell off my car on the way home from work. Annoyingly, the exhaust broke somewhere in the middle,and the bit attaching it to the back of the bumper didn't, so it didn't actually fall off, it just dragged along the road, so I had to stop can carry out emergency tying bits of the car together (fortunately I had several bits of bungee in the boot)

Fortunately my neighbour is a mechanic and kindly removed it for me once I got home, and the car is now fixed, but it was not a good start to the week. 

Wednesday I had planned to go to the cinema to see the live broadcast of Carmen but it was too hot, and by the time I got home from work I was tired, hot and had a nasty headache, so I didn't go.


After that, the week started to improve. On Thursday I went bee-ing again, which was interesting. I am starting to feel a bit more confident, and competent,  around the bees, which is nice. I am going to have to start scouting around to see where I might  be able to keep a hive or two next year...

Then on Friday evening I met up with my friend T to go to the theatre, in Bath,which was lots of fun.

Catherine Steadman (Kate) and
Michael Pennington (Mr Hardcastle)

We saw 'She Stoops to Conquer'  which is on as part of the Theatre Royal's summer season. The play was originally performed in 1773, but for this production the setting has been updated to the 1920s, which mostly works - it is still feasible, just about to have the big class divides which underlie the plot.

The plot relies heavily on characters being unable to recognise one another, and on the dashing young gentlemen being fooled into thinking that the manor house was in fact an inn...

Hubert Burton plays Marlow, shy and tongue-tied with women of his own class, forward and brash with women he believes to be his social inferiors, and cringingly snobbish and superior towards his host, Mr Hardcastle (Michael Pennington) who he believes to be an inn keeper. Marlow has a touch of Bertie Wooster about him, and while his way with innkeepers and serving maids is a little unappealing to modern eyes, it is very well done.

Micheal Pennington had a far less showy role, but played it with beautiful restraint, as Mr Hardcastle, ready to welcome the son of his best friend as his daughter's suitor, but  met with arrogance and treated as a servant.

Catherine Steadman (who I last saw in 'Oppenheimer') was Kate Hardcastle, who seemed more n control of events than any of the other characters, and seemed to enjoy playing the barmaid to 'conquer' Marlow.

It was all good fun, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and felt the setting - (both the period and the revolving set) worked well.

The play is on in Bath until 18th July, so plenty of time to see it if you are in the area!

Snow

We were told, yesterday, that we would get snow today. Possibly quite a lot of snow. They were partly right. We got a light  dusting of snow. 

(and I got to see that my loft insulation is, it appears, pretty effective, and that my water feature may be a land-shark in its spare time.)

Loki, unimpressed

Judging by the paw-prints, the cats had been outside before I came downstairs, and judging by their expressions, they were not impressed. 

It started snowing again quite heavily as I set out for work, but then stopped almost immediately and the snow was all gone by mid-morning, although we've had the pleasure of sleet and wind since, too!

Back to Work

I went back to work last Friday, which was probably a good thing - having a one day working week to ease back into the working routine lessens the shock! 

I have now written all my christmas thank you letters, and paid my December credit card bill, and taken down all the decorations, and the tree (which naturally shed needles in a thick layer on the floor through the house to the back door!) The tree is now waiting in the garden to be put out with the rest of the recycling, on Tuesday morning.

It's actually been having adventures since then - last night was very wild and windy - nothing like the 100 mph gales they have had in Scotland, but never the less very energetic. This morning I found that the tree had migrated half way down the garden (and that the recycling boxes were all the way down to the end, so I spent some time picking up all the recycling!) 

And of course, the cats decided to make today the day that they played tag along the top of the fences and walls, and up onto the roofs of the sheds and the kitchen. 

I don't know that this is the first time they have been up there (I know Loki, at least, has been up on the fences before) but it is the first time I've *seen* either of them on the shed roof, and the first time I have seen Coraline (who is smaller, and generally less adventurous, than Loki) on the fence or the wall (both about 6' high).

As you can tell from all this, I am having a quiet weekend at home. I do have some fun things planned - next week I am going to see 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in Bath, then the weekend after I am planning to see an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust'. Then at the end of the month I'm hoping to have a visit from my cousin and her husband and little boy, and at the beginning of February I shall be going to London, to meet up with my parents, and to see the Magna Carta at the British Library. 

And I am still making plans to have some work done on the house. I had someone come round just before christmas, and have just had their quote, which is not as horror-inspiring as I had feared. I have asked them for clarification on some points but it looks as though I should be able to get most of what I want doing, done, at least indoors. (I shall have to wait for the outside work, I think)

So all in all, I am cautiously optimistic about 2015 so far!

(Now, if I can only shake off this cold . . .)

Plumbing again

The plumber came again today, and I have I new pump in my boiler, and less gunk in places where there shouldn't be gunk, and radiators which get hot. In fact they get hotter than the did before, which is nice.

I haven't had the bill yet, I'm hoping it won't be too horrendous.

And this weekend my parents are coming to visit, so I'm hoping I will be able to get my dad to accompany me while I look at more cars - for moral support as much as anything else.

I do wish it would stop raining, though.

I am British: Hear me talk about the weather!

We have not been having sub-zero temperatures, or airport-closing snow, as is happening elsewhere, but we have been having some horrendous weather. Massive amounts of rain and wind.

I'm glad I don't live on the coast - this picture is Sennen Cove in West Cornwall.

Picture from 'I love Cornwall' on facebook

There is flooding in lots of coastal areas, and around Gloucester.  The Somerset levels are flooded.

Here, we've had pouring rain, which is unpleasant to be out in, and wind, and (yesterday) a fairly dramatic hailstorm - we had a ceiling leaking in one of our offices at work, which was no fun for the person who got an unexpected cold shower at her desk. We couldn't find any obvious holes or missing tiles - it may be down to the wind driving rain in, rather than an actual 'leak' - we'll have to see once it's checked out properly.

I walked down to the paper shop this morning - this is the little stream which goes under the bridge at the end of the road.

 And this is what it usually looks like (both taken from pretty much the same point!)

Apparently we are due for yet more rain and high winds over the next few days. My heart goes out to all those who have suffered, or are facing, flooded homes - I've been there, albeit to a fairly limited degree, and it's horrible.

I'm really hoping that things will improve soon.

And meanwhile I am counting my blessings - that I have not (yet, at least) suffered power cuts or flooding, and that my family are all safe, and my house appears to be weatherproof (at least, so far!)

Christmas!

It's been a quiet Christmas, but nice, so far. I drove down to Deepest Devon on Monday evening - which was an interesting experience - it was very wild, wet and windy, and there were places where there was an awful lot of surface water and huge puddles and streams on the roads.

Tree

Fortunately it seemed to get better rather than worse as my journey progressed, and by the time I arrived ( with the journey having taken about 40 minutes longer than usual) it had stopped raining (temporarily!)

Christmas Morning church 

My younger sister and her partner were at my parents for a pre-christmas visit, and we overlapped for about 24 hours - long enough to catch up, exchange gifts, and to cooperate in decorating the Christmas Tree.

Christmas Day itself was fairly quiet - we went to church to ring in the morning, and admired the church full of christmas trees, each decorated by a different group.

Ringer's tree (Or Dalek)

The ringers have a bell-shaped tree (or possibly a Dalek in deep disguise)

We got home for second breakfast to discover that the heating element from the oven had blown, but happily my Dad was able to jury-rig the oven to work, by the careful deployment of a large baking tray to turn the grill into an oven-style heating element which, combined with the use of the fan part of the defunct oven setting, allowed us not only to bake out croissants, but also to cook a full Christmas Dinner.

Which was a relief. I'm sure we would have managed, if we'd needed to, with the little cooker in the caravan, the hob, and the microwave, but it would have been more complicated!

Burning food!

As it was, we were able to eat and drink to excess in the traditional manner, and to open gifts and watch Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty' and telephone family members.

It was a Good Day.

Boxing Day brought more socialising as my aunt and uncle, together with my cousin, her husband and son, came over for lunch - I tend only to see them 2 or 3 times a year, so it was good to catch up.

And having a 3 year old visit reminds you of the thrills of Christmas. He was just as excited about everyone else's presents as his own, with lots of jumping and "What is it What is it What is it!?!" And we all enjoyed the reading of 'Fox in Socks', which followed. (Kudos to Granny, who managed to read it aloud and without losing her self control, despite 6 other adults getting the giggles around her as she read..)

Day to Day stuff

So, no exciting theatre trips or writers this week. In fact, the week started badly as I must have eaten something which disagreed with me, and since then it seems to have been nothing but rain and work, and work and rain.

And I'm working this Saturday, too.

I spent most of today on a course. I was pleasantly surprised with parts of it - if anyone had told me that Trusts could be made interesting (especially in the dead hour immediately after lunch) I would have mocked them mercilessly, but apparently it is possible. Of course, it may not be relevant unless I suddenly start to have lots of multi-millionaires wandering into my office, but still. If they do, I shall now feel more prepared.

Other parts were . . more what one expects of a CPD course..

This weekend I expect to be doing such thrilling things as raking up dead leaves, vacuuming the house and trying to organise my financial documents and shred the stuff which I don't need to keep.

So - not a lot in the way of excitement or bloggable activities.

The British Museum, and the British Weather

I forgot, when I was booking my train tickets to go to London for the Kickstarter party, that the clocks would be going back on Sunday morning, and I had anticipated that I  might be a wee bit hungover, and wanting a lie-in. I was also holding out hope I might be able to meet up with a friend, too, so I'd booked a ticket for 1pm.

As it happened, I wasn't hungover, didn't need the lie-in (just as well) and my friend wasn't free. so I did what any sensible person would do, and went to the British Museum. I like the British Museum.

Painted Drinking Cup, Athens, 460BCE

They have lots of interesting stuff, and it's free to get in, so you can pop in when you've a spare hour or so, and just browse a little.

This time, I mostly wandered around the ancient Greek sections - I don't recall having seen the Bassae Frieze before -

Detail of Bassae Frieze (approx 400BCE)

I particualrly liked these footsoldiers on the Neiried Monument, peering over their shields.

Detail of Frieze from the Neried Monument (Lykia, 380 BCE)

And the magnificent horse from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. 

I gave the Parthenon marbles a miss, and wandered on to ancient Ninevah. I think it was Ninevah, anyway.

Then, a couple of hours on a train (and a  lot of time sitting on platforms waiting for trains) and home. Given the weather forecast, I was glad to be travelling on Sunday and not Monday, when they were threatening apocalyptic storms.

Missed Me ?

This past week or so has been a little stressful - we've been replacing our elderly and very slow computer system, with new servers, hardware, and moving from having separate servers in every office, to having everything in one place.

And of course, things have not got entirely to plan, some stuff took longer than expected, and getting the various bits of software we use to play nice with each other has caused a few problems, so even through the main upgrade happened over the weekend, the IT guys have been in all week to get everything set up (and to try to work out why one (and only one) of the new computers is not playing nicely with the dictation system, and to make it behave itself)

My laptop has been to visit the IT guys to check out whether it was about to die (answer: probably not - it's running a bit hot but did well in its stress test, so for now I'm buying it nice cooling stand and am going to try not to spill any more drinks into it. I've heard they don't like that)

We're still having very hot weather, which I don't appreciate - I think we've had the hottest day in 7 years, and also one of the longest unbroken periods of sunshine.

On Monday, things changed a little - well, a lot.

We had torrential downpours, thunder, lightening, the lot. I popped out of the office at, lunch time for about 5 minutes, I got so wet that my shoes took 2 days to dry out, and I had to wring my hair out when I got back to the office..

It was still raining when I got home, and while I didn't dance naked in the rain (the neighbours are too close, and not understanding!) I did go out to enjoy the rain.

I wasn't the only one. There was a beautiful frog, and hundreds of lovely little snails. Mostly they were the stripey kind, but there were also dark brown ones, and yellow ones. They really are fascinating little creatures, and so beautifully shiny, in the rain.

(I admit I'm prejudiced. I can't feel quite so friendly towards the slugs. I'm sure they are just as fascinating, but they are rather less attractive)

Since Monday it has got hot again - I'm hoping it will be cool enough to do a little gardening tomorrow.

I'm also trying to get the house a bit less cluttered - last weekend I managed to completely fill the wheelie bin, and have taken 2 big bags of books to charity shops, and to tidy up the cupboard under the stairs so that I shall be able to fit several boxes of  my less-favourite books into it. There's a way to go yet, but I shall get there.

So, that's what I have been doing for the last week or so. How about you?

Under the Weather

I had various things planned for this week, but have not managed to do the fun bits - I got back from my holiday on Saturday, and I was due to go to the Amanda Palmer gig in Bristol on Monday night, but as it turned out,  couldn't go. It was simply too hot, and I finished the working day feeling exhausted, with a heat-induced headache, and felt that to drive all the way to Bristol to spend hours in a loud and hot environment would be a Bad Idea.

I was very disappointed to miss AFP, and to miss catching up with friends, but I think it was the right decision - I wound up having a quiet evening and an early night.

I am just not cut out for summer weather.

I also missed another outing on Thursday, due to heat and work related issues. *sigh*

Catch Up

I've not blogged for the past couple of weeks partly as nothing very exciting has happened, and partly as my laptop has been poorly, and life is too short to try to blog from a phone!

My backspace key came off, and the tab key became extremely stiff and unreliable, so I decided that replacing the keyboard, rather than just the one key, was the way to go.

and then as I waited for the local repair shop to get the new keyboard in, I managed to spill a glass of G'n'T, and while I didn't, at the time, think any of it had gone onto the laptop, other than (literally) a drop or two on the casing, the laptop then intermittently  refused to start up which seems a bit of a coincidence.

Anyway, I took the battery out, and left everything in the airing cupboard for a few days. I thought it was completely dead, and was comforting myself with the reflection that I'd just backed everything up, so wouldn't lose anything.

However, (touch wood) it seems to be behaving again now, so it looks as though I have a reprieve, if not a cure.

I also now have a new keyboard.

And today I learned I won a book in a competition on The History Girls blog, which is a very nice surprise (it's a very interesting blog, I heartily recommend it, quite apart from the chance to win books) and I found that the unexpected parcel I had to collect from the post office this morning was a couple a books which I had forgotten I'd ordered, which is also happy-making.

And less than a week from today I get to see Nathalie, and Anabel, and Ian, and Brian, and of course Cheryl, and we all get to see Neil and get our copies of  The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

And I have booked a day off work so I will have a short week, although we have a partners meeting this week so there will be at least one very long day!

Meanwhile, it a a beautifully sunny day, and I have been pottering around, repotting tomato plants, and ..er doing laundry (so nice to be able to dry things outside).

Family and Work and Things

It's been a busy week. We had a Partner's meeting on Wednesday, which means a late night, and one of our partners is retiring, with Friday as her final day in the office, so we have sticky buns and champagne at lunchtime, which I'm not sure amounts to a balanced diet, but which is not bad, as an occasional thing.

Then on Friday night I visited my second cousin, M, who lives about 40 minutes drive from here, for dinner. It was an enjoyable evening - we talked about all sorts of things, travel, and gardening, and the inanity of banks, and I learned about a few things from M which I'd never hear of before -  including the time that Aristotle and Jackie Onassis  gatecrashed a picnic M was attending, and her memories of meeting [Sir] Peter Scott back in 1948, not long after he established Slimbridge.

Saturday was quiet - I have been doing various bits and pieces around the house, and spent an hour listening to the 1st Episode of 'Neverwhere', on Radio 4 - I was concerned that it wouldn't (couldn't) live up to my expectations, but I thought it was excellent - I particularly enjoyed Mr Gaiman's cameo role as The Fop With No Name, and we've still got Benedict Cumberbatch's Angel Islington to look forward to in future episodes...

And I found out on Saturday that Neil Gaiman is coming to Bath, through the machinations of  Topping and Co. Bookshop, in June, which is definitely something to look forward to. (and having checked my diary, it's the same week as I am going to see The Cripple of Inishmaan and Bill Bailey which I think you'll agree is going to be a pretty good week! 

This weekend is that last I've got for about 4 weeks when I'm not doing anything - next week I'm going to London, and then bringing a friend back for a visit, then it is Easter weekend, when I shall be seeing my parents, then the following weekend I'm getting together with my oldest friend and her partner. Lots of good things to look forward to. 

Cold and Car Troubles

It's turned very cold again. It snowed a little on Sunday night, and again today (although none of it settled) and it all proved too much for my car battery, which gave up the ghost overnight, and could summon up only a tiny, pathetic cough this morning, rather that, y'know, actually starting the car.

Fortunately, I do have breakdown cover (including Home Start) and it must be admitted that if you are going to have a non-working car, the best place to have it must be at home. At least I was able to wait inside, in the warm, and to get on with some work while I waited.

I would not have been impressed with a wait of almost 3 hours had I been sitting miserably at the side of the road!

On the plus side, I have a new car battery, so I shouldn't have the trouble again.

But I am so very ready for it to start being properly Spring-like, now.