Quote of the Day

I looked outside this morning, just before my Internet went down for a few hours and what I saw made me think of this.

 “The more it

SNOWS – tiddly pom

The more it

GOES – tiddly pom

On

Snowing.

And nobody

KNOWS – tiddly pom

How cold my

TOES – tiddly pom

How cold my

TOES – tiddly pom

Are

Growing.”

“Pooh” Piglet replied solemnly, “it isn’t the toes so much as the ears.”

The ‘outdoor’ hum by Pooh Bear, from the House at Pooh Corner.

Oh to be in England now the snow is here…

When I was a child, I was never sent home from school because it snowed. The busses all seemed to run and trains were only delayed if they went to Scotland. Why so much chaos now?
That is not strictly true, in my last year at school we did get sent home because very few of the teachers had been able to get in, but that was because eighteen inches (about 46cm) of snow fell in one night, which is a lot for England. That is the only time I was turned away from school. I did actually get there, so even with eighteen inches of snow I was only a bit hampered by the weather. When I grew up and became a TV engineer I went to work all weathers driving around to fix people’s TVs all over Essex and parts of London. I did have a few bumps, but I soon learned how to prevent that and could pull out of a skid and avoid getting stuck in every kind of weather like the best of them. We had some bad weather too. I was working in 1962/3, a really bad winter, one of the worst on record. Twenty years later, having moved west, in 1982, another exceptional winter, I still went to work every day even though the West was buried in deep snow, so why is it such a problem now? The Better Half and I were going to Manchester this weekend to watch the Granddaughter perform in a school choir. We had booked the hotel bought the train tickets and were packed and ready to go when this happened. . .

Just in case you have'nt noticed, it snowed - but not much

It is not so deep here, about four inches, but busses stopped running the town became gridlocked and trains were re-scheduled. We could not get to the station and so had to cancel the hotel and mourn the loss of our non refundable cheap train tickets. So here we are out of pocket and unable to go with the Granddaughter the other end of the country with a gridlocked and useless transport system , so it will be a while before we will see her. The only highlight was that I was able to wander around this afternoon and capture some of the snowy scenery, amongst all the dog walkers and parents with children on toboggans.

A frozen pond in the bushes

We won't be getting too much light from this solar powered garden light tonight.

Even the back door handle got a minature snowdrift on it

The snow kept falling all dayand all the kids off school had a wonderful day.  Snowmen will soon be popping out of the ground and then it will all go away and we will be back to normal.  But another month, another year and it will all happen again. Maybe one day we will learn how to keep things running when it snows, but I am not holding my breath.

Winter continues

 We had a little more snow again today and I quickly snapped a few pictures (in poor light) in order to capture them before the snow melted. The birds were making the best of our bird feeder and we had quite a collection in the garden. I was unable to snap every kind that arrived looking for food, they tend to act camera shy and vanish as soon as I have got them in shot.

Twisted Hazel with two visitors in there somewhere

 

All the smaller birds disappear when he arrives

 Magpies will take baby chicks from smaller bird's nests in spring, so he is not very popular with them.

Robins are regular visitors and are very territorial, so he may be the same one we see most days

The snow did go mostly during the day, but there is still a little left and the temperature is falling rapidly this evening so it could be icy tomorrow.

Winter

He is not an inchie, I drew him on the computer for our Crristmas tags, using an art package

 We have had our first taste of winter.  Actual snow fell one day but it was gone the next.  We have had some frost before that but nothing terrible, the coldest nightwas about minus 7C.  The cold may be returning but for the last two days it has kept well above freezing in our tiny corner of the UK.  Elswhere in the Eastern side of the country the weather has been a bit more disruptive but it only take a few flakes of snow to bring our country to a grinding halt.   Even though we regularly get snow, it always seems to come as a suprise and find the roads and most importantly, the road users totally unprepared.

The terrible winter of 2012