Getting Ready for the Big Day

It is now less than 10 days to go before Christmas Day is upon us. Doesn’t it creep up on you fast?! Luckily, Dori and I finished our gift buying a little while ago before it got too manic in the shopping centres. We have, believe it or not, also already wrapped those gifts and they are currently snuggled safely under the Christmas tree. Well, I say we wrapped them, but it would be slightly more accurate to say that I wrapped my present for Dori and she did all the others!

Before I was married, I would just about be thinking of starting to buy presents at this point in the year, and yes I have even done the stereotypical male thing of rushing round the shops on Christmas Eve trying to get those last few gifts :-) But age, marriage and the sheer dread of battling with thousands of other sharp-elbowed shoppers has led to me being much more organised nowadays. So, the gifts have been bought, wrapped and installed under the tree, and the decorations are up around the Yellow House. Talking of the decorations, for those of you that didn’t see them over at Dori’s blog, here are a few pics to give you an idea of what some of our festive characters look like.

The forecast is for the snow to return tonight and over the weekend, so there is the very real possibility of a White Christmas at the Yellow House this year. I can’t remember the last time we had snow on the ground at Christmas. Santa may need a sleigh for real next week!

Catching Up

It’s been a little while since my last posting. Apologies for my absence, but sometimes real-life takes precedence over the blogosphere :) So, what’s been happening in the interim?

Well, I guess the big news was the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the subsequent fixing of the date for the Royal Wedding. It’s been a while since there has been an occasion of this size in this country, certainly not since the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and probably not since Charles and Diana’s wedding back in 1981. Back then there were street parties across the country and a real mood of national celebration. I suspect that it won’t be quite like that this time round. Questions have already been asked about how much the taxpayer should be paying out for the wedding at a time when drastic cuts are being made to public spending, taxes are on the rise and people are fearful for their jobs. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are going to want to be in London to see some of the wedding and it will obviously be a huge security operation for the police that is going to cost millions of pounds. At a time of such austerity in can sometimes be a positive thing to have an event such as this to celebrate and get people’s minds away from the daily drudgery. Whatever the rights and wrongs, I can only wish the couple every happiness in their life together.

We have also been doing some celebrating of our own over the last week. Of course, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. This year we had a quiet, though very delicious, celebration here in the Yellow House. Last year, you may remember, we flew over to Georgia to enjoy the holiday with Dori’s family. Well, plane tickets sadly aren’t getting any cheaper and so we stayed on this side of the Atlantic this time round – although thanks to Skype we were able to experience a little of the festivities over in America :)

The celebratory mood continued yesterday as we attended the christening of my nephew’s baby girl. The weather here for the last week has gotten progressively colder and icier with many areas experiencing heavy snow, so the thought of spending an afternoon in a cold and draughty church – even for such a happy occasion – was a little daunting. However, as it turned out, the church was quite small, not at all draughty and even had some very welcome heating! The service was lovely and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Ironically, after the fears of getting too cold in the church, when we all decamped to the venue for the celebration meal afterwards, we found that the heating there was not turned on and it was frrrrrrreezing!!! Everybody was sat there, still in their coats and scarves for the entire time. It is always good though to have a story to relate to an event like that though – makes it even more memorable. :-)

The forecast looks like some of that snow I mentioned may be heading our way tonight. Hopefully it won’t be too heavy, although if it is we may be able to get some even better photos than we managed at the start of the year when the country was paralyzed for a couple of weeks! Here are a couple that we took at the time as we walked around on the first day of heavy snow.

Finally, can I wish the team bidding to bring the World Cup to England in 2018 every success over the next few days. FIFA will be announcing on Thursday the host countries of both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and England have thrown their hat into the ring for the 2018 competition. Football politics may scupper their chances apparently, but you never know. Everyone assumed that the 2012 Olympics would be in Paris and look what happened there! Good luck to everyone involved!

Yep, It Is Spring - Sort of.

My last post was entitled “Is It Spring Yet?” as winter seems to have lasted for about the last 5 years here! Anyway, imagine my surprise when watching the news today to find out that, apparently, yes it is spring already!

Now I know what you are thinking – “spring doesn’t start until March 20th” (if you are in the Northern hemisphere at least). I agree. The vernal equinox is the start of spring, or at least it has been for as long as I can remember. But now, The Meteorological Office here in the UK have declared that spring now starts on March 1st, and similarly summer starts on June 1st, autumn on September 1st and winter on December 1st. Oh, and because they have decided on this timetable, those are now the Official Dates for the various seasons. Not for me they ain’t! My diary still tells me that spring starts on the vernal equinox, and that’s still the day that I will be observing.

Anyhoo, in other weather news, the same Met Office say that this winter – that’s the one that ended on the last day of February obviously – has been the coldest in England for over 30 years, and for nearly 50 years in Scotland. I can well believe it, the cold weather seems to have gone on forever, and the snow has been a much more regular occurrence than usual. This was illustrated by this NASA satellite photo released in January of a snow and ice-covered Great Britain.



The Met Office have yet to release a seasonal forecast for this spring, even though it is already here! But then, given their track record for last summer – “a barbecue summer” it rained and rained – and this winter – “milder than average” coldest for 30+ years – it is maybe not so surprising.

I am just glad to see the sun come out for the last couple of days, even if it is going to go back in hiding again tomorrow!

Snow Day!

As Dori mentions in her post today, we have had significant snow here overnight, and it has continued to fall during today too. The weather has been on a cold groove since a little before Christmas, but this week has seen it get even worse. Most nights have seen a very sharp frost that has made everything look like it has been placed in an ice-box. On Monday, which was my first day back at work since Christmas, our car refused to start and I had to call out the breakdown service. The verdict was that the car battery had met its demise and had gone to meet its maker. So, the New Year started with a £70 bill for a new battery, and a late start to my working week which was exacerbated by the fact that the delay meant that I was then driving into the office during the peak of the rush hour. Ho hum, things can only get better.

The snow started late yesterday afternoon, and the forecast was for anything up to 16 inches of snow in some areas of southern England. The reality was that we got about 3 inches or so where we live by the time I woke up this morning, but even that was enough to cause traffic chaos. With the snow still falling heavily, I was fearful that if I did drive into the office then I may not be able to make the return journey later in the day, so I rang to say that I would not be able to make it in – and by the sounds of it I was far from the only one in that situation. So, today is a Snow Day! Yay!!

Dori and I decided to have a walk out to see what the conditions were like around where we live, and to take a couple of pictures to share with you all. The wind was quite icy, and we both had our hats pulled down around our ears, and our scarves pulled up over our mouths. It was like a scene from “Scott of the Antarctic”! :-) I hope that you like the pictures.

The snow continued to fall quite heavily up until lunchtime, so it is now deeper than you see in the photos, and the forecast for tonight is for possibly more snow followed by a very severe frost. So the conditions tomorrow are likely to be even more treacherous than they have been today! I brought some work home with me yesterday, so I will work from home tomorrow if I can. At the moment there is no sign of this cold stretch ending anytime soon, and there may be another heavy snowfall at the weekend.

It may be time to barricade ourselves into the Yellow House and just wait it out until the thaw!!