Change of plan

As a rule on a Sunday morning I get up and run the long way round into the village to buy the Sunday paper. We only ever buy newspapers on Saturday and Sunday. It takes just about all day to read them so during the rest of the week we scan headlines online and pick out bits to read. However on Saturday and Sunday we give ourselves a treat. Hence my habit of running into the village. 

In view of the arctic conditions outside and because I didn’t fancy breaking any bones, today I decided, like yesterday, to forego my run. Instead of running shoes, I put on my hiking boots and set off to walk my running route. And then I came to the point where the snowdrifts started. 

I persevered only a short distance further and stopped at the point where the snow went wall to wall. 

Backtracking, I opted for another route into the village. Same story. 

So I headed back down the road, intending to go past my house and into the village along the main roads. On my way I came across an elderly neighbour digging his car out. We reminisced about winters of the past. He commented on the advantage of this weather being the fact that you get to meet people you don’t normally see when you go everywhere by car. Yesterday, he informed me, he was talking to the lady from the end house. That would be me; I remember the conversation. So I set him right on that score, whereupon he expressed his surprise at how different ladies can look from one day to the next. Now, I was wearing the same bright red coat and the same brown woolly bobble hat as yesterday. I didn’t set him right on that score. He is 87 after all and is entitled to forget a few things. After all, he is still getting out and about, clearing the snow off his path and is generally pretty sharp. We can forgive him for forgetting he spoke to me yesterday and even for telling me the same stories twice over! 

Eventually I had to move to prevent my feet freezing to the spot and went on my way into the village. The pavement from our house to the crossroads and from the crossroads to the village centre alternated patches of deep slush and stretches of sheet ice. So when I came back I did my neighbourly duty and cleared a good bit of our patch of pavement and sprinkled it with a cocktail of ash and salt. 

This is serious weather; some people are having difficulty getting out of their houses. A friend of my daughter reports having to dig her way IN to her house on Friday evening. My poor little Christmas tree in its pot in the garden has been blown over and turned into a kind of snowy hedgehog.

What’s more, for the second time this winter I have had to cancel a dinner party this weekend because of snow. 

I wonder if it will happen again if I try to organise one in May!