Frost, walks, beards and so on.

Up at the crack of dawn for grandparental duties, I saw frost on the shed roof, frost on the cars parked outside our house. Clearly winter has arrived. 

After I had taken the children to school, done a quick supermarket shop and, taking advantage of having my daughter’s car to drive for the day, bought in supplies of coal and logs for the fire in the living room (preparations for the arrival of winter before it gets too severe) I went home for a late breakfast. By then the sun was shining out of a clear blue sky. This is why there was frost of course: that clear sky! But it was too good a day to sit indoors so I persuaded my husband to abandon the computer, leave his translation work until later and to go for a walk with me. 

So, once again taking advantage of having my daughter’s car to drive for the day, off we went to one of our local beauty spots: Dovestone Reservoir. We drove up and down the road to the reservoir a couple of times, trying to find a way of avoiding paying parking. In the end we went onto the pay and display car park. As I approached the ticket machine, an old chap sitting in his car wound his window down and offered me his ticket. He and his wife were about to leave and had a ticket good for another couple of hours which we gladly accepted. Small acts of kindness still abound in the world. 

A surprisingly large number of people were out and about, considering that this was Monday morning. Not all of them were retired folk either. Judging by the number of children around, either some schools are having their half term holiday a week later than everyone else or there are a lot of parents condoning truanting! It was a splendid day to be out for a walk. The wind was a bit fresh but out of the wind it was positively warm, reminding us that despite the frosty start it is still only the beginning of November. Here are a few photos of our foray into the Saddleworth beauty spot:- 

November has turned into Movember, with many gentlemen growing sponsored moustaches to raise funds for research into prostate cancer. I have read that our Mr. Cameron has decided not to participate this year. Over in Germany, near Stuttgart, where they have The World Beard and Moustache Championships,  some gentlemen have made a good start on this. 

Yesterday I wrote about the “thigh gap”. Here is some comment from Hadley Freeman in today’s Guardian.

That’s about it for today. My busy day continued with an afternoon school run to bring the grandchildren home again and then a detour to collect their mother from the school where she is doing her teaching practice. 

Tomorrow Granddad is doing the afternoon school run because I am attending an Italian class in Manchester. That will be interesting for all concerned. 

I have ended the day by baking a cake. Such is the busy life of a retired lady!