A Snow Day

At 6.00 a.m. we had two possible strategies. I thought that our journey was not essential and that we should stay at home, and Braveheart thought that we should leave as early as possible so as to get to work on time. We got up and had breakfast while we thought about it, and then were lucky enough to watch one of the neighbours trying to get his car out. The road was as you see in the photo, in fact the tail lights you can see in the far right are those of the neighbour in question. He cleared snow from the roof of his car, and that allowed me to see that there were about 12 inches. Hmmm, I thought.

He took 10 minutes to back out of his drive onto the road and get stuck in the snow. Then he took 20 minutes, a shovel, two pieces of carpet and five neighbours to get his car back on the drive. His wife stood in the doorway saying "you'll never make it". We watched from the window and took photos discreetly.

Braveheart decided that our journey was not essential and we should stay at home.

We measured the snow depth outside the back door:









and outside the front door:









The garden is a winter wonderland.
Kino and her three friends left for Africa a few weeks ago. She'll be gutted to learn that she missed the best UK snow event for 18 years! She is travelling over there until Easter when she is home for a week before returning to continue her trip around the world. Kino has her own blog, and you can read her articles (and look at some stunning photos) on Curiouser and Curiouser.

A day after her departure I received an email to say she had left her yellow fever vaccination certificate in her handbag and could I send it on by Global Priority mail. Unfortunately, there was no vaccination certificate in her handbag and after a lengthy search of her belongings I concluded that we did not have it. A difficult email conversation followed, as she was absent for days at a time and I had to travel to Paris and had no internet access, but the upshot of it all was that I phoned around her doctors in the last five years till I found the one who had done the vaccination, and then they issued a new certificate, which they posted to me and which I have now sent on to Kino at a youth hostel in Kenya. Here's hoping it gets to her alright!