Winter grips tight

Brrrrrr!


Thank goodness the rain and gales have subsided for the moment! Teaching yesterday was like battling the elements, and to keep warm the fan heater was coming on via the thermostat, so therefore working like a trooper, and the whole sounded like a modern piece of symphonic music with a singer desparately singing for all they were worth just to be heard above the trombones!

My lovely young R arrived for her lesson off the school bus at the end of my lane. After negotiating a small lake, she walked the 100 metres to me and arrived like a drowned puppy. Her school trousers were sodden up to the knee, and her hair plastered to her face - but the smile was there, especially after some restorative biscuits! She sang beautifully, if a little dripping!

So many folk have throats, coughs, aches and pains at the moment. The November gloom has set in, and we are not yet near enough to the excitement of Christmas for that gloom to lift. That is why I value these rare sunny days when the mountains are clear, and the blue in the sky has that winter iridescence. The garden is awash with leaves off those bountiful plum trees which gave us much culinary pleasure, and many of which reside in my freezer for stewed winter plums and custard! Yum

My dishwasher gave up the ghost yesterday......I know, I should really save more of the planet and do it all by hand, but it is the only 'non essential electrical convenience' that I use, and when I moved here was the first time in my life when I have owned one! So for the moment until I can get hold of the plumber, it is back to the old fashioned way!

Friday is song free day, so I am enjoying some BBC Radio 4, and will take a short trip to the small supermarket in the village and then visit my parents. Getting old is so tough, and as painful to watch as to be the recipient of the aging process. They do brilliantly, but I know it is hard. My Mum has dementia so cannot remember anything very much, and my Dad is her carer.

Hope S shoots me before I get too debilitated !