Thursday, December 02, 2010

This ubiquitous white stuff (now with thrilling update)

Dec 10 047

Well, here I am sitting in bed typing again, but this time I have the huge white blinding SAD light sitting on the blanket chest facing me. Dave says the light beaming out from the room is like that scene in Ally McBeal where she meets the unicorn. I hope this thing works and stops me from getting seriously fed up like I did last winter when the snow and ice and fog went on and on and on.

Dec 10 018

Meanwhile, 16 miles away, my daughter in Sheffield (the third largest city in England) says that after 24 hours of snow, the roads have not been cleared at all, and her local shops have run out of bread and milk and eggs, because delivery trucks cannot get into town. We Brits have really got to get our act together if this is going to be our new winter climate.

Meanwhile, Dave – who two days ago was saying he wanted snow as high as the dry stone walls (as we had 30 years ago) – is now saying the snow is a bit claustrophobic. We went for a lovely walk yesterday morning, but when we emerged in the afternoon, the snow plough had been and turned the road into a treacherous sheet of ice, so we gave up and came home.

Meanwhile, my big sister is dancing up and down with glee at what she calls the “beautiful snow,” because she rarely sees the stuff in her part of the world (a mere 50 miles ESE of us). Though it has to be said that Kath is always a cheerful bunny.

Why do I hate the stuff?

Simples. Because it gets in the way of my life. On Tuesday the snow made me miss my saxophone lesson, on Wednesday I missed a meeting in Bakewell, and today I will miss my trip to the cinema to see The Kids Are All Right – a film I am desperate to see. It is probably my last chance before it disappears from the schedules.

But – what was that C.S.Lewis quote I put on here the other day? It speaks to my condition all the time at the moment.

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own, or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life - the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's real life is a phantom of one's own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time.  C.S.Lewis

And even though there are no newspapers and no post, we do have milk in the village -

Dec 10 049

Jan 10 103

UPDATE at 10.29

OK, now it’s getting exciting. The drifts on our lane are waist-deep in places. We are officially snowed in. It’s getting interesting. We have flour, we have yeast, but the best before date on the unopened emergency yeast packet is September 2007. Will it work? or will I be wasting flour?

No comments: