Merry Christmas

This is the exciting game we got with the box of crackers this year. Instead of a token we got a wind up reindeer in our cracker, and the box had a race track on the back, so after dinner we wound up our reindeer and had races. It was actually quite good fun, though Nic's reindeer had a distinct steer to port, so anyone to the left of it got barged into which led to some corrections.

The picture below is Saffy looking very fetching in her Christmas scarf and leggings.



Poor hard done by doggy.

Happy New Year everyone

Christmas food shopping

I have done most of Xmas food shopping but went into Waitrose at lunchtime today to get some things that had been forgotten. It was really busy! Our Waitrose is never busy except at Christmas and today it was busy. There were lots of people queueing for the tills, but they had got it well organised. There were staff at the end of every aisle organising people into neat queues and then sending them on to the tills, and rewarding you for your patience by giving you a chocolate when you got to the top of the queue.

It made queueing almost enjoyable!

Glad tidings

Supermarket shopping with young children is seldom a pleasure really.  Shopping with young children at this time of year is HELL.  Luckily we are way past that.  This morning we needed to pop to our supermarket to get victuals for a quickly(due to weather) rearranged lunch with Trev's sister.  The place was heaving.  Not surprisingly given that it is two days before Xmas and the roads are the clearest they've been of snow since Saturday.  Waitrose, our supermaket gives you the chance to self scan what you buy and then check it out yourself.  You carry a hand held device and scan each bar code as you read it.  We got round to the far end of the shop and there was a very harrassed mother trying to be reasonable with her  5 year old who was holding the scanner.  Suddenly she snapped, a voice that sounded like the girl from the excorsist suddenly issued forth: GIVE ME THE SCANNER.  To be honest, I don't know if that was succesful as Trev and I made a hasty retreat to giggle unobserved.
Hey ho!  Sometimes I can really appreciate my kids being in their 20s

More Frosty Pictures

Another sub zero day plus the end of yesterday produced more picture taking opportunities, so here they are:

Yesterday the Cow Parsley made a great frame for the late afternoon light

We also had our own entrance to Narnia:

And even the bins were decorated

Cold weather not all bad after all.  But it would be nice to be able to drive off without spending 10 minutes defrosting.

What do "experts" know?

 David Quarmby, chairman of the RAC foundation and co-author of the Winter Resilience Review, is quoted on the BBC saying: "This is a very early onset of winter but it is also a bit different from what we are used to - although temperatures are not particularly cold..."

Well I don't know where he hangs out, but I maintain it is ******* cold, particular or not!  Just look at this Willow tree.............

A particularly cold Willow tree

Minus 6 degrees - Narnia in Saffron Walden

A cool start to the day, so a couple of pictures of the scene 100 metres from our door.

Never has a recycling centre looked so festive

Cold but pretty

Nicky takes flight

This is a picture of Nicola taken by a bystander at the races in the spring sometime. The horse, called No More Whispers, was acting up - as you can see - and she rashly hung on.

The owner has used the picture as his Christmas card, so Nic will be on all his cards!

She is glad she has her back to the camera because she says she was probably pulling a really daft face.

What is lovely is that the person who took the picture took the trouble to send it to Evan, just because he liked it, and thought other people would as well.

Kindness of strangers.