We are truly post apocalypse today.
We were late to start the day, because of the late night at work, and opened the curtains to discover, to our surprise, that the world had turned white whilst we slept, and that snow was still falling.
We looked at it suspiciously whilst we had coffee. There was once a time in my life when a heavy fall of snow was thrilling, and led to excited longings for it to stay and stay, and bring the world to a soft-crunching halt. Alas, those feelings seem to have disappeared. This morning all that we felt was anxiety about the state of the wood pile in the garden, and whether it would last until the road up to the farm was clear.
Of course it will. Next door has just replaced their kitchen, and we are currently burning the old one. This will keep us magnificently warm for the next few days, even if we had no other wood, by which time the roads will probably be clear.
We donned waxed boots and coats and took the dogs to the park. This did nothing to shift the mood of anxious gloom, because two of the mighty oak trees had been felled by the storm, and lay lifeless on the bank.
This was awful, like a bereavement. One had been uprooted, and a plate of roots taller than Mark protruded into the air. The other had been torn apart. Its great trunk, four feet across, reached terrible splintery white fingers to the sky, whilst its body lay inert and defeated on the ground, shrouded now by the softly-falling snow.
We walked and looked and felt very quiet.
The Library Gardens had fared no better, and many trees had fearsome pale gashes where once enormous branches had been.
We would have liked not to be working, because we both thought that scrambled eggs served with a single malt chaser might improve the morning, but of course it was not to be. Mark went into the garden to saw up some more kitchen, and I went into the kitchen to bake biscuits.
Eventually the skies cleared. The steady fall of snowflakes faltered, and then ceased altogether. Slowly but inexorably then, the world began to freeze.
By evening the soft snow was iron-hard, and Mark had to turn on the taxi engines to try and melt it away. This took a great deal of time and climatically friendly engine running, but it was rather pleasant to get into a warm taxi.
We had not been at work for very long when an email arrived from Oliver’s school, telling us that after two days, their power had been restored. This meant, they added with satisfaction, that all boys would be able to have hot showers this evening.
Everybody was exhausted and cold, they explained. The evening would be occupied by television and a take-away, followed by a prolonged lie-in tomorrow. I thought that this sounded like superb wisdom, and would have liked to follow it myself, except that obviously we are on the taxi rank.
I must observe that this is hardly exhausting. We have been here for three hours, and I think that we may be the only people in Bowness. My only customer so far has been a weary hotel porter who had come down the hill from the freezing staff accommodation, into the village seeking warmth and light. Their electricity, along with much of the village, is still off.
I jolly well hope that everybody remembers this when next Boris tries to persuade us all to get rid of our gas boilers and our diesel cars.
If you had got an electric car you would not even be able to run away.
We do not have any of these worries. We have got a petrol generator and a wood fire and a gas boiler and an inverter and some batteries charged to run the freezer.
All of these things are left over from experiencing terrible French winters, and so far here we have never needed them.
I am extremely glad about this. There are an awful lot of people who are still having a very unpleasant weekend.
The Gods have been kind to us.
