We have descended into the very depths of winter.
We woke up this morning to torrential sheets of icy sleet, bashing against the windows, which after a little while became snow.
Mark went off to work. He did not go to do rural broadband, because they are in the middle of doing something with a very lot of outside on a mountaintop. This would probably be better left until they are not going to become first sodden and then frozen.
I took the dogs out up the fell side, where there was a lot of snow. It was still snowing so hard that it looked as though I was the very first person to walk up there, but I knew that this was not true, because I had met several people on their way down.
The world was almost utterly silent. Not a bird squeaked, presumably they were sitting in barns with their heads under their wings, like in the rhyme. I could hear the snow creaking under my feet, and the distant sound of the beck in the dip, but apart from that, nothing.
It was very horrible. Under the snow, which was thick enough to coat the toes of my boots, the grass was sodden, and the paths were flooded with frozen puddles on which the snow had just begun to settle. Beneath the grass I could still feel the iron-hardness of the still-frozen soil. Mark said later that this would be why the ground was so wet, because the water had nowhere to go.
I hope that it does not freeze tonight.
I talked to some neighbours on my way back, and discovered that we are not the only ones who have noticed the rats in Windermere lately. Several dead ones have been found in the alley, thanks to somebody’s enthusiastic cat. Fortunately, I think at least one of these must have been the one from our garden, which seems to have disappeared. At any rate the peelings on the compost heap have been untouched for a day or two, and the dogs have lost interest in the garden again, belting through it on their way back from our walk with no attention to anything other than getting back to their fireside cushion and somewhere to warm their paws.
I am very grateful to the cat, and would have dropped round with a bottle of wine for it if I had known where it lived.
I was relieved to get back, and spent ten minutes bringing in firewood before breathlessly unpeeling my scarves and hats and coat with frozen raw fingers. I had been wearing two hats, one a thick woolly affair to protect my ears, and the other my wide-brimmed leather one, which acts like a small portable roof. Its brim had become thickly laden with snow by the time I got back, making me feel a bit like the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament. She has to practice for this because the crown is so heavy.
I will never understand this. I really do not see why on earth anybody would want to wear a hat weighed down with enough stones and metal to sink a sack full of kittens. I don’t suppose the Queen wants to wear it either, it must have been some distant ancestor.
I don’t really see the point to any jewellery really, no matter what colour they are they are still stones, and hence add nothing whatsoever to one’s comfort and ease of movement.
Fortunately this does not matter very much because I am so terribly allergic to nickel, which seems to turn up in most metals, that I can’t wear jewellery anyway unless it has been thickly painted with nail varnish.
In other news, the exciting new Air Fryer has arrived, delivered by Amazon this afternoon. I am quite sure that Amazon is a wicked tech giant putting small businesses into administration and not allowing Donald Trump to say what he thinks, but they are jolly good at getting your shopping to you quickly, and they do seem to sell pretty much everything that exists. It is very splendid indeed to live in a world where one only has to think about an air fryer, and the next day there is a large box on the doorstep.
I have not tried it yet. I have spent some time squinting at the instructions, which are in stupidly small print, honestly, do they think that only young people buy these things?
I am going to cook chips for dinner for the first time in about thirty years.
I am looking forward to this very much indeed.
I will let you know how I go on.
