woo! 2011!

Well that was a Christmas! We were starting to think that this crazy Uber-winter weather was over, but it was -8 again this morning : (

Can you spray de-icer on the INSIDE of your car windows? Is that safe?

It must be said that the scenery has been AMAZING. And we had a nice little quiet intimate Christmas with a distinct lack of visitors – so much so in fact that on Christmas Day we went for a walk on a frozen lake (well Lough actually) – how often can you say that?

My father’s been suffixing his sentences with “it’s not as bad as the winter of 1963” – which I suppose is a given, having looked it up. I guess we just don’t get winters that bad any more!

The other option is that we are overdue a collection or ELE (extinction level event) disasters and ‘tomorrow’ could bring anything from another Ice Age, to a Polar Shift Super Volcanoes and whatever else… perhaps we shouldn’t complain about the 2ft of snow???

Christmas was pretty hectic in many ways for us – our move has been pushed back (mainly due to the weather to be honest) so that’s taken a bit of organisation, or rather grovelling for my notice to be extended and begging our neighbours/landlord for an extension.

Two days before what would have been my LAST DAY I came down with some sort of horrible bug – not kidding, I have NEVER felt so sick, I couldn’t move. At all. I was so sick in fact, that Dioralyte tasted GOOD. I described my symptoms to a pharmaceutical friend, who maintains that what I had was some kind of poisoning. Needless to say – I wasn’t in work.

I was so unwell on the Wednesday that I couldn’t drive home, and my dad had to fetch my car from work and take it back to their house – because by the next day we were snowed in. I believe the technical term for where we live is “the arse end of God’s nowhere” – but, pretty, you know? So there the car sat until Boxing Day, because, of course, then it wouldn’t start again. I ended up spending a wodge of my Christmas money on a new battery, so now it’s going like the proverbial. So the last shopping weekend before Christmas we were housebound, not that I could have moved anyway – but we were low on food etc! We had a few visitors though - people who have cars like tractors basically – my boss popped up to see if I was alive and my cousin popped up to drop off our Christmas present – which was a Goose!!!! (Who feels like Bob Cratchit now??)

The week before Christmas was supposed to be spent packing for the move – so as we’re not moving (should have been the 6th) it was reallocated as ‘spring cleaning’ time. The day before Christmas Eve was my Grandmother’s 80^th Birthday, and she was off on a cruise with a girlfriend – on the way home, two days out of Southampton and still at sea, she fell and broke her hip. As you can imagine all Hel broke loose – my grandfather and dad had to fly out to Southampton to be with her when the ship made landfall and she was rushed in for emergency surgery. I was called in to help out in the B&B as I was off work – but Al had to stay home, because there is no public transport to work for him – and someone had to feed the cat! So we basically didn’t see each other for most of the week coming up to Christmas : ( and since then we've been petty busy! We've had parties to go to and I've been babysitting, Fencing is back on again after the break and its been my cousin's birthday - so I made her a cake : )

Isn't it awesome!!!!

it was also Al's mum's birthday so I had a card

to make as well – we mailed her a book of the best gardens to see in Britain and Ireland – northern Ireland had 3, Yorkshire had over 20...