12 February

Today it has not snowed much since daybreak, and none is lying. It is not blowing a gale. There are occasional blinks of sunshine. So, I’ve spent half an hour in the garden, most of it chopping up the Christmas tree. We put it out once the January snows had gone, and it has stayed pretty decorative until the last few days. Getting knocked over by the strong winds hasn’t helped it a lot, and in the last few days it has started to brown off noticeably. So it is now chopped up and binned ready for next week’s garden waste collection. I’ve also tidied up the straggly remains of last year’s mint growth, and snicked off a few brambles here and there so that they won’t leap out and attack passers-by.

On the technology front, mixed news today. I had a call around 07:30 saying to expect fridge-freezer N°2 within the hour. At 08:20 I opened the door to a young man with mahogany skin and crimson hair, and wondered for a second whether I’d supped too eagerly of the electric soup last night. He and his colleague proved to be non-hallucinatory, and once I’d checked the goods on the lorry, in they schlepped it. It appears to be perfect this time, but I haven’t powered it up yet. Although it’s a whole lot bigger than the units it replaces, it occupies the same footprint, and so uses the available space better. On the computing front, I’ve had another morning of hopping up and downstairs to re-boot the hub, and a major cursing session when I completely lost the first draft of this blog. When I tried a while back to compose it in Word, then cut and paste to Blogspot, it didn’t work. Now, I find, it does. Alors là, je n’y comprends strictement rien.

Dinner tonight with some fellow beaks at one of Mother’s favourite pubs near the county town. As I recall, it was OK in a scampi & chips sort of way, but distinguished itself by terse orders of battle to diners. ‘1. Select table. 2. Select from menu. 3. Order at small bar, quoting table number. 4. Purchase drinks from main bar. 5. Bugger off and leave us in peace.’ (Well, not quite.) I haven’t been there since shortly after Ma died, back in 1998, so we’ll see whether it has improved in the meantime.