Spring?

We had our first forecast of snow this winter a few days ago.  Fortunately, it didn't materialise.  We had a rather dramatic hail shower the other day - stones the size of marrowfat peas - but this time at least we weren't out in it!  We made the mistake of letting a sunny interval tempt us out to walk to the village shops a week or so ago, and got caught in a lacerating hail shower on the way home. 

It's so good to see a bit of colour in the garden (though I shall be cursing the bedraggled bulb foliage ere long, I expect).  I guess we'll be able to walk on the grass again in six weeks or so, so we'll just have to try to be patient meantime.  There is so much to do, and so little of it accessible without leaving four-inch deep welly prints in the grass.  We've pretty much decided to GSI to dig over the recently cleared bed, and heave in the compost: neither of us is in a great state for digging these days.

On the positive side, having been sent for a chest x-ray 'just to make sure there isn't anything nasty going on in there', the report came back 'normal'.  So why the devil am I still coughing?  The hundred-day cough after the autumn cold stretched to 150, and having caught another cold on the way to or soon after arriving in Madeira, I'm just hoping that the trip counter hasn't zeroed itself, as it were.

Promises of action on the building work in Another Place in March/April, so we'll probably hop down there for a couple of weeks in May.  It seems from Martyn's researches that the best deals are to be had on the ferries, so perhaps we'll settle for a more leisurely progress this time.  This has, of course, nothing to do with my having watched a Nat Geog documentary about the building of the tunnel the other day, complete with graphic detail of floods and fires...