The Beast from the East

It started whilst I was out on a lunch time walk and I was glad to get home after work.

We all hunkered down.

I say all, HWMBO was somewhere in Canada, America or inbetween for the whole time and Cog just got on with life and went off for the bus whilst I worried about her.

 So it was the kitties and I that hunkered down.
















Or sat right in front of my keyboard whilst I tried to work from home.

 Little Cat never went out once and I became her litter tray slave, but fat cat refuse to lower her standards and insisted on still shitting in the neighbour's gardens despite the -11C temperatures and as always is the case, a nice clean litter tray on offer.

Work that one out.

The rabbit run was snowy.

I worried about them getting cold and the snow blew into their downstairs home.  I packed upstairs out with so much straw,

But they left clear evidence each morning that they were not sensibly staying cuddled up with their hot water bottle, they were out playing at night.

So their hardiness guilted me into getting out for a walk.  I found the cancelled playgroup's milk still outside the village hall (I was rather surprised it hadn't gone walk-a-bout to be honest) so I walked it up to the owner's house.

 Our pond was covered over.

 As were the roads

 At day 3 of being home I decided to take my muddy shoes out for a clean.

 The snow had been drifting over night

making it rather deep in places.

Not conducive to running.

 The canal was as frozen as I had ever seen it.

 But I didn't fancy finding out how frozen and I turned back once the drifts were as big as me and blocking the towpath.

It did however, clean my shoes off nicely.

Like everyone else though, I'm a bit fed up with it now. We just aren't geared up for extremes of weather.  If we got it a lot we would be.  Or if we got it for longer, again, the councils and us would be more likely to be better set up to manage.  But the transient and rare nature of these extremes means we just can't cope.  The roads block, we panic buy milk and all enjoy the 'god isn't it dreadful, I'm down to my last 50 tea bags and 10 pints of milk' chatter.

But I do have (semi) clean shoes, which won't last when this lot melts and the mud is back!