ice

I set the greenhouse and conservatory heaters last night for the first time this winter.  A hard overnight frost was forecast, and the remains of yesterday's snow looked pretty crunchy on the lawn when I peered out of the bathroom window this morning.  The cats were gathered in the hall waiting for their breakfast, watchful and alert, and the chickens' water had frozen.  We are certainly aware of the shifting seasons, living here.  Not for us the centrally heated, street-lit sameness of city life, where we might just about notice whether it was still light when we left the office, but no more.  Frost and snow alter the shapes of our days.

It took some time with a jug of hot water and some careful tapping to break the drinker lid free of the bottom half, so that I could refill it.  When we started keeping chickens I bought a plastic water dispenser, and one frosty morning I struck it absent mindedly, trying to get it to come apart, and the plastic fractured in the cold.  When I broke the base of the second plastic one, trying to knock ice out of it, I switched to galvanised iron.  The iron drinker cost approximately three times as much, but will outlast my chicken keeping days and still be going strong as an heirloom to pass to our nephews or great-nephews or nieces, should any of them choose to keep hens.

The postman brought our first Christmas card, another sign that the season of glad tidings and joy to all men is getting closer.  This was a real card from an actual person, not just some company we've done business with during the year, saying something like Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year from all at Buggins Bathrooms.  When I worked in the City we used to receive cards from the stockbrokers we dealt with, signed by all of the members of each team, or as many of them as were around on signing day, and some of the names would have us scratching our heads as to who on earth so-and-so was.  We in turn sent out piles of cards, some with multiple signatures.  I could never work out whether the whole exercise was cynically commercial and entirely pointless, or whether a tiny desire for human contact still clung on, amidst concerns about commissions, generous allocations in the next sure-fire new issue, and golf day invitations.

A friend was wondering to me whether it was still worth sending cards, with the price of stamps being so expensive, and when we use e-mail and text for almost everything else.  If I like somebody enough to want them in my life the rest of the year then I don't grudge them 80 pence or a quid at Christmas to show them that I'm thinking of them, and I have bought our cards.  And you can't put texts on the mantelpiece.  So if you know me and you get a card then it means something.  If you don't get a card it might mean that the post office has randomly delivered it to the wrong house.

We lit the stove in the study, but by lunchtime the thermometer still only read nineteen degrees.  That is three degrees more than the HSE suggests as the minimum for indoor workplaces where the work is not physical, so in theory warm enough, but in practice not very warm.  We were burning poplar, which is not proving the most flammable firewood, at least after only six months' seasoning.  It smoulders with a low, sulky flame, and is reluctant to get going, so after lunch the Systems Administrator put some pieces of old fence post on the fire. These got it to go so well that my legs began to prickle with heat sitting in my usual chair.

By the time it got dark there was still a lump of frozen snow on the rear windscreen of my car, although it is parked in full sun with the rear windscreen facing south.  The outside temperature had crawled up to two degrees.  It is supposed to rain hard this evening, which would get rid of the last of the snow, but there are no signs of it yet.