A Siberian cold front – ‘The Beast from the East’ – has rolled in from Europe, cloaking the flatlands in a thick blanket of fluffy snow drifting in the arctic breeze. Cancelled buses forced Liam to take the day off and a ‘real-feel’ of minus 11 means we’re going nowhere. And neither is anyone else judging by St Stephens roundabout, empty save for one brave soul. Come rush hour, it’s normally nose to nipple.
Thank the Lord for central heating.
This winter’s brought some lively weather to keep us from our slumber and to wake the dead in the funeral parlour next door. Unsurprisingly, the huffing and puffing of storm Eileen and her gusty sisters trying to blow our house down damaged the roof over our heads. So it was over to our property management company to contact our freeholders to contact their insurers to contact the roofers to contact the scaffolders to repair the flashing loosened by the ladies. It’s a long supply chain and, of course, we didn’t get any warning before a couple of butch men in hard hats and tool belts over woolly jumpers arrived to chuck some poles up the side of the microloft. It’s just as well I wasn’t sitting in my underwear and fluffy mules.
I should be used to chance encounters with scaffolders. Before we bought the microloft, the roof of our rented weaver’s cottage had sprung a leak. The workers turned up unannounced then too. But that was in the summer and at least I had something scanty to ogle – discretely, naturally.
And then there was the time back in the day when I had a proper job with a proper office on Kensington High Street. The building had been caged in scaffolding for repainting and repointing. There I was, busy counting beans at my proper desk, when there was a rat-a-tat-tat at the window. I looked up to see my brother-in-law beaming at me.
“Milk and two sugars, please,”
he said.
Yes, he’s a butch scaffolder. And yes, I made him a brew.
A damp blanket of gloom has covered the big skies of Norfolk and Mother Nature has dimmed the lights to a flicker. All the memories of summer are gone. I’ve whacked up the heating to warm body and soul. It’s time to re-live the God skies of crisp October dusks to bring a little cheer to the micro-loft.
For weeks now, a flock of starlings has been ebbing and flowing in the skies above Norwich. Every evening, at dusk. I took a few snaps from the loft with the Nokia.
Yes, I know. They don’t really capture the magnificence of the mumurating birds (that’s what they do, apparently). You had to be there. So, here’s something someone made earlier.
East Anglia tends to get to best of the weather – it’s often drier and warmer than other parts of these wet little islands. During the bleak winter weeks, when low damp clouds cloak the rest of the nation and drive half the population into Thomas Cook to thumb through the glossy travel brochures, we often enjoy clear skies and bright sunshine. But in the last twenty-four hours, we’ve gone from this:
To this…
…as an Arctic snap blew down from the North Pole closing roads, runways, schools and A&E Departments. Brrr…
So today, I thought better of my routine (a stroll to the gym – like I need an excuse to step off the treadmill – followed by a steaming americano and a trawl through the free papers). Instead, I slipped on my fluffy mules, whacked up the heat and tuned into daytime TV. Let’s hope the weather turns by tomorrow. At my age, a diet of soporific trash on the box could easily become habit forming.
Perking the Pansies 