Sunday, December 26, 2010

...the bleak mid-winter...

We still have snow here-quite a lot of it-and very cold temperatures...the animals' water will freeze over several times during the day. Then this morning, we saw as we got up that the trees
have frozen over-somehow the overnight fog got stuck onto the branches. All quite pretty...but also a warning sign as we discovered when we realised our well water supply had frozen over. Time for Mart to go out in his dressing gown, boots and hat to try and change the supply over at the tap to mains water (which took a while since the concrete lid was also frozen over) whilst I poured bottled water (the shame of it) into the toilet cistern since my body was ready to dispose of the remains of yesterday's Christmas dinner.
Every single thing takes so much longer when it's cold like this. Just getting ready to go outside takes some minutes-in addition to the usual coat hat gloves etc, it's also necessary to apply some kind of lip balm and particularly thick socks. I have been helped with this last item by my daughter's fantastic gift to me of hand knitted woollen socks. They are beautiful and unbelievably soft and warm.

Indoors, I've been busy with the more traditional pursuits of Christmas baking-here using my Mum's old mince pie tray which I can remember her using when I was a child...which memory caused me a tearful moment. She used to do her baking whilst listening to the Carol concert on the radio and-just for once-us children were allowed to help ourselves pretty freely to whatever we wanted to eat.


Here, I did my decorating-as usual-on Christmas Eve. Felt pretty silly applying spray snow to my twiggy branch given the quantities of the stuff outside. The wooden piggy candle holders were made for us by our Swedish friend Pelle a few Christmases ago.
The local shop was open this morning so we called in for a few necessities and noticed a postcard of the town there. We'd forgotten how green this place usually is. We've had weeks of this covering of snow now. It can drive you a little crazy...

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I've lived with my partner in Normandy, France, for about four years now. There's lots I love about our lives here-including our beautiful surroundings-but I also miss my wonderful children and grandchildren who are back in the UK. I trained as a hypnotherapist originally in the UK and am now registered for this in France, I also like making (and hopefully selling) some jewellery.