snow – Kathleen Jowitt

A car parked on a snowy street. Someone has written "MERRY XMAS" in the snow on the rear windscreen.

It snowed overnight! We don’t get much of it round here; in fact, it’s been almost exactly a year. So either the perpetrator of this mild act of vandalism is keeping the full twelve days of Christmas, or else someone’s driven in quite a long way without clearing their back windscreen.

Anyway, this time last year we had a pathetic little dusting of snow, and I was in bed, in a good deal of pain and unable to keep any food down, as the leftover gas from my gallbladder removal surgery fought its way around my abdomen. (What sorted it out, for anyone in similar straits, was a little pill called Wind-eze. The packet wasn’t very clear on how it works, but it does.) Today, by contrast, I was able to walk across town in my Wellington boots, stopping at the cathedral to walk the labyrinth (still in wellies – that’s a first!) and eat the last cherry cream choux bun in Caffè Nero. So, contrary to my gloomy posts of the last month, I can and do get better.

And it really was ridiculously beautiful. See:

Snowy scene with people walking past a Gothic doorway

Cathedral and bare trees on a snowy day with one stretch of roofs illuminated by pinkish sunlight

Pa. Sort of. Incompletely. That’s the thing with an unexpected death: you don’t say the things that you might have done, otherwise. I would rather have it this way than the other, but I never actually said goodbye.

And that’s about all I feel up to writing about that, so on with the rest of the post.

The good

The snow was pretty? And not too inconvenient for me personally. I took the slow train to the office on Monday (nothing running on the fast line) and had a lovely time looking out of the window at white-blanketed Essex countryside.

The difficult and perplexing

I’ve had a horrible cold, which has run the gamut of symptoms (runny nose, nosebleeds, lost voice, cough, cough, cough, headache, exhaustion). This morning I woke at half past five or so and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’ve been very tired and grumpy all day.

What’s working

Hall’s Soothers, a bit.

Reading

I finished The Fellowship of the Ring this morning and started The Two Towers after lunch. I’ve read quite a lot of articles on the internet this week, a fact that I’ve found faintly encouraging.

Watching

I started The Detectorists earlier this evening. It’s quietly enjoyable so far, though it hasn’t really grabbed me yet.

Cooking

Finally got my act together and attempted vegan pierogi. The shells worked well; the filling, made with vegan spready ‘cheese’, lost all cheesy flavour when cooked. Also I need to be more careful about sealing them. I’m wondering about trying that yeast flavouring stuff, and/or vegan parmesan.

And pasta e fagioli from Tin Can Cook.

Eating

Other than the above, Thai green chicken curry, on my mother’s suggestion. Lebkuchen.

Noticing

A fox loping across a snowy meadow. Blue tits and great tits and robins at the birdfeeder, with a woodpigeon prowling hopefully on the ground.

In the garden

Everything is frozen.

Appreciating

Sleep, when I get it. Dungarees.

Acquisitions

Perfume – Ffern winter box came through this week. Haven’t opened it yet.

Line of the week

From Rejoicings in a Dug-out (a London Review of Books review of a biography of G. K. Chesterton):

His saintly lack of concern for practical affairs seems to have entailed not only a wilful failure to think about how his staff’s wages would be paid, but a deeper reluctance to address what he was avoiding and what he was clinging to – attachments that a life of prayer and self-examination are supposed to make clearer.

This coming week

One and a half days at work; a visit to Addenbrooke’s; and the last of the Christmas prep (I feel as if I’ve hardly done any).

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!

Tag: snow

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