Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together - Vista M. Kelly

Saturday afternoon brought snow, not just a flurry that didn't last, this was the determined kind that intended to stay. I'm not fond of snow because it makes all the ordinary but essential things such as going to work and shopping for food more difficult to do. By Sunday morning our world was covered in 4 inches of white and my car was lost under a shroud of snow. It took nearly 15 minutes to clean it off and get ready to drive. It was a bit of a challenge to get off the drive (and a bigger challenge to get back on) the side roads were a bit scary, but once I got on to the main roads it was OK.


I have to admit that a covering of snow makes our world look beautiful, and other members of the family had great fun in the snow.

The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show 

(author unknown)

Road Rage

I think of myself as a fairly placid even tempered person generally, but I have to admit that there are a certain things that make my blood boil. The mere mention of milk floats has me gnashing my teeth and thinking evil thoughts. I could almost cope with at horrible noise they make, like an overworked hair dryer, but I can't forgive them for getting in my way or for moving so slowly that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were not moving at all. I encounter three milk floats every morning as I take various family members to school and work. They have a number of things in common, they are all driven by dubious looking men of a certain age who make up for their own inadequacies by disregarding the rules of the road and creating total chaos. All of them think it is OK to double park while they wander off to deliver the milk in their own sweet time. The one that I encounter in the ring road even weaves between lanes to cause maximum disruption and he doesn't exactly double park, it would be more accurate to say that he recklessly abandons his milk float skewed across two lanes of traffic! If only I had a hand grenade!!

Robbie thinks it is really funny that I get so wound up about milk floats and whenever he gets the chance he mentions them just to get a reaction - and it always works! The other day he tried to tell me that milk floats were perfectly designed for a quieter time on urban roads, he then asked me to think back to my childhood and remember how efficient milk delivery was. He is right it was certainly much faster and more efficient, because it took place long before rush hour. When I was very young our milkman had a horse, it didn't double park and it could easily outpace a milk float!

Has The World Gone Mad?

I am starting to think that there is a streak of insanity running through our town. A couple of days ago I was driving through the center of town when I caught sight of an odd looking man. A second look revealed that he was holding a lead and he was taking his ferret for a walk! The poor creature must have been terrified of the traffic. This morning I was driving through town not far from the place that I saw the ferret when I pulled up at traffic lights. The passenger jumped out of a van that was slightly ahead in the lane next to me, I didn't take much notice of him, until I suddenly noticed that he was mooning! I have no idea why he felt the world needed to be treated to that view so early in the morning, it certainly blighted my day! It reminded me of my visit to the zoo a couple of weeks ago, a baboon did something similar - but it had more reason to be proud.

The other mad thing concerns Laura's friend, a bright bubbly girl who has just passed her A Levels and is about to go to University. Laura was driving to the chemist to drop off our prescriptions and her friend was holding them. She asked Laura if that was her brother's full name, and thinking that she meant Samuel William David, Laura replied that it was. Her friend then asked why we called him Sam, and Laura explained that it was short for Samuel. Her friend's confusion only became obvious when she said "I think Master is a really cool name" Laura had to explain that it wasn't a name, it is just the male equivalent of Miss!

Head in the Clouds

Robbie was very late home last night, so he met me from work to get a lift home. Guess what he talked about on the way home - trains! Apparently there are plans to electrify certain routes and Robbie has big reservations. He probably has good reason for his doubts, but I was tired, hungry and not in the mood to hear a detailed comparison of the merits of diesel against electric. I was just thinking that for once it would be nice to talk about anything but trains, when Robbie did one of his famous conversational U turns and began talking about clouds. He pointed upwards and said "look at that cloud formation". I was tempted to remind him that I was driving and it was fairly important to keep my eyes on the road, but as usual I couldn't get a word in. I thought it was nice to hear him talking about something that had no connection at all with trains, you could almost call it romantic (well, as close as Robbie gets anyway). Then he spoiled everything by telling me that there was a list of cloud names in that dreaded book of his, Shott's Original Miscellany. He started to list the various different types of cloud and I made a mental note to burn that book. I love books and I honestly don't think I could destroy any book, but in Robbie's hands that book becomes an offensive weapon!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/5892821/Electrified-rail-network-the-benefits.html

Not Wanted

Robbie's dad is moving house in a few weeks time. Robbie feels a bit sad about it as it will break the link with the village that he grew up in. When he was talking to his dad at the weekend Robbie arranged to go over and visit his dad next Saturday. His dad said that there was a lot of 'stuff' for Robbie to take home, so we would have to bring the car. I am suspicious of that word 'stuff' Robbie already has far too much clutter and I really don't know where to put any more! We need to be fairly ruthless in sorting out the junk that we already have. I agreed to drive to his Dad's house to pick up the stuff. I am not keen on driving that far north, it is such a boring journey and it seems to take forever to get there. I especially hate driving in Walsall because they don't seem to understand the difference between roads and pavements, it is like lemming year, people just dash out into the road! Anyway I was willing to drive to his dad's next Saturday, but to my surprise Robbie doesn't want me to go! His dad is having a bit of a get together for a few friends on Saturday evening, and Robbie wants to stay for that, he seems happy to take Sam with him, but he is worried that I will cramp his style! Never mind, I will have a nice day on my own instead.

Changes

Sam has to select his GCSE options and he has very clear ideas about what he wants to do. He is not a great one for taking advice (its a man thing) and his form was completed before I even got to see it. At first I was anxious, but he is taking a broad range of subjects and it is better that he take subjects that motivate him to work hard. It is a difficult adjustment for me to find my youngest child suddenly very grown up and sensible, but I expect I will get used to it. Anyway the sensible bit doesn't last long, we just get fleeting glimpses of the sensible side and then we are back to the old familiar totally unique Sam.

On the subject of not taking advice, Laura is getting ready to take her driving test and is determined to get a car as soon as she can drive. I must admit that it will be a relief to have a second driver in the family, but I worry about the expense of Laura running and insuring a car, and of course I worry about her staying safe. I think this is just another case of mum needing to adjust!

Snow Joke!

Robbie can be so annoying, especially when it comes to time. He deals with everything the way he deals with a train timetable, always in the 24hr clock and always timed to the second. This in especially annoying when he phones me asking for a lift, a simple ten to, or quarter past (or whatever) would be so much easier to deal with. He rang me yesterday to tell me that heavy snow was expected at 04.00 the following morning, I wasn't keen to know that more snow was coming our way, but it his use of the 24hr clock that irritated me and I told him sharply that you can't time nature. When I got home from work he told me that the timing for the snow had been revised to 03.00, and he got an even sharper answer from me. So it was infuriating when I got up to visit the bathroom during the night and found that his prediction had been spot in and we had several inches of snow! The roads have not been gritted and traffic has more or less ground to a halt, so there was no chance of going anywhere safely this morning. Robbie is working from home and Sam and Laura are out playing in the snow because their schools are closed. The previous snow had become compacted and turned to a sheet of ice on the pavements and minor roads, so the new snow is deceptively dangerous to walk on or drive on and I dread to think what will happen tonight when this lot freezes!

Keeping Busy!

I took my step dad and my mum to hospital on Wednesday for his follow up appointment with the consultant after his surgery in September. The consultant was very pleased with his progress, they have decided that he will not be able to go back on Warfarin any more because they think it was responsible for his bleed around the brain he will have to take asprin every day instead. He is not allowed to drive again until March next year, so as well as being the only driver in our house my role as driver for mum and David will continue for the next few months. It is a small price to pay when you consider that in the first few hours after he became ill there was little hope for David's recovery.

Yesterday I drove to my mum's house to pick her up and take her to the hairdressers, she lives about 7 miles away. I had just arrived home after dropping her at the hairdressers when I had a panic stricken phone call from David demanding that I should take mum straight home because his heating wasn't working. He was clearly getting uptight about it and he said the house was cold so I drove back to their house to see if I could sort it out. When I walked in the house was so hot it was like a sauna, so there was no chance of David freezing to death. The heating was not working because David had forgotten to override the timer, so it was easy to put that right. I set the heating to constant for him with the intention to put it back on timed when I took mum home. I was almost home again when David called on the car phone, panic again, this time he thought the radiators were too hot and he couldn't turn the system off, he was afraid that there would be an explosion so he had turned the boiler off! There was a danger of explosion, but it was my temper rather than the radiators that were at boiling point. I couldn't go back until I had picked mum up and taken her to get her food shopping.

When I took mum home I restarted the boiler and stayed a while to check that the radiators were OK, everything was fine, but poor old David was in mum's bad books for giving me the run around!

Not a Good Week

It is a week since we got home from holiday and there is only one thing that I didn't miss when we left Cornwall – the narrow roads! The Cornish roads around Padstow are not very wide and if you meet a vehicle coming the other way it can be a hair raising experience. The roads are beautiful with high hedges and wild flowers growing along the verge, they may look harmless but they demand respect. The hedges are built with earth and stone, they are made to last, so when you have to pull in to the edge of the road the innocent looking vegetation may conceal sharp edges ready to scratch your paintwork. It feels good to be driving on normal roads again!

It has been a horrible week. After a fortnight of Robbie 24 – 7, I was quite looking forward to sending him back to work, but I really missed him and I hardly saw anything of him during the week. I missed a school reunion when I was on holiday, I was glad of an excuse not to go. I am not a going out sort of person anyway, but after this long I convinced myself that my former classmates would be younger, thinner and smarter than me! Despite my misgivings I was keen to hear news of the reunion and I contacted one of the people who had organised the event. I was expecting the usual inconsequential stuff about people I knew a lifetime ago. Instead she told me that someone who was a close friend during my school days had killed herself. It came as such a shock, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I have perhaps encountered more than my fair share of illness and loss, but I had never been confronted by suicide before, I can't imagine the despair and distress that would lead someone to take their own life. I wish life had been kinder to her.

Robbie also had bad news, he has been worried about his friend's health for months and last week his friend was finally diagnosed with a brain tumour. Robbie is a typical man, he is not good at feelings and all that stuff, and he found the news very difficult to accept. At first Robbie's anxiety and shock combined with an inner rage because he felt so powerless to help. I felt pretty useless too because there was nothing I could do or say to make him feel better. His friend has been foremost in his thoughts all week.

Emergency Stop!

We were on the motorway on our way to Cornwall when suddenly Robbie let out a piercing yell, so loud that I thought we were about to crash. It turned out that he had spotted a train at the side of the motorway! Thankfully I was driving otherwise Robbie may not have survived unharmed!