• Wash my hair – Although the depressing thing about having put this on here is that I need to do it again on Tuesday
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I’ve uncovered while tidying – might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn’t broken) – I mostly did this, but the Toyota service department weren’t in at the weekend, so they wouldn’t book my car in. Helpful.
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit I did do this, but now I have more
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really I wrote quite a bit last night and this morning
• Sort out what I’m going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th – I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD I finished the DVD and am down to just three episodes of Being Human out of all the stuff I taped while watching Olympics
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I would have managed all of it, except that I went for a walk in the afternoon. I felt great while I was doing it and for about five minutes after I got back, but despite lying down for two hours afterwards I just feel increasingly more terrible the longer I spend not lying down. So the rest will have to wait and I’ll get started on the Being Human instead.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Life: Life

• Wash my hair (I know that’s something I’m hardly likely to forget, but at least this way I’ll get to cross something off)
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I’ve uncovered while tidying – might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn’t broken)
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really
• Sort out what I’m going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th – I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I think that’s probably everything…

Permalink | 1 comment | Categories: Life: Life

50.22 / 50kg (100%)

Simon’s Cat by Simon Tofield
This is funny – which isn’t a surprise if you’ve seen any of his films. The book is images, some of which are funny on their own, some of which tell a story. They describe cats so well – like taking over the whole bed and getting a big new toy and playing with the box it came in. I kept laughing out loud when I read it.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
Well, of course, it’s good. I don’t like football and I liked it. The main characters are the Wizards and some new ones who work at the Unseen University and the new characters are all really interesting and I really liked them.

Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell
I really like this. This is this bloke’s second book with the same characters and he mixes crime and family history. It’s really well done.

Victorian Farm by Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman
This is the book of the series. Some of it I skipped over (like recipes and detailed farming descriptions), but a lot of the rest gives you more detail about what went on and how they felt about it. The most useful thing I learnt was that when you wash your clothes you only need to use washing powder on the stains – your clothes are washed by the water pushing the dirt through the fabric. Ruth said she’d stopped using any washing powder and hasn’t needed to use any for three years. I stopped after Christmas and everything is just as clean as before, so it’s really true.

Bernice Summerfield: A Life Worth Living
I totally read these in the wrong order, as I bought a bundle of seven from Big Finish and picked them up randomly. This one is a collection of short stories set after the war. I quite enjoyed them.

Bernice Summerfield: Life During Wartime
This is the preceding one set during the war. Each story comes after the next in time and it’s really interesting to see how it all progressed and how the war affected them all.

Bernice Summerfield: Something Changed
This one is just weird. There’s one story of set-up and the rest are what-ifs coming from that. Some of them were alright, but mostly I just found it strange.

Bernice Summerfield: A Life in Pieces
This is a trilogy of novellas all telling bits of a story. It’s quite interesting, but I think you really need to read other books/listened to other audios to work out what was really going on. I found the style of the first one very odd for a published book.

Bernice Summerfield: Parallel Lives
Another trilogy of novellas. The first and last ones are really good, but the middle one is terrible. Nothing happens in it at all, which is the point of it, I think, but I struggled to get through it.

Bernice Summerfield: The Big Hunt by Lance Parkin
This was quite interesting. It’s odd having a whole story being only about 160 words because it felt quite short, but at the same time it also felt like it could quite happily be shorter. It’s alright, but nothing special.

Bernice Summerfield: The Tree of Life by Mark Michalowski
I wasn’t that keen on this one at the start and I hated it more as I went through. I hated the descriptions of where they were, the plot was cliched and it was a real struggle to get through.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Books: Reading my weight in books

On the plus side, I now have time to do things other than watch curling and ice skating. I just have two weeks worth of TV to watch instead. Which actually won’t take me a week – there’s not really much on at the moment.

Saturday night I helped run the bar at the annual Welsh evening (it being St David’s Day today). It consisted of quite a bit of singing in Welsh… We had a whole load of beer left over that we couldn’t take back to Tescos, so I took it into work because I know people there would go mad for free beer. And, I brought it all home again. The reason: they’d have to get it out of my boot. Despite my car being parked a whole two minutes walk away, it was a sunny day and I was parked in the same place everyone else parks. I knew people at work were apathetic, but not being able to get off your arse for free beer is something else. So I’ll be throwing that away now.

Permalink | 2 comments | Categories: Rotaract, Sport: Olympics, Rotaract

I feel ok about it at the moment, but that’s because I’m having a good week. At the moment my aims are:

• To stay up late for the general election, if I get one for my birthday, as is being predicted (everyone I’ve told about this thinks I’m crazy, but it’s exciting! Especially at the moment when it’s not clear who’ll win).
• To go to Wimbledon on the first Thursday – when we have tickets for Centre Court! – and get through the day (it’s usually tiring…)
• To go on some days out this year, like I was planning to last year
• To go back to New York to see hhertzof’s bunnies and Flushing Meadow, and maybe go back to Canada too, since I can only cope with America for a week and that’s pushing it. This I obviously can’t do until I’m really sure I’m better, so that’s probably more likely to be next year at this rate.

In contrast to last year, I’m not planning anything at all this year because I have absolutely not idea at all when I might be better.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Life: Ill

The rest of the curling will wait until after the Olympics – I’ll just wait and see if we get into the semis and watch that.

Because of this I haven’t watched any TV all week and I have a whole load of RSS feeds marked as unread that I just haven’t read/commented on. And a whole load of other things to do. And other sports I’d quite like to see some of. I really could do without having to work…

Permalink | 1 comment | Categories: Sport: Olympics

You’re eligible if you have at least five 500 word stories or at least seven 100 word stories in one fandom on their long list (which they are currently discussing adding to).

Since I know that there are people who are nearly eligible, but not quite, or people that are nearly eligible in one fandom but not quite, how about a little drabbleathon? All those drabble comms I used to be in, years back, are now paying dividends because I’m eligible for four fandoms, one of which I’ve only ever written drabbles in.

So, anyone who wants to write a drabble – for whatever reason, even if it has nothing to do with remix – comment here with fandoms, and characters too if you like, other people can give you prompts, then you write some drabbles.

It’s probably a good idea to link to your comment, so your friends who aren’t reading this can give you prompts – or you can post another entry on your LJ/blog. But since this post is in three places, lets keep all the prompts etc in the LJ post.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Fan fic: Drabbles

Tonight I managed to get the pair short program into about an hour but cutting out anything that wasn’t the actual skating. But tonight’s the free program which has more skating, then tomorrow there’s a GB curling match and I’m going out for pancakes in the evening.

And there’s only so much Olympics you can watch in an evening. Fortunately I have nothing planned for the weekend, so it might involve watching a lot of ice skating and curling and a bit of other sports…

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that various people have been posting their TV series for the meme at isurrendered and there’s some really interesting stuff there. I think I have the smallest cast…

Copper won the prize for guessing the connection between the actors in mine: they’ve all played policemen/women:

• Peter Davison was DC ‘Dangerous’ Davies in The Last Detective
• Ben Peyton was PC Ben Haywood in The Bill
• Philip Glenister was DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes and also DCI William Bell in State of Play
• Jaye Griffiths was DI Sally Johnson in The Bill

Georgia Moffett only played a policewoman’s daughter: she was Abi Nixon, DS/DI Sam Nixon’s daughter in The Bill.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Meme, Sport: Meme: other, Olympics

lost_spook gave me:

Detective drama set in the 90s/80s/70s/60s/50s (take your pick; you can sell the resulting soundtrack album even if the show doesn’t take) around a disgraced ex-spy and his 17 year old daughter who’s had to leave her posh boarding school. They’re forced to form a detective agency to fight crime and avoid poverty (because working in Tescos is less dramatic). With supporting cast as large or small as you like.

Which I thought would take a while, but it turned out it didn’t…

In the Red
Set in 1993

Main characters:
Harry Jones (nee Terry Jones) played by Peter Davison.

He’s an ex-MI5 spy who was turfed out in disgrace after it was found that he was taking bribes. He did it to provide his daughter with everything she wanted because she lost her mother and doesn’t see her father much, since he’s away with work. He put her in a posh boarding school, since he wasn’t around enough to look after her, but when they set up their detective agency he finds that he doesn’t really know her at all. He spends the series trying to understand his daughter and mostly failing, and also trying to go straight.

Scarlet Jones, played by Georgia Moffett

Harry’s 17 year old daughter. She’s really unhappy about the situation she now finds herself in. She doesn’t care about not having got her A levels, she just misses her friends and her old lifestyle and hates having to hide. However, she’s also a pretty good actress – she learnt to act posh at her boarding school, so no one would suspect that she wasn’t. Now she’s got used to being posh, she’s having to act like someone with no money and no qualifications. Her skills come in handy when going after criminals.

Supporting characters:
Will Pearson, played by Ben Peyton

Will is a rookie young PC who’s immediately taken with Scarlet. He flirts with her, until he meets her father and his attitude towards anyone going after his little girl. Scarlet ignores her father, but Will is scared enough not to make a move. However, that doesn’t stop him from being attracted to her and flirting with her. Occasionally it gets in the way of his policework.

Mike Wilson, played by Philip Glenister

He’s the landlord of The Red Lion, Harry’s local pub. He’s also an ex-copper and he runs the pub with his wife. He has his ear to the ground as far as the local gossip goes and he’s a good informant for Harry. Mike understands that not everything is black and white, although at least in his case leaving his old job was his decision.

DI Rachel Davies, played by Jaye Griffiths

Davies is the head of CID in town and has a long-held grudge against Mike. Davies is efficient and you have to work hard to get past her outer shell. Being a black, female DI in a small town is hard and she works long hours to show that she’s just as good as anyone else.

6 one hour episodes on BBC1 at 8pm on Tuesdays.

Episode 1: Terry is kicked out of MI5 in disgrace for taking bribes. All his money is taken away from him, he’s hounded in the press. He has to take his daughter, Scarlet, out of her posh boarding school because he can no longer afford the fees. She’s less than impressed about this. Since he’s a master of disguise and she’s never been in the press, they leave London and go to the countryside. He has a new name, Harry (fortunately Jones is a common surname), and and new identity. Scarlet manages to get a job at Tescos and hates it, he signs on. In the process they discover a crime, solve it, and at the end of the episode, he decides to set up a detective agency.

Episode 2: Scarlet isn’t happy about working for her father, but it’s better than working in Tescos. She’s surly and uncooperative through most of the episode, but brightens up a bit when she meets Will, the local PC, who’s young and good looking. They’re attracted to each other, but he’s dissuaded from making a move because he’s scared of what her father might do.

Episode 3: Harry gets a tip-off from the landlord of the local pub – who’s an ex copper. He has a grudge against the head of CID in the town, DI Davies. Harry and Davies butt heads over the case but work together to solve it in the end. Harry discovers there’s two sides to every story when both Mike and Davies tell him their side of the story about why they hate each other. Harry spends the rest of the series trying to keep the peace between the two of them.

Episode 4: Two of Scarlet’s friends turn up during their school holidays. Scarlet desperately tries to get in with them, but they laugh at her. However, one of them is attacked and they gain a new respect for her when she helps find the attacker and bring him to justice.

Episode 5: Harry is finding life hard without money and goes back to his old way of taking bribes. After all, catching the criminals and getting money off them pays better than handing them over to the police. And then he’s caught in the middle when the police catch up with the briber. At the end, when it’s all sorted out, Davies wonders why the taking bribes bit rings a bell. Then she recognises him, although Harry knows nothing about this.

Episode 6: It all looks like it’s gone horribly wrong when Davies confronts Harry about who he really is. He tells the truth to Davies and Mike in the hopes that they’ll trust him now that they know him. And he points out that he has been punished. However, his friends are coppers or ex-coppers and they’re less than impressed. Suddenly he and his daughter are persona non-grata in the town. It’s only when Harry solves the latest mystery, when he recognises someone from his days in MI5 that they agree to let the past lie. However, his friendship with Davies and Mike isn’t quite the same as it was.

Other notes: The series gets good reviews and a second series is commissioned after the first two episodes have been shown. Series two keeps the same mix of crime and personal lives. Scarlet and Will continue their will-they-won’t-they relationship and kiss at her 18th birthday party. We get more backstory on all the main characters, another threat to Harry’s identity when an old colleague turns up and Harry struggles to stay on the straight and narrow when he gets into debt. At the end of the series Davies is promoted to DCI and leaves for another station in a bigger town.

Series 3 does less well with the loss of one of its main characters. Her replacement is widely disliked and her relationship with Harry doesn’t have enough chemistry to make it believable. With Peter Davison saying before the series started that he didn’t want to do a fourth, the series sees Scarlet joining the police force and finally get together with Will. In the final episode Harry is outed to the national press and abandons his detective agency to go on the run.

There is a connection between the actors who play the main characters – and Georgia Moffett is the odd one out. Bonus points to anyone who can work out what the connection is.

The trouble with having written all this is that now I want to see it…

Permalink | 3 comments | Categories: Meme: Meme: other

So have a TV meme instead:

Name a TV show series in which you have seen every episode at least twice: Red Dwarf. I think that might be the only one actually.

Name a (current) show you can’t miss: Everything I currently watch, I watch every episode of.

Name an actor that would make you more inclined to watch a show: Only Ewan McGregor, but that’s more of a film thing. And I wait for them to be on DVD because he’s been in quite a lot of weird stuff that’s not very good.

Name an actor who would make you less likely to watch a show: Johnny Vegas. He’s like nails down a blackboard to me.

Name a show you can, and do, quote from: Hitchhiker’s maybe?

Name a show you like that no one else enjoys: I am quite fond of Wife Swap USA in small doses. Americans are crazy people.

Name a TV show which you’ve been known to sing the theme song: Red Dwarf. It’s impossible not to when someone’s say “It’s cold outside”.

Name a show you would recommend everyone to watch: Victorian Farm. Informative and funny.

Name a TV series you own: Just one? There’s Red Dwarf. I even have most of it on DVD (just VIII I only have taped off the telly). I have all of Babylon 5 on video. And given the effort I went to to get it all as cheaply as possible, it’s too upsetting to think about getting rid of them for any reason.

What is your favourite episode of your favourite series? White Hole from Red Dwarf IV. Not the most popular, but it plays with time and I like time (as a concept).

A show you mean to watch, but you just haven’t got around to yet: There’s one sitting around on my PVR from before Christmas about early man, or something like that.

Ever quit watching a show because it was so bad? Oh, yes. Lost and Heroes spring to mind.

Name a show you aren’t interested in watching, not in the least: If I’m only choosing from one I’ve never seen anything of… maybe Black Books. I remember the trailers not being funny in the least, which is never a good sign.

Name a show that’s made you cry multiple times: There isn’t one.

Oldest TV show you like? The Avengers.

Newest TV show you like? Leverage.

What do you eat when you watch TV? That’s a crap question. When I eat I either read or watch TV and what I watch depends on what’s on my PVR.

How often do you watch TV? I usually watch a bit every day when I’m having a lie down during the evening.

Do you have a favorite talk show? No, I’ve only watched the odd one when someone I like has been on. And that’s mostly Jonathan Ross.

What’s the last TV show you watched? I watched last night’s Argumental this evening.

What’s your favourite/preferred genre of TV? Cop shows. Including the subgenre of murder mysteries.

What’s your least favourite genre of TV? Soaps. Those programmes that make you ring up to vote people in or out, or something.

What was the first TV show you were obsessed with? I remember being allowed to stay up late to watch Blankety Blank…

What TV show do you wish you’d never watched? Flash Forward for how dizzy it made me.

What’s the weirdest show you enjoyed? I don’t think I’ve watched anything that weird. Not that I can remember anyway.

What TV show scared you the most? Casualty. I had to leave the room and lock myself in the bathroom. And then come out again to turn the TV off because there was no one else around to do it…

What is the funniest TV show you have ever watched? Red Dwarf.

Which do you think is the best TV series ever made? Red Dwarf.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Meme: Meme: TV

• Tidied
• Cleaned
• Done my finances – and discovered the electricity bill I thought I’d paid on Christmas Eve I actually hadn’t
• Sorted out some paperwork – and found a two month old letter from the doctors inviting me for an asthma review
• Baked chocolate chip cookies, fairy cakes (with purple icing), chocolate chip biscuits, flapjacks and chocolate sponge puddings

And if that wasn’t enough, I have uploaded a load of stories to A03. These are some of the stories I have on Harry’s journal that are written for weekly prompt comms. It’s useful to have them in order, but these are essentially quick things that I dashed off. They’re not the greatest things I’ve written ever, but they’ve been useful for getting me writing – and sometimes it’s useful to just get something over and done with without spending weeks on it. Think of them as flashfic if you will.

I thought it’s entirely possible that some people might be vaguely interested in them, so they are:
Harry’s childhood
Harry’s present

The latter starts where the Sarah Jane Smith audios stop and run concurrently with New Who, Torchwood and SJA and I did work out what went where at one point, but I have since forgotten.

And now I am tired and fifteen minutes late with Being Human.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Fan fic, Life: Life, My fanfic

lost_spook

anything to do with Press Gang, Kenny and wrong numbers

so I wrote:

Wrong number, right thing to do

“Lynda?” Kenny frowned upon hearing the voice on the other end of the phone. “I didn’t call you.”

“I know.” Her tone was smug. “I had the line re-routed.”

He sighed. “Lynda, you can’t stop me from going to Australia.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

He had to admit it was hard to stop Lynda doing anything she didn’t want to, but he hated to leave it like this. “Come and see me off at the airport.” When she said nothing he added, “Please?”

“I’ll think about it.” She slammed the phone down.

Kenny hoped she would forgive him for leaving.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Fan fic: Drabbles

Last night’s The Bill was good as usual, and amazingly didn’t make me feel really dizzy halfway through. And I think I’ve learnt the names of two of the PCs and I quite like Sgt Stone. I thought he was going to be dodgy, but perhaps not.

Anyway, last night there was a character on it playing the main character’s brother, and I recognised his voice from somewhere, but couldn’t for the life of me work out where. I thought that maybe he sort of looked familiar too, but couldn’t pin it down and eventually decided I must be imagining it.

Except that then I realised where I recognised the voice – he was Colin in Press Gang. At which point he wasn’t in a scene for absolutely ages, but the next one he was in, someone called his name, he looked up and the expression was pure Colin and I knew I was right, even before checking on the credits.

It was very surreal – out of the last four episodes of The Bill we’ve had Luke from SJA, Ianto from Torchwood and Colin from Press Gang. There is sadly no picture on the official website, and nor is there a video clip with him talking, but I managed to find a clip with him in. It’s in this one at 00.00.48 where. And I have taken a handy screencap and annotated it:

Colin from Press Gang in The Bill

(And that’s the first time I’ve ever tried using the gallery to upload a picture, rather than doing it by hand. It’s pretty cool – I like it)

Permalink | 7 comments | Categories: TV: Press Gang, The Bill

Since I installed Windows 7, my printer doesn’t work with it. I had a complete arse with it in XP, but it was perfect in Vista. In theory it should just have been a case of downloading the drivers, but in practice that had no effect. So I browsed a lot of forums and tried various things, none of which had any effect.

I ended up asking HP support who told me to do lots of things I’d already done (despite telling them I’d done it), were complete idiots and treated me like an idiot and didn’t read my emails properly. And now they’ve given up. They’ve concluded that the problem must be my computer and I should contact the computer’s manufacturer and get them to format it. Beyond the obvious question of why on earth would I get Acer to format my computer, my answer to that is not just no, it’s hell, no.

So now I need a new printer that definitely, definitely works with Windows 7. So one that’s come out this year, probably. And ideally works with my current cartridges too, since I have one of each spare… I hate being printerless as well. I don’t use it that often but now I keep needing to use it!

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Computers: Printer

And a drabble meme from lost_spook I’ve been waiting to put up until I’m feeling well enough to think:

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble of any pairing/character with a prompt. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

Although feel free to ignore that last sentence – it’s not like I’m going to be checking. By first ten people, I mean first ten notifications in my inbox regardless of whether they come from my blog, LJ or DW.

There’s a list of fandoms I’ve written in on the left of my fanfic archive, but feel free to request anything I know. If I really can’t write it I’ll just get you to pick something else.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Life, Meme: Ill, Meme: fanfic

Why can’t I just sleep until I’m better? Or more to the point, why is it that whenever I put 301 on there’s either no Australian Open or they’re just finishing? And why do we always have to listen to Sam Smith rabbiting on annoyingly?

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Life: Ill

I’d be warmer, I could leave later, so get up later, so get more sleep, I could listen to the radio (I haven’t heard Chris Evans at breakfast yet and I’m missing the Five Live guys with the news on my way home). It wouldn’t matter if I left a few minutes late, I would have to slide over so much snow, I would spend ages waiting for a bus and I could leave work whatever time I liked (well, after 5.30pm obviously).

I can’t drive at the moment because although the main roads are fine, I’d have to park down a side road, which aren’t so great. My road isn’t great and to make it worse, I’d have to turn my car round 180 degrees, it’s currently on a slight slope and there’s a pile of snow behind it because it’s been parked there ever since we had the heavy snow Tuesday night last week. And most importantly, having experienced driving on snow once I’m not desperate to try it again.

It’s supposed to be a lot warmer from tomorrow (where a lot warmer means above freezing) so hopefully there’ll be lots of melting going on. But I am so sick of the snow.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Life, Weather: Driving, Snow

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Internet: Livejournal

I am enjoying The Bill at the moment, despite its lack of theme tune and pullover, and I am getting used to the incidental music. I can even name some of the new characters. Not that I can necessarily recognise them first off, mind you, even though they have their names on their uniforms these days…

I stopped watching in June 2005, I discovered from looking through my blog. And started again in October 2009. Thanks to the magic of YouTube I’ve been watching some old stuff and I can honestly that what I’ve missed has been utter rubbish, for the most part. And it’s obvious from the synopses too, which consist of a lot of sentences about the character’s personal lives back then. These days it’s a couple of sentences about the crime, which is what I’m watching for. I don’t mind them having personal lives, as long as it’s a background to the crime and isn’t the main focus.

Now I might go and put on an early half hour episode from the Volume Two DVD I got for Christmas and see who I recognise…

Permalink | No comments | Categories: TV: SJA, The Bill

First, the background. I grew up on the south coast of England where it snowed every three years or so. Although it did, however, completely fail to snow while I was at uni – except in the Christmas of my first year where it snowed at home and nowhere else. Until last winter I’d never seen the snow stay around for more than a day. Until this winter and one a few years ago, I’d never seen it start to snow and settle during the day. So I was a bit startled before Christmas when it did just that, it was really slippery and I vowed never to drive in snow again.

Cut to this winter. There are quite a lot of people at work who, at the mention of snow, get all excited. They were rather less excited after the sudden snow we had before Christmas, mind you, but they’re back to being yay about snow again.

Yesterday it started snowing about 5pm, so although I did drive home in it, it wasn’t really any different from driving in rain. It was forecast to get heavier and it did. We cancelled our Rotaract cheese and wine planning meeting for the second time for the same reason. So everywhere was a bit white this morning.

But it is just ordinary snow. Walking to the station this morning to get the bus was pretty easy because people had already walked along the pavements and flattened all the snow. So I reckon, looking at the height of the bits people have walked on and comparing it to the bits people haven’t, that we’ve got about two inches. The most snow I’ve ever seen was last January, which was more than that.

The main roads are fine, just slushy at the edges. The minor roads are snowy, but really slushy where enough people have driven. So understandably the bus was 35mins late. And then he didn’t drive that fast because the slush isn’t great to drive on. The route does go through a village and coming out of that onto the main road the bus did go sideways. I was just glad I wasn’t driving.

So I got to work 45mins late to find that no one else in my office was there. One of them lives not far from me and hadn’t come in because she reckoned the roads were impassable. Someone else hadn’t come in because they didn’t believe the bus company’s website when they said they were running the buses until 7pm and she thought they’d leave her stranded. (Amusingly, the bus that runs between home and work stops at 6.53 usually…)

Given that I’m the one least used to snow, I can’t believe how wet they’re all being. I left early because I had loads of overtime to take and had failed to take any of it on Monday or Tuesday. The roads were much better and because there was no traffic and the bus was on time, I had the fastest bus journey home I’ve ever had. I’m waiting to see how many people bother to make it tomorrow now.

The best part is that I bought some really big, thick gloves from Primark at Christmas (for a whole £3) and although I can’t do a thing with my hands while I’m wearing them, they do keep my hands lovely and warm. I was also wearing my fencing socks on top of my usual socks, my walking boots (waterproof and good grip), my tracksuit bottoms on top of my work trousers, three jumpers and two hoods and a hat on my head. The only part of me that was cold was my feet and part of that was because they were really stuffed into my shoes so I couldn’t really feel them anyway.

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Weather: Snow