….dammed cold. According to the news, the temperature last night here was around -10°C. Today, it’s still below 0°C and is expected to drop to -12°C. Minus 12 Centigrade is minus 20 Fahrenheit!!! And the long-term forecast is for more of the same.
I can remember the “Big Freeze” winter of 1962/3, when even London (where I was living then) had day after day of minus temperatures (in fact, checking the ever-useful interwebs, I find that London had below-freezing nighttime temperatures all the way through February).
However, in that winter I was just a kid, with no concerns about keeping the house warm or having to get around. So all I remember from that time is the snow and slush and problems with getting to school.
Now I’m grown-up, experiencing the kind of grown-up worries that my mother went through then. Most of the roads here are icy, the drive here is just a sheet of ice, all the shops are completely out of salt – and the local news is saying that some councils in Scotland are running out of grit and salt to keep the roads open. We have enough coal for our fire until the coalman gets here this week. But if he can’t get through then we’ll have to get the car out and buy some bags. But will the roads be safe? And so on.
So I’m wishing it would thaw soon.

Especially because it’s none too warm where I’m sitting now, in the hallway. Luckily, I’ve no urgent work to get on with (though I wish I had, to get in some money), so I’ll switch off soon and sit by the fire.