Archive for February, 2012
Snowdrops
How pretty are snowdrops? I’ve never seen them before, but they’re currently dotted all over the village church’s graveyard. If I don’t watch myself I might seek out the upcoming bluebells and start reciting poetry about daffodils and so on…
So, you’re a star… I think
Watching TV in England is very confusing. I seem to cope with TV in the US okay, so I’m not really sure why this is, but the English really do have their own set of stars that are unknown in every other country on Earth. In particular, I am confused by:
- Myleene Klass (I’ve probably spelled that wrong, but her own mother probably spells it wrong…). Who is she? I looked her up on Wikipedia and am none the wiser, because it says she is an ‘English singer, pianist, media personality and occasional model’. But aren’t we all these days?
- Denise McAdam. I am currently using her shampoo and conditioner and this gives me a secret thrill every day when I see her name on the two bottles in my shower each time I pick them up. It’s like I’ve nicked someone else’s toiletries from the gym, because I have no idea who she is. Is she a hairdresser? An actor?
- The woman on the Iceland ads. I’m sure she’s famous. To someone.
- The guy on the Morrison’s ads. He mumbles a lot and acts quite laddish. I’m sure he’s beloved by many, because he can’t be an actor. I hope. I seem to have ongoing issues with Morrison’s, don’t I? I really must seek one out.
- Every single person involved with Dancing on Ice, except Torvill and Dean. Watching Dancing on Ice is like being dumped in the middle of a party where everyone knows everyone else except you.
In future, I’m sticking to re-runs of the Aussie Border Security. I know where I am with Border Security. There aren’t any famous people. Just regular Aussies, drugs and dodgy foodstuffs. Surely TV doesn’t get any better, or less confusing, than that.
It snowed! It REALLY SNOWED!!!
A big pic. for a big occasion. For weeks, people have been telling us it’s going to snow. So, when the weather forecast stated that it would snow around 6pm yesterday, we took this with a grain of salt (and grit). Just before 6pm, it started to snow. And it didn’t stop all night. When we woke up this morning, we were greeted with a true winter wonderland. We’ve spent most of the day running in and out. Out for fun and in when we can’t feel our extremities anymore. There have been snowballs and snowmen, sleds, slipping and sliding. Good practise for Lapland, where we’ll be headed next week.
A frosty walk to school and, in other news, I am a squirrel killer…
It’s officially turned into winter. When I walked the kids to school this morning, it had not yet reached the dizzying ‘mild’ (as they call it here — if it’s not actually bone-freezingly cold, pissing down, or blowing you sideways, it’s ‘mild’) temperature of 0 degrees. Big bonus: when it’s really cold, the mud freezes and I don’t spend the walk on tenterhooks wondering which child is going to fall over first. Don’t say I’m not a positive person.
Each morning we pass the village church and this morning the graveyard looked particularly frosty and pretty…
In other news, I am the harbinger of death for any and all village squirrels. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. It all started a month or so ago, with a squirrel having an unwanted swim in the lock. It was duly fished out, only to slowly gasp its way to death in front of us. Last week, after I dropped the kids off at school, I was walking along the footpath when a squirrel took a look at me, then bolted in front of a bus, doing a James Bond-like skid underneath. At least, it would have been James-Bond-like if it had not emerged from the other side twitching. Then, this morning, I closed a gate to a field and disturbed a squirrel climbing a tree. It fell from a great height. I didn’t go hunting for a body. I think we all know what happened to that squirrel. I’m not getting any sympathy from the locals about my squirrel issues, because apparently the grey ones are a pest (it’s all about the red squirrels, apparently. People are quite racist when it comes to squirrels around these parts).
