Good Morning

I got up and there wasn't a cloud in the sky and between that and the noise of car tyres on frozen slush I knew it was going to be COLD!
When I could be bothered opening the curtains, there was some nice light on some clouds (More over here).

Before making the tea I nipped outside to throw salt/grit down  on the ice that had formed where the snow had melted, run down the slope into the courtyard and then frozen making it rather treacherous.
I also went down to the house in the corner where the paving slabs have been replaced with monobloc. As I suspected it was a huge sheet of glass (being on a decent slope) so I starting chucking down the salt 'just in case'. He is suffering from cancer and has a tendency to overdo things (especially when in comes to helping neighbours).
I was just about finished when the lady of the house came to the door and started thanking me for that and the wee Christmas presents I had given them.
After about an hour we were joined by 'Him'.
Do you think we could stop him coming out in his slippers to shake my hand, say Happy New Year and Thank You? - could we bollocks!
It took me another half hour to get them to go in and get warm.
The pair of them are too nice for their own goods.

Late morning and we got a surprise video call from No1 son and family (minus Butterfly who was at school). My word Bunny is growing fast and and increasing her vocabulary - although 'No' was her favourite word this morning.

After lunch The Monsters were collected so that they could see some different faces and Dad could get a break and  get on with work - it must be really hard working from home with 2 primary kids needing home schooling and entertaining.
By the time I got into the house after breaking and removing all the 2" thick  ice from the gutter outside the house which was preventing melt water reaching the drains - and forcing it to run across the road and refreezing, SWMBO and the monsters had set up a board game which took up a fair bit of the afternoon.
After that Squirrel sat with me and looked at old pictures of herself (vain wee horror) family weddings (she is a wee girl after all).
Bags collected them on her way home from work.
I think the afternoon did all of us good.