Icy

As I came upstairs tonight, I realised my thighs feel as though I'd climbed a Monroe today instead of merely walking enough to close my exercise ring (an Apple watch thing.) This, I suspect, is because walking was intermittently hazardous in the thin coating of snow that fell last night and today, along with the patches of black ice that had melted and refrozen - I kept finding myself walking like John Wayne. It began early, of course, as I was out before the sun rose to do the supermarket shop. Himself heroically went out first to melt the car - he could only find one door that would actually open, and the windscreen takes an age in the current car - we miss the heated screen of the lamented Kuga. Morrison's shelves were somewhat depleted, presumably affected by the Red Sea problem - though I'm sure some of the missing stuff comes from Europe. When I got home, my hands were so cold they hurt - I could hardly use them - and I was terrified of chilblains so had to resist the temptation to plunge them into hot water. I stood at the radiator in my living room, not holding it, just dangling my hands in front of it, and was inspired to take the extra photo just because I thought the room looked so cosy and inviting compared with outside.

My only real task this morning was to fix the travel insurance for the new trip, which I did, quite speedily, online. There was no recompense for our visas for Saudi, but I suppose it was a long shot (I did ask ...). Meanwhile, Himself was shut in the walk-in cupboard in the front room, cleaning mould off the outside wall, dressed as if he were trying to deal with the Chernobyl clean-up and wearing safety goggles ... I'm afraid I did nothing so energetic/heroic, though I did have a phone chat with my sister, and spent quite some time catching up on the lives of my blip friends. I also downloaded the new MacOS Sonoma ...

Much later, when all was restored to the cupboard, I decided some fresh air would do him good after all that bleach stuff. There had been a fleeting snow shower, and it was amazing how much white stuff was left on the ground. We had entertained thoughts of walking along the Old Road, under the big trees that we thought might have kept it snow-free, but the ice had re-formed on the car windscreen and we were too late to spend time melting it, so walked round the West Bay instead. But I loved the photo I took of the windscreen from inside the car: the delicate fern shapes reminded me of the single-glazed windows of my youth, which used to grow these patterns inside the window on cold nights. Anyway, that's my arty offering for today.