Mrs T having a hard time

.She writes:  I just heard about the Defenestration of Prague. And my toilet makes a funny wailing noise every time I flash it. It's just one damn thing after another.
Yrs
Blodwen Trellis, Mrs, Widow, retd.

It can only get worse

'Blizzards to blanket Britain'

Heavy snowfall and icy storms are set to leave much of the country shivering. Travel chaos

The above taken from Sky News online. The snow hasn't even fallen yet, and already we have "Travel chaos". Makes you proud to be British.

Fartfall

The snowfall yesterday turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The media, bless them, did their best to turn it into a catastrophe, but frankly is wasn't even an inconvenience. It induced some Yellowhammers, Reed Buntings and Tree Sparrows to join the army of Blackbirds in my back garden, but really it was a fart of a fall. Better luck next time. February can be apocalyptic - at least five mm of snow, and it sticks around for three days some years. Yaay!

Author query

One of the side effects of being a published author is that from time to time you receive letters from people who want something from you. I don't mind, as long as they bought the book in the first place. In fact, I have a few lovely people on my contact list as a result of such queries. The latest query is a puzzle, though. It's appended as a comment to my blogpost Anon-anonymous, and reads to this effect:
"I am doing a mid-term report on your short stories so could you please send me an account of your life and woks."
It is signed "Anonymous". I have no idea what to do with this, flattered though I may be by the idea that someone is interested in me and my short stories. I not modest enough to deny that I have had a fascinating life, but I never expected anyone to be interested in my woks. To be accurate, I have only one wok, which I haven't used since I last cooked Philosophical Rice, a dish much appreciated by my children and others, mainly because they used to become very philosophical about what was in it while eating it.

Coincidence

I can't resist turning you green with envy: this morning, we have woken up to a whiteout, with the promise of more heavy snowfalls during the day. All that cold wet stuff! All the slithering! And the stinging cold! I feel sorry for any of you who are suffering warm sunshine on the back of your neck.

Yesterday was a heavy socialising day for the OS. A splendid lady from church gave a mulled wine and nibbles party yesterday afternoon. I stuck to the Prince Charles Organic Lemon Spritzer, but most of the rest of the company - about thirty people - got cheerfully legless on mulled wine. Most of the people I met were new to me (locals, nothing to do with church), including a knowledgeable ecologist, a plumber and a professional photographer. The latter immediately identified my vestigial regional accent as West Shropshire, and it turned out that she was originally from Wolverhampton, which is no more than twenty miles from my natal village of Hadley.

In fact we could both see the Wrekin from our bedroom windows. So we had a mega-reminiscence session, and discovered that we had a lot more in common than just birthplace and upbringing. Most enjoyable, and it is mere coincidence that she is also stunningly attractive. Thank you, coincidence.

The evening party was also a cheese-and-nibbles do, laid on by birding friend, Barbara, at which she showed us slides (or whatever is the 21st century equivalent) of her recent trip to the coastal forests of south-eastern Brazil. One of the cities she visited en route was Curitiba, the home town of Bruna, my daughter's best ever nanny, the one who has adopted me as her "avôzinho" (grandpa). She is very attractive too. Thank you, coincidence.

There you are. I thought you would want to know that the OS is still doing his Mehitabel impersonations, though my legs are now a bit creaky for "a dance or two in the old dame yet". So, à bientot. I am off now to build a snowman out of muesli.

Just a gesture