Weather with teeth

 

It is lethal out there.  I was tweeting earlier that this degree-or-two-above-freezing to degree-or-two-below is the worst because it turns the world into an ice-mirror.  Today I don't think it ever got enough above freezing to put your begonias back outdoors (or anyway I didn't) but it got that crucial .05 degree over the edge to permit all the little water molecules to sigh and stretch and settle into their places for maximum effect when Beira or the White Witch or some other spoilsport comes along and taps them and whispers 'Now, my children' and . . .

            Ice mirror.

            If I didn't have my yaktrax* I'd be dead, or at least in traction.**  And of course the temperature makes hellhounds frantic, even in their coats.  Chaos in particular attains a kind of permanent airborne-ness which involves whizzing around at about human chest-level and trying to catch his lead on the yaktrax ironmongery.  Darkness tends to remain gloomily at my heels, trying to convince me with mind-waves that his coat is cutting him in half.  I did manage to get it around him—just.  And he has finally deigned to pee and crap while wearing it, but he will not jump into the car till I unfasten the bellyband.  He's right, it's too small.  But it is at present what we've got, and it's better than nothing. 

            Jumping into the car is currently a bit moot:  when you're living in the middle of a skating rink, you tend to leave your wheels quietly at home.  And we're supposed to get several inches of snow tonight:  the local forecast is full of Extreme Weather Warnings.  When it crunches down that'll be good.  When it first falls and is doing its self-toboggan thing, it will not be good.  I should go look out the door and see what's happening.  We have to walk home tonight. . . .

            No.  Don't want to.  Whatever it's doing, it's going to do it whether I'm looking at it and clutching the doorframe and moaning, or not.***  Peter was supposed to play bridge tonight.  His partner has a 4-wheel drive car† and was saying oh, it's fine, we can get there, no problem, and I was just taking a deep breath in preparation for having a complete frelling meltdown tantrum, reinforced if necessary by chaining Peter to the banister, when said partner rang up and said bridge had been cancelled.  By sensible people.

            I finally got the poor indoor jungle sorted.  I had got quite used to wasting at least half an hour every day putting it out and bringing it back in again, but it doesn't really get enough daylight that way . . . particularly given my owlish proclivities.††   But I like having things that are still flowering in December on my front stairs, if frelling December would cooperate.  Which it clearly has no intention of doing, any more than the latter half of November did.  The last five days or so the poor jungle hasn't got outdoors at all.  Oops.  So the summerhouse at Third House has finally been turned on, lit up, and re-bubblewrapped, and everything I couldn't crowd onto a windowsill at the cottage††† has gone up there.  I was partly impelled to move on with things not merely by the prospect of my poor jungle turning yellow and collapsing but by the amount of jocularity it was causing among certain members of my handbell crew—who are due to come back and pester me tomorrow, although probably not if the weather is as ratbaggy as predicted.  It's okay though, Pooka and I can sit quietly in a corner practising our bob major.  With an indoor geranium or twelve hanging over our shoulders.

 * * *

* I was going to give you a link, but they're all sold out—except, I imagine, in Australia.  I raved about them last year anyway.  I'll be raving about them some more this year.  Rave rave rave.  I've tried a few other of those strap-on walking pitons and personal caterpillar tracks but yaktrax are the best.   

** And who would hurtle hellhounds.  Maybe we could work out a sort of velodrome around the ward.  Um.  A chien-de-chasse-drome.  

*** Yes, I could go home early, and finish this post at the cottage.  But at present the desktop is possessed by demons, and I'd rather not.  

† I told you I was determined to get Wolfgang through at least one more winter, despite bits starting to fall off at a somewhat alarming rate?^  I have also been saying that while the future, global warming, next season's flash All Stars colours and the minds of hellhounds are all opaque to me, I was going to use this winter as a coin toss:  if we revert and have what I used to consider a normal Hampshire winter, the next car will just be a normal car.  If we have another winter like last winter, where there were weeks when my yaktrax were my best friend, then I want 4-wheel drive again, which I had in Maine.  It's beginning to look like a 4-wheel-drive prospect.  Which only adds £978,500 to the purchase price and a clause in the contract requiring me to be Beira's handmaiden^^ for a month every winter. 

^ Although Atlas gave him a truly Olympian+ clean about a fortnight ago and he now looks like a car again instead of a four-wheeled shrubbery.  I'm sure he runs better, the way you present better in a sharp suit.  Not because of the suit, but because of the way you feel in the suit.  Okay, maybe not a sharp suit in my case.  Maybe my Blondie All Stars.

+ Yes, Titan, I know, but Olympian sounds better 

^^ Or in my case, handhag 

†† You can take that any way you like, but I was referring to my tendency to go to bed late.  

††† Every year I seem to manage to find a way to crowd a few more things onto windowsills.  I'm not sure how this works.  There might be a Tardis gene involved.  But my craving for little green growing things seems to be a slightly warped version of SAD.^  My latest mad plan is to research the smallest possible greenhouse light and hang it from the kitchen ceiling at the cottage.  Here I've got the Winter Table.  And the Aga.  And the permanent fog that English winter seems to produce. . . .  So, warm, well-lit fog.  Mmm.  Rainforest.  Orchids.  I wonder if they've figured out a dwarf pineapple yet?  Those blade-edged leaves are not the best option in a kitchen four feet square inhabited by a human klutz and two hellhounds. . . .  A bird of paradise?  A small one?  And a poison dart frog.  They don't take up any space.  Probably not an anaconda however.  Even a small one. 

^ Seasonal Affective Disorder?  We all know about this?  http://www.sada.org.uk/    It's pretty common among us old codgers and not uncommon among the younger.  I'm amazed SADA's home page is saying only 7% of the population, although maybe they mean truly functionally-impaired severity.

PS:  OH GODS IT'S SNOWING LIKE A BASTARD OUT THERE.