Ground (Still) Stands Hard as Iron

The novelty of the wintery weather is starting to wear off a bit now. The return to school, usually a dull and dismal prospect signifying the end of the Christmas fun and festivity, has been made far less oppressive by the deep, crisp layers spectacularly coating the neighbourhood. The Bright-Eyed Boy has been mightily cheered by it all, which is a massive relief as I was dreading that his earlier anxiety symptoms would return with the start of the term. So far though (touch wood), so good: the snow has most certainly been a mitigating factor, with the prospect of snowball fights with friends and probably more sledging this coming weekend acting as a distraction from any lurking worries. I do hope that it was just a passing phase, although if it does return, I think that we'll probably be better able to cope with it.
Daughter #3's school has been operating irregular opening times, which meant that she has been returning home just after 2.30 in the afternoon, much to her delight. On Monday she had a teacher-training day, so she took herself off for a morning's sledging, complete with flask of hot drink and bags of biscuits.

The bird table in our garden has seen a mass of frenzied activity of late. I've made sure that it's re-stocked everymorning with crumbs, fat, bird seed and mealworms (popular with robins, apparently). The avian clientele seem to wait in the surrounding trees and bushes until I've done my duty (which includes making sure they have fresh, unfrozen water) and then descend. There is a definite heirarchy: the starlings arrive first, then the blackbirds, sparrows and the thrush (singular) and finally the ring-collar doves and the wood pigeon, who is too fat to sit on the table and sits underneath it waiting for stuff to drop to the ground. The blue and great tits arrive whenever they feel like it and tend to prefer the balls of fat that I've hung from the cherry tree at the end of the garden. I haven't actually seen the robin lately, although (s)he was around before Christmas.Very occasionally, I've caught a glimpse of a wren which bobs around at low-level, seldom above the bottom-most plank of the wooden fence. Last year, and the year before, blue tits actually nested in the box that the Husband carefully constructed from approved RSPB plans (did you know that size of the entry holes are variety specific?). However, unless blue tits are able to dispose of their egg shells completely - we opened the nest box up to clear it out in the autumn - I don't think they raised any young in there.
The guinea pigs are still living inside too, side by side in two large plastic tubs filled with shavings and hay. They've been in for three weeks now, but I'm not going to risk them outside in their hutches until the temperature increases somewhat. We lost a rabbit and a guinea pig to something like pneumonia when the children were small, and I still feel pretty guilty about it today. I did take them to the vet when I noticed the symptoms, but despite antibiotics and a special diet their conditions just deteriorated. And it is very difficult to bury even small pets at this time of year, as the ground is like iron. Last year daughter #2's budgie died at around this time and he had to wait about ten days for his funeral. Luckily, because it was so cold at the time, he remained quite well preserved round the back of her house, in his little shoe-box coffin.....

So Arthur and Albert - the guineas - remain inside, and pretty boring it must be for them too. Like solitary confinement. Roll on the days when they can laze around in their runs in the sunshine and vocalise abuse at one another! Albert (tri-coloured and short-haired) gets pretty noisy during the evening, which encourages the whole family to respond with squeals of their own. Arthur, albino, long-haired and quite, quite mad, maintains a more dignified silence. It's a shame they can't keep each other company in the same pen, but they just don't get on. When we tried it there was lots of eye-rolling, stiff-legged, wary circling and hostile chittering. Don't fancy taking them to the vets with battle-wounds either!

New Year's Fun

As it is the last day before the general return to work/school/study - no waiting until 12th night which falls on a Wednesday this year - we spent the first part of the morning taking down the Christmas tree and cards and stowing all the baubles in the loft until next year. We were quite shocked at how quickly Christmas had come round again this year, and no doubt we will be expressing the same sort of thoughts twelve months hence. Once everything was all clean and tidied away it was actually quite pleasant to have that bit of extra space and the feeling that the coming week represents a 'fresh start' in many ways. Once that was out of the way, all four of us went up and over Siward's How, the southerly ridge that obscures the low winter sunlight from our house, to the steepish hill that drops away onto Fulford Moor. This is excellent sledging terrain: the Husband and the Bright-Eyed Boy did some reconnaissance yesterday and ended up having two hours of snow-based fun. They couldn't wait to go back again today, and daughter #3 and I needed little persuading. The piste itself is reasonably uniform in profile (with some more challenging sections) that has been polished over the past couple of days to a glassy sheen, ensuring a fast and rather exciting trip. The run-out area at the bottom of the hill starts where the longer weeds and grass poke through the snow as a natural break. I suppose the entire run from top to bottom is about a couple of hundred feet or so, and you can reach a fair old speed. The trickiest bit is avoiding other sledgers, especially as the steering is a bit erratic, and a good loud shouting voice is essential! There were a lot of families there, lots of Dads imparting advice to their children and a lot of parents doing stuff that is going to mean aching joints and stiff muscles tomorrow (myself included - one particularly spectacular wipeout left me with some colourful abrasions on my leg).

But was most noticeable was the sound, a sound of pure joy, people of all ages laughing and having wonderful fun together that didn't rely on expensive gadgets or complicated preparations, and it struck me how unusual that was -an atmosphere of warmth and camaraderie, strangers chatting to one another, all their defences down.

Gradually the sun became veiled by cloud and large flakes of snow started to fall silently. Having had the best fun we'd had for ages, we headed home for soup and hot buttered toast, making a wholehearted resolution that this year we would - as a family -try to have much more fun!

Somewhere between Christmas and the New Year I have managed to pick up a stinking cold. This is absolutely typical: I manage - through sheer bloody-mindedness, I think - to make it through most of the year unscathed, only to succumb when there are a concentration of lovely, sociable gatherings to attend and enjoy. Still, at least it's only a cold, not a recurrence of the rather debilitating virus-thing I had last year, where I spent most of the holiday week glassy-eyed and inert on the sofa.

We managed to stay up and 'see the New Year in' last night (complete with daughter #2 and her Bouncing Babba, who grumpily kept stirring in his sleep to complain about the disruption to his routine). To be quite honest, we could have easily have turned in at our normal bedtime, having snaffled our buffet supper at seven in the evening and been bored to tears by the bland TV scheduling. We did attempt some games, but by then I was feeling a bit rough and was losing my voice and was not terribly enthusiastic. However, we stuck it out and raised a glass at the as Big Ben struck the midnight hour. On retiring almost immediately after, my attention was caught through the bedroom window by a flotilla of Chinese lanterns rising silently into the night sky. The light northerly wind carried them directly over our house and it was a beautiful sight, very much like drifting, luminous jelly-fish - much nicer than the raucous fireworks that randomly punctuated the early 2010 calm.

This morning the Bright-Eyed Boy and I were up early and, having waved goodbye to #2 and baby, took our sledge to the local park where over the past couple of days I'd been eyeing up the solidly-frozen and iced-up gravel path as a makeshift competitor to the infamous Cresta bobsled Run. The B-E-B soon mastered the art of weight-shift steering and, after a couple of trial runs, managed to propel himself along a fair portion of the track at a reasonable speed. He was quite keen (against my better judgement) on trying the head-first 'skeleton bob' approach, but fortunately this proved less successful than the conventional method, to which he reverted after a couple of slower runs. It was quite tricky remaining upright, especially as I was juggling the Dog's lead and my phone-camera and trying to boost the Boy out of the 'starting gate'. Much slipping about and hilarity ensued, but I eventually managed to get some fairly good video footage and some stills, despite the Dog being sent into leaping, outraged fits by a spaniel that had the nerve to get too close. When we arrived home the B-E-B was so enthused and glowing that the Husband immediately decided to accompany us back to the park (minus the Dog, who'd had enough excitement by then) and have a go himself. The bonus to all this fun is that my cold seems to have gone into retreat, no doubt on account of all the adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream, and I feel a lot brighter. (Long may it continue to improve.) It was a fantastic way to start the year.