News from Nowhere

Two excursions this week, neither requiring any great degree of intrepidity, but each, in its way, feeling like an adventure.

On Tuesday we went to Newcastle for a Wine Society tasting. We don't do this often, but this one was particularly tempting, wines of the Languedoc Roussillon with representatives of the growers in attendance, and held at the Station Hotel, which made the journey as straightforward as it could be. I agreed that I could manage the walk up to the station on the way out, and durham_rambler agreed not to fuss about getting a taxi home from the station, and this worked pretty well. I coped with the walk and was no slower than I had anticipated (which was, admittedly, pretty slow) and with the amount of standing required throughout the evening (there were some chairs, but it was pretty crowded) and although there were no taxis to be had at the station, we managed to hail one before we reached the foot of Station Bank. And the wines were worth the effort.

( a beaker full of the warm South... )

The second excursion was around Durham, to entertain visitors: it is they, not we, who were intrepid, having taken the train from York into the blizzard:



( Third time lucky? )

So all in all, despite the day not having gone at all according to plan, I'd call it a success.

Things are not, in fact, all that bleak. If this cold snap is the work of the Troll from Trondheim, it must be the troll who came in from the cold, the troll who couldn't handle the weather that is routine in Trondheim.

We had heavy frost on Friday: cold enough that I explored the winter clothes bagged up in the drawer under the bed - which have lain undisturbed for the last couple of winters - and I am now wearing the big fleecy sweatshirt which is usually just too warm for comfort.

We woke on Saturday to a blanket of snow; not the thickest of blankets, but quite enough. We had no plans to go anywhere over the weekend, and we didn't. We spent a quiet Sunday afternoon writing Christmas cards - I discovered a stash of cards left over from previous years, and those with the cards we bought at the Christmas Fair last weekend (was it really only last weekend? yes, if you count Friday) will suffice. We used up our supply of second-class stamps, and durham_rambler walked out to take the stamped cards to the postbox.

The forecast threatened that last night would be colder than ever, but it didn't feel it. There was a dusting of snow on the doorstep when I brought the milk in, but cars were moving up and down the hill with no sign of nervousness. durham_rambler drove out to a post office and posted more cards, including all the foreign ones - they will robably arrive late, but never mind.

This evening we are due at the Parish Council's festive event; and on Thursday we set off for London. Weather permitting, but the prospects are good.

Yesterday morning I turned the page on the calendar by my desk. It has a countryside scene for each month (by Rob Barnes, and in this style). January's picture was all white, sheep in the snow, but February was full of colour, pheasants among green shoots, with a frosting of snowdrops for contrast. Meanwhile, outside the window, snow had fallen overnight, and all was white. A note on our doormat confessed to having skidded on the bend and run into our car - the damage is minor, but I took it as a sign, and did not venture down the hill into town.

Last night BBC4 decided to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly by repeating a programme in their 'making of the classic albums' series about Don McLean's American Pie. I'm not sure I'd call it a 'classic album', because the inclusion of two absolute show-stoppers pulls it all out of shape. If asked, I could name one other track from the album: Babylon, which I prefer to Vincent (and I don't think I ever knew that McLean credits it to Lee Hayes, though I should have). Still, it was good to hear American Pie, and to hear McLean talking about it: though that story about how the verses all came to him in a rush should probably be set alongside his earlier (and unfairly overlooked) song Magdalene Lane. I liked McLean's contention that you could read the repetition of 'the day the music died' not as a repeated reference to the same day, but as building on the growing loss of innocence of each verse.

Woke up to more snow. The morning sun was bright on the trees on the hill opposite, and the sky was blue above them. After much toing and froing we decided that we would risk a trip out to Sainsbury's - a waste of a beautiful morning, but less of a waste that staying at home. We not only managed to drive down the Avenue without mishap, we managed to drive back up again, and I'm optimistic that we may be able to accept J.'s invitation to lunch tomorrow, to admire the progress of her building works. And if not - if there is more snow overnight - we have supplies. Oh, we would not have gone hungry in any case, but now we have fresh fruit and vegetables, and other luxuries.

The forecast is beginning to tell us that the worst of the snow is over: except for the north-east and Scotland, of course. But in fact yesterday was quieter, and nothing seems to have fallen overnight.

There has been no post all week. The milk and the newspaper continue to be delivered (no Guardian yesterday, only the local paper; but today we have the Saturday Guardian, whose absence would leave a real hole in the week's reading). As I anticipated, the local paper confirmed that recycling would not, after all, be collected: if you put it out, please take it in again, we'll be round in a fortnight for the next scheduled delivery. The paper was less soggy than I thought it would be, after its day and a half on the doorstep.

Also as anticipated, D. cancelled his weekend visit. Strictly, we cancelled it. When the engagement which had been the excuse for the trip was cancelled, he was quite willing to drive up from Ely regardless, but we thought this was silly, and we told him so. Irritatingly, that engagement has been rescheduled for next weekend, which would work much better for us, but D. isn't free...

We too have a dinner date this evening - a long awaited party with the pub quiz team, to spend some of our winnings - so that will be the test of whether I can walk to the bottom of the hill (and then, if we can make it to the bus station on our way out, how close to home we can persuade a taxi to bring us back - but as I keep saying, if I can get down the hill, I'm confident I can get back up).

I don't know where this nickname came from, or how it caught on. There's nothing exceptional about wintery weather coming from the east, is there? Yet every weather forecast seems to be using it, so I was braced for blustery winds and stinging snow pellets lashing against the windows. But this is a stealth beast. We woke yesterday to that light and silence that say, even before you open the curtains, that the world is blanketed in snow - and more has been falling steadily ever since. We've had big feather flakes of snow, and a fine white powder, almost a mist, all falling without a sound, straight down, none of that horizontal stuff. The most drama we've had was this morning, a couple of flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder (the word 'thunderstorm' means rain to me, not snow, and summer rain at that. We live and learn.)

It's a big beast, all right, but a comparatively tranquil one: though this assessment is brought to you by someone who hasn't ventured outside the door further than it took to bring in the milk. The milk delivery got through, and so, more surprisingly, did the paper: other things are being cancelled all around us.

durham_rambler's meeting went ahead yesterday morning, although the Council officer who was supposed to attend couldn't get there; I decided against taking the train into Newcastle for my reading group; durham_rambler's meeting this morning was cancelled, as was the talk we had failed to get places for. The pub quiz is on, as is his meeting tomorrow morning. Whether I can manage the walk down to hill to the pub is an open question (I'm better uphill than down, so confident that if I can get there, I can get home again).

First, though, there is the rubbish to be taken down to the bin, and the bin put out. Will the bin lorry get through? Wait and see. A better question is, is it worth putting the recycling out, since its containers are not watertight, and since the recycling lorry didn't make it up the hill last time it snowed rather less than this? Decisions, decisions...

One day, I asked my Finnish teacher if it was true that her language had 30 different words for snow. She fixed me with her big, blinky eyes.

"No, you poor deluded fool," she sighed. "We Finns only have one word for ‘snow’. The trouble is, you English think that everything white that falls out of the sky is ‘snow’."

Jonathan Clements, Schoolgirl Milky Crisis

Similarly that cold wet stuff falling out of the sky right now cannot be rain, because the forecast told us that it would not rain north of Middlesbrough.

(I think I'd have noticed if they'd moved Middlesbrough.)

A quick update, because I have left the house on both of the last two days, and feel altogether more cheerful for it.

On Thursday we had tickets for the Dylan Project at the Sage, and had booked a meeting with a client on Tyneside at the end of the afternoon. So this was a motorised excursion, and it worked out, just about. The drive north was icier than it had been on Monday, but we reached our destination, and had a good meeting (cups of tea, biscuits, discussion of client's furure plans and other matters of varying levels of relevance). Then we collected a friend who was going to a different event at the Sage and crossed the river.



The Sage is an amazing building, and looked wonderful in the snow. Their catering is less than wonderful. The band were - oh, well, they were what they were, which wasn't necessarily what I was looking for: every now and then something really worked (Ballad of a Thin Man interpreted as a really bad dream, for example), but mostly rocked out too loud and all at the same tempo for my taste. And the journey home was not pleasant at all: snow was lying on the motorway and more was falling, and the temperature dropping. We made it up the hill and lurched to a halt in the roadway just below our house, and it took two of us - a helpful neighbour with a little help from me - shoving from behind to get the car parked in anything like the right spot.

Yesterday there was a Christmas Fair in Durham and we walked - separately, each at our own pace - into town. I bought a couple of small Christmas presents, but the best part of the fair was the local food section in the cathedral cloisters. It was bitterly cold, but not as cold as it had been earlier. People were telling us that it had been -10°C and below when they came into Durham earlier that morning (only an hour or so before I'd left the house, thinking how pleasant it was in the sun). We were able to pick up some of the things we would normally have bought at the Farmers' Market, had we not missed it this month, and chat to the people we usually see there. I loaded my backpack and trudged home via the market place, and the market, but I just couldn't carry as much shopping as I would like. Never mind, we won't starve. And I was weary enough after my excursion to feel quite cheerful about spending today at home.

Today there has been a degree of thaw - I can see the road surface outside the house. Which is odd, because I've felt quite cold, and put on an extra jumper over my big jumper. And what will tomorrow bring? Will be get out to our lunch date? Only time will tell...

We took the risk, and we went out yesterday evening: and since we had no major problems, we must have been brave rather than foolhardy. We packed shovels and sandwiches and changes of footwear and towels and went first to the pool (where we had a very pleasant quiet swim between five and six: but this is no indication that will always be a good time to choose) and then on to the Sage for a concert called 'Future Traditions', featuring the second year students of the folk music degree at Newcastle University.

This was a bit of a gamble, too, but it too paid off. About twenty young musicians (I got the impression this was the whole of the second year, including four Scandinavian exchange students) in shifting alliances (they'd clearly been encouraged to think of names for these bands, with varying degrees of success: the Cheesy Ones*, the Great Danes, the Soggy Peacocks...) to play one of two pieces each. All traditional, I think, or at least that mix of 'origin unknown', O'Carolan, Child ballads and nineteenth century parlour ballads and dance tunes, plus the odd 'a friend of ours wrote this'; mostly instrumental but with some impressive singing, too; lots of fiddles, some guitars, a variety of squeeze boxes - and a hammered dulcimer, very effectively used. Certainly we've seen support acts at the Sage who were less ready to perform in public (there's a rant about support acts just waiting to be written, but not tonight).

We were afraid that it would have continued to snow while we were at the Sage, and we'd have trouble getting home: and the road out of Durham up to the motorway had not been all that clear when we left. But if anything, the opposite had happened, the temperature was milder and the road clearer at ten than it had been at six. The only really tricky bit was the last few yards up the hill to our door, and even that we managed, more or less. I'd been prepared to park futher down the street and walk the last bit, but that wasn't necessary, we parked (albeit at an odd angle) outside our door.

This morning there was fresh snow lying on the doorstep, but only a sprinkling of round hard pellets. The thaw had reached the trees on the hillside behind us, too, which were all bare, greenish black instead of yesterday's monochrome. durham_rambler went out to improve on his parking, and discovered that the winter isn't over yet: he got stranded in the middle of the road, and it took him and a neighbour over an hour of shoveling to achieve parallel parking. More snow has fallen since then, and what was wet has become icy. We decided not to go out this evening, and tomorrow's poetry launch has been cancelled (the publisher set out this morning from her home in darkest Northumberland to collect the books, got stuck, the 4X4 which came to her rescue got stuck too and it took a tractor to get her home again).

But the milk and the newspaper are still being delivered, today the post got through as well, we have heating and internet. Sooner or later we will have to shop (we've run out of onions). Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

---

*"We were trying to think of a name, and someone said 'The problem is, all the good names are taken, there's nothing left but the cheesy ones...'"

...is the recycling lorry coming up the hill. There is hope for this winter, after all...

The thaw continues. I actually went into town yesterday - no, that's overstating it. But durham_rambler took me into town yesterday, and I made my own way home. Net result: some necessary shopping (vegetables, fruit, caffeine, rather overdue birthday present!) and some unnecessary shopping (Unseen Academicals reduced to half price in the sale and therefore probably costing about the same as it would from Amazon), some fresh air and a sense of moderate achievement (walking back up the hill confirmed my reluctance to try walking down it).

Encouraged by this, we decided to take a step back towards normality, and go swimming first thing (for values of 'first thing' which do not involve setting the alarm clock and venturing out into the darkness. Wake up whenever we wake up, we reckoned, let the dawn pass and any overnight frost clear first, but then swim before breakfast). We were thwarted by the pool being closed all morning for a schools gala (yes, we should have noticed the warning signs, but we don't usually swim on Fridays). Went back to the pool this afternoon, and managed to swim, but it was very crowded. Net result: some wasted time, and a renewed determination to try Plan A next week - not agreeable, exactly, but no doubt good for me.

I have a virtual Valentine's gift! From Frank! (Shouldn't Valentine's gifts be anonymous? But the card with this gift says "Frank sends his love.") This came about because there was a challenge in news to comment saying what mysterious object was in the box, first 25 commenters to receive a gift, and since I was there, and it was obvious (what's in the box? Schrödinger's goat, of course), I commented. I've never received a virtual gift before (real money, virtual gift? I think not), so I'm quite pleased - but on the other hand, Valentine's already? It's not even Burns Night yet! (Since the gift is captioned 'Opens Feb 14' and the accompanying e-mail says that it will show on my profile page for the next two weeks, I may never find out whether the goat is or is not alive: which is, I suppose, as it should be).

And, oh, joy, the students return this weekend! A group of them were hovering around their car as we drove back from the pool. Picture, if you will, twilight, durham_rambler driving very carefully on ice, trying to maintain enough momentum to keep going up the hill, and a young man wandering across in front of us, talking on the phone - wearing camouflage trousers in shades of white and grey. Death wish, surely?

Still no rubbish collection, but you can't have everything.