Thursday 2 December 2010

Snowbound

We awoke to a substantial covering of snow this morning, about eight inches, drifting to a foot or two, sufficient to maroon everyone's car in the drive and to make walking fairly treacherous. Schools and colleges declared themselves closed.

Typical -- I'd booked the day off to paint the bathroom ceiling. Oh well, suppose I'd better get on with it. Though I may sneak out later to watch the cars sliding backwards down the hill.


Harry Callahan? Never 'eard of 'im, mate


8 comments:

helen said...

Nice pictures. I assume they are in black and white! That's all you need for snow shots!

Mike C. said...

Helen,

Well, they started out in colour...

I always like to get a few shots from the kitchen door at breakfast time when it's snowing -- it's good to feel the day's photos are sorted before I've even had a first cup of tea.

Mike

Kent Wiley said...

That bathroom ceiling should have several coats by now, no? Even before the snow.

Is that 8-10 inches a freakish thing for your parts? Fortunately we haven't repeated last winter's mayhem - yet.

Mike C. said...

Kent, I may say I'm going to paint the ceiling, but that doesn't mean it actually gets done...

Now, however, it is -- no mould, no peeling paint!

Mike

Mike C. said...

Kent,

Forgot to say:

The climate of the British Isles is complex -- a lot depends on how far north you are, whether you're coastal (and whether you face the Atlantic, the North Sea, or the Channel), inland, upland, etc. Down here in Southampton we get a mild climate, unless the prevailing winds swing round from a westerly to a north-easter -- then we get Russia's weather second hand...

Snow this early in the winter is highly unusual, and a mere 6 inches throws our infrastructure into chaos. It could snow for weeks now, or we could see no more until March, it's that unpredictable (and that's why no-one wants to invest in the snow-ploughs or heated train rails, etc., that would keep everything running).

Geography lesson over...

Mike

Kent Wiley said...

Home projects do tend to stretch out, a bit. The front "portico" only took about ten years from the time the old ceiling was torn down til the time we finally installed a new light fixture. But I blame most of that delay on the "design department."

And then there's the smoke detectors that were inactivated five or seven years ago, and were only replaced last week. Lo and behold, one of them is already nonfunctional and bleating at me to "replace battery...squawk...replace battery...squawk..." Yet another call to tech support...sigh.

Mike C. said...

Smoke alarms! We had to have some wired into the mains electricity as part of some building work,and one kept going off in the middle of the night, as it interpreted dust sifting down through the holes where the wires went as "smoke". I eventually ripped it off the ceiling at 3.00 am one night, and the wires are still dangling there, 5 years later...

Mike

Kent Wiley said...

I believe ours were removed under similar circumstances - or was it the incessant warnings while cooking in the evening that put me over the top? But it was pointed out to me that during this holiday period of family visits, it might be a wise feature to reactivate. Unfortunately I can't report on the new models yet, because they've all been removed again due to the single faulty one.