Say what.......?

We have a salt mine in this country???!

A SALT MINE?

I thought they were apocryphal.......

Late surge.........

Having had my carefully planned work schedule derailed by the inclement weather this morning, I have more than made up for it since by completing two batches of tiny toy casting and several hours of prep for the post-Thame workshop. Not to mention making a start on two new miniature toy theatres.

So all in all, not a bad day, considering.

We've had lots more snow, which is lying crisp and deep and even.



Except where Small Dog has been treading in her own footsteps and making a right old mess. She seems incapable of going outside without bringing a barrow-load of snow back in with her, strongly attached to her person.

This was after she'd been intercepted coming in looking like a snow-dog, been rubbed down and had the worst of the snow pulled off her legs and undercarriage. She's looking so scrappy because this denied her the pleasure of pulling off chunks of snow then chasing them round the kitchen floor in a frenzy.

Yesterday we thought this was quite amusing, until the resulting pools of meltwater rendered the floor as slippery as the skating rink outside, so now when she returns from forays into the garden we have to 'field' as she races in the door. If she manages to evade Silly Mid Off then the we still have the fall-back position of hopefully heading her off at Deep Square Leg. However she's a slippery little bugger so she can often achieve the relative safety of Deep Extra Cover, also known as Under The Duvet.

Obviously this usually has us stumped.

In other news tonight is yet another non-wine night in keeping with our non-resolutional no alcohol Mon-Thurs (inclusive)

*sigh*

It's been a l-o-n-g week.

Brrrrrrrrr...........

As expected, all of yesterday's snow has frozen solid and the road outside is more use as a ski slope than a thoroughfare.

Today is 'bin day' up our road, but I don't expect the truck will be able to get up as far as us. However, just in case, and as our household rubbish bin hasn't been emptied since before Christmas, I ventured outside this morning to skid it down the drive.

My first challenge was opening the porch door which was completely frozen. I was reluctant to put my shoulder to it lest I was jettisoned out onto the drive and careened down the road on my back. Eventually I managed to get the door open to discover the next challenge. The black bin lid was firmly sealed with about an inch of solid ice.

So, back indoors to boil a kettle of water with which I eventually managed to melt enough of the ice to get the lid open.

Next I had to negotiate the drive, which had a deceptively safe-looking layer of several inches of snow, over thick black ice. Using the wheelie bin as a brake (yes I know...... what WAS I thinking?) I gingerly advanced down the drive, holding onto the handles of the bin for grim death, which is exactly what I was anticipating if it gathered enough momentum to fling me head first to the ground.

There then followed a very chilly 15 minutes trying to brace the bin in a position where it wouldn't either:

a) topple over, spilling the detritus of two weeks of Christmas festivities all over the place.
b) start to slide down the hill, banging into cars and toppling small children like tiny screaming skittles.

I did the best I could, jamming the bin precariously up against next door's tree, and headed back indoors, only to remember that I had still to read the electricity and gas meters which are housed in little boxes behind the porch.

This necessitated trying to move the green recycling bin, which had frozen onto the drive and wouldn't budge. I used the last of the hot water from the kettle, making a mental note not to set foot near the bins again before the thaw, as the water lying on the ground would surely freeze and create even more of a hazard than the frozen snow.

Needless to say, both meter doors were frozen shut and I had run out of hot water.

I had also run out of patience.

So, with the judicious application of several increasingly frantic thumps I eventually gained access to the electricity meter and dutifully noted the number.

I was a tad more wary of the gas meter cupboard, as a Methuselah of a spider, who I'm sure was a stand-in for the Great Spider in The Haunting of Toby Jugg, lives in there, and has a tendency to spring forward threateningly whenever the door is opened.

My caution was unnecessary however, as there was no sign of him. Rather than being relieved, I was worried that he had gained access to the house via one of the ventilation slits just under the cupboard. Of course he may have succumbed to the cold, but in that case I would have thought I'd have found his shrivelled corpse inside the box.

Where DO spiders go in the winter? No on second thoughts don't tell me. I don't want to know.
*shudder*

I'm almost completely thawed out now, but all the messing about has played havoc with my new work schedule, and my 9.30-11.30 time slot has all but passed.
So, in order not to squander the remaining time *ahem* I have just scored a minor, but very satisfying victory on Lexulous.

Lexulous, for those who don't indulge in displacement activity, is basically an online version of Scrabble. I only discovered it recently, and have been playing the solitaire version, where I have been routinely beaten and humiliated by a robot.

This would be bad enough, but you can select the skill level of your virtual opponent and every time I've played I've chosen the lowest possible level for the robot. Despite this 'advantage' I've been beaten every single time.

Until today.

This morning I beat the bugger, 296 points to 267!

Woo, and indeed, hoo!

However that might have been a fluke. Although I did get to put QUIZ on a triple word score.
Take THAT you low-skill robot you!

Well, enough of this. It's coming up to 11.20 so I need to go and get ready for my 11.30 till lunchtime shift and I've got lost time to make up........

Waking to a Winter Wonderland.....

It was so dark this morning that my body clock refused to accept it was time for me to get up. So I got a sneaky mid-week lay-in, which hopefully won't play havoc with my new regime too badly.

The much heralded 'snow event' has taken it's time to get to St. Leonards on Sea, but it's snowing hard now and several inches have already accumulated. I haven't seen a single car inch its way down our vertiginous road this morning and having got ours safely off the road yesterday we won't be digging it out any time soon.

Small Dog took one look outside and promptly turned tail to return to her cosy nest by the radiator in the study. Despite the fact that her bladder can be only the size of a walnut, it must be cast-iron as she can keep her legs crossed for hours if need be.

The light is so bad today that I am considering re-jigging my schedule to avoid doing any casting. However, to do so would feel like a gross dereliction of duty, given that I've done so well this week so far. Perhaps if I use both my SAD lamp AND daylight lamp together I might have enough lux to enable me to cope with casting and de-moulding another batch of very, very tiny toys.

However, before I do battle with casting, I have my porridge to look forward to. Many thanks for all your suggestions on how to make this bland paste more palatable. Today I'm going to add some dried cranberries and a soupcon of honey.

Doomsday scenario........

The radio and television news has been full of dire warnings of a major 'snow event' over the next 24 hours in the south of England.

Parts of the south will experience snowfalls of up to 40 cm while here in East Sussex we can expect around 10 cm. This of course will cause chaos, and on the basis of the snow just before Christmas our road will be impassable. As the snow is set to continue off and on for the rest of the week, with the temperature never rising above freezing, we have the possibility of being virtually housebound till the weekend and perhaps beyond.

This prospect, far from filling me with fear and foreboding, is music to my ears as I can concentrate 100% on work and personal projects in equal measure.

Small Dog is rather ambivalent about the whole snow thing. She hates the cold, and although she is happy to jump around and play in the snow for a short while, she quickly gets soaked through to the skin and starts to shiver piteously.

She has put in a request for a dog sled. She added the unnecessary caveat that it would be used as sled for her to sit on, rather than pull, dog-team mush-styley. Apparently she envisions sitting on it while we pull her down the road so that she doesn't get snow-logged before her walk in the woods. Naturally she would then expect us to pull her back up the hill again, presumably at a rather slower pace than her downhill jaunt.

As there is currently a nationwide 3 month waiting list for sledges, we will have to improvise her dog sled from an old metal tray, with two holes drilled through the corners and a length of thick string for the pull. I suspect that our home-made effort will not meet her exacting standards of style and panache so we may have to customise it with go-faster stripes and flames over the sides.

In the meantime we have battened down the hatches and await the snow event with anticipation.

Edit - just idly browsing through Google videos and came across this. So that's where she got the idea from......

Day 2 and still on track.......

Day two of my new regime.

So far so good.

It's still blisteringly cold but at last the house seems to have absorbed enough residual heat for us to stop shivering. In view of the Arctic temperatures I decided to have a bowl of porridge for breakfast to set me up for the day. Why is it that a modest amount of oats expand exponentially in the saucepan to provide enough porridge for a family of four?

PP disdains porridge. Even the stuff with chocolate in, which of course isn't real porridge at all.
Despite my Scottish roots I disdain porridge made with salt.

Yeuch!

However, porridge made with milk, is creamy gorgeousness in a bowl. As a child my mother used to drizzle a few spoonfuls of condensed milk over the top, which instantly transformed the humble cereal into food of the gods. Naturally my new spartan regime (remember, it's NOT a resolution) forbids the use of condensed milk, so I had to slum it with a spoonful of evaporated milk (low fat naturally) instead, which performed as a satisfactory substitute.

Small Dog wandered into the kitchen as I was halfway through my bowl. She is always very interested in anything in a bowl, as she is eternally hopeful that it might be pudding. So I left her a tiny smidgen, which she initially viewed with a certain amount of suspicion, until she tentatively lapped a morsel, then rapidly dispatched the rest.

Thus fortified I set about a marathon casting session which has just been curtailed by the news that blizzards are due to hit the whole of Southern England tonight. So we're now having to do a quick dash out to the post office to send off orders, then a scoot round Tesco to reprovision as the cupboards are bare and anticipated snow drifts might render our road impassible for the rest of the week.

Actually I've just seen the first few tiny snowflakes floating down from a heavy grey sky so we'd best be off.

I may be gone for some time....

New year, new regime........

Mindful of my new work regime due to begin today, I was up this morning at 7.30 am (aka the middle of the night) in order to get right down to it.

Have I mentioned how cold it is? It is absolutely freezing both outside and in. It has taken since we arrived home yesterday afternoon for the house to warm up sufficiently for me to be able to work at all. The kitchen especially is like an icebox and Small Dog had to have her blanky laid on the floor under her dinner bowl last night to prevent her dainty paws from getting chilled.

Anyway, the first task on my newly revamped 'to do' list this morning was casting, which I thought would ease me gently back into the work saddle. What I hadn't bargained for was having to schlepp up ice-encrusted steps to the shed, then rummage around in the freezing cold to find a new gallon of porcelain slip.

I then had the 'pleasure' of sieving and mixing it several times to get all the frozen lumps out before adding the slip tint. It's a horrible, slimy, messy job at the best of times, but when the slip is so cold it's extra miserable.

No matter.

The slip was eventually mixed and I've completed my scheduled casting batch so that's one thing I can tick off today's 'to list'.

It's now lunchtime but my new regime (it's not a resolution remember) stipulates that instead of a cheese and tomato sandwich, followed by a cup of tea and a Kit Kat, I will be savouring the delights of two pieces of fruit, followed by a cup of tea and NO Kit Kat. I'm a bit surprised that I'm not feeling ravenously hungry, but considering my food intake over the past three weeks it's surprising that I'm surprised.

No matter there either.

PP is making a deliciously hearty home-made vegetable soup for dinner which undoubtedly, as my granny would have said, 'will stick to my ribs' thereby rendering me replete and famine resistant.

This afternoon I will be working on preparation for the workshop in the wake of the Thame Fair next month, as well as getting organised to make a start on some orders.

So the work ethic is working well so far, and I will not let the fact that I'm only 5 hours into the new regime lull me into a false sense of security.

In any case, I have a cunning plan to link all work efforts to my 2010 aim, which is, as Ms Hill correctly divined in her comment on my previous post, to finally get into print. I've been fiddling and faffing around with my first book for a while now, but the time is right to grab it by the folderols and knock it into shape.

Preferably something book-shaped.

To this end I have been industriously laying plans, including, following the advice of a fellow blogger, making a secret little virtual work area, carefully camouflaged as a blog, but to which only I have access.

Mwahahahaha....!

It's a great idea and I can store all my resources, ideas etc in there and talk to myself to my heart's content. I imagine it to be just like Vita Sackville-West's study in the Tower at Sissinghurst Castle..... cosy and intimate, lined with books and filled with sumptuous fabrics and textures. A perfect little writing retreat.



I have to get my writing-space thrills virtually and vicariously as in the real world I'm still stuck with my laptop on a tiny tray table, although providing myself with a proper desk space is high on my newly prioritised list of stuff to do.

So, onwards and upwards and back to work I go.......