Snow (Almost) Gone . . . And A Drive Out

We woke this morning to find out that the snow had almost all gone, apart from a few stray bits. What do they say? If there's a bit of snow left, then there'll be more soon to join it, so there is the possibility that we will get more before the winter is over. It is a good deal milder, so I turned the central heating down. The lounge does get warm, particularly if the sun comes out, which makes a real saving on the gas bill. These houses were designed to be warmed by natural means, with larger windows facing the sun and the windows on the opposite side of the house much smaller.

At 8.30 a.m. there was a weak sun shining. Which meats the remaining snow would soon dissolve. Carol was still asleep and I heard Alfie coming downstairs and wanting no doubt to be let out into the garden.

I'm still reading 'Keeping On, Keeping On', Alan Bennett's latest book. It's mostly his diary entries, covering 2005-12. He mentions Miss Shepherd, the elderly lady who lived in a clapped-out van parked in his driveway for 15 years, and who provided the inspiration for his play 'The Lady In The Van' and the film version of the same. There's nothing particularly interesting about his ramblings, mostly about his visits to various churches, National Trust properties and so on, but I love his sense of humour, very dry, and his mentions of the people he's met in various roles, for example, writers and actors. You can't read these books of his as if they're a novel. You can read several pages, all bits and pieces covering several days, none really connected in any way. There's no narrative thread, so it's the type of thing you can pick up on occasion, although some bits are more interesting than others.

We've been trying out the new Tassimo machine. It's a good deal more sophisticated than the Dulce Gusto machine. There is a wider range of drinks. It will make teas, and branded drinks, Cadbury's chocolate, Twining's and Costa. It has taken a while to fathom out how to work the machine, which Carol has christened Hannibal because it sounds a bit like the sounds the character, Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, makes in 'The Silence of The Lambs.'

We drove down the A5 towards Stockgrove Country Park. It's been such a sunny and warm morning, after about a week of snow and ice, it was great to be able to get out of the house. We saw some patches of snow, but not enough to make things difficult to drive. We parked in the carpark and saw that the main path down to the lake was still covered in ice and snow, so we gave it a miss. We walked around and saw people sitting outside the café with their dogs. We didn't have Alfie with us. If we had, he'd have got heavily covered in mud and most likely would have ingratiated himself with the dogs as he has a habit of doing. It was surprising to see so many people about on a Monday morning. We didn't remain at Stockgrove, and left, which was annoying as we had to pay £3 for the privilege, even though we were there for such a short time. Carol wanted to take photos with her iPhone of the drifting snow along the road going back to the roundabout on the A5. Some really weird and wonderful shapes carved out of the snow at the side of the road. Drove over the roundabout towards Woburn. The centre of Woburn was like a ghost town, compared with a weekend., when it's usually heaving with tourists. A pretty village, but it's been over-commercialised. Drove through the park, although we didn't see much of the deer. Drivers not over-appreciative of me driving slowly to take  in the scenery. Why should they? Why bother to keep your speed to a decent level, particularly if it means avoiding any deer who happen to be in the middle of the road, as they have a habit of doing? No point obeying the rules, as usual. I drove straight through and out the other side and theynround towards Steppingley and Ampthill and then round towards Ridgmont and they made a detour back towards Woburn Sands as we wanted somewhere to have a bight for lunch. We went into Frost's at first. Parked well away from any other vehicles, as I don't want a repetition of what happened the last time we were in Frost's carpark. We went into the main body of the garden centre, which, as usual is beautifully organised, new displays of items to buy for Mothering Sunday. (I hate that we have to Americanise it to 'Mother's Day.) Why do they seem to think mothers want everything to be a hideous pink in colour? Flowers as well as boxes of chocolates and other gifts?

The restaurant is heaving with those of a 'certain age.' You can hardly find room to sit, if you were proposing eating. We go into another area as Carol wants to sit down. I go and have a look for a simple sandwich or baguette, but I can find nothing that fits the bill. Plenty of other options, but it's been made so up-market with rockett rather than plain old lettuce, or posh food on a platter rather than a plate, over-priced and certainly putting off a certain section of the population. As we can find nothing suitable, we decide to leave and drive over the road to Wyevale Garden Centre. Frost's have lost our custom.

This amuses me; a garden centre, making every available type of plant for sale. We walk into Wyevale and one of the first stalls (if that's what they call them) we come across is made up to look like a vegetable patch, but with obvious artificial veg appearing to grow in some earth and then, further in, a huge display of artificial flowers of every shape and variety, looking amazingly realistic. It just seems crazy that a garden centre, of all places, should sell such things as plastic flowers. Though, thinking about it, some of these would have been useful to me when I was working in stage management and I needed to find such things as flowers to be used as props in some of the plays I worked on, particularly as real flowers were considered to be bad luck by some actors. Just that a lot of theatrical folks are superstitious. No mention of a play by Shakespeare, better known as 'The Scottish Play' (Macbeth.) as it's considered to be bad luck.

In Wyevale we go into the restaurant. We order tomato and cheese toasties and have to wait some considerable length of time for them to arrive at our table because we're told they only have one operative griddle. When they arrive, they are very tasty. Also, we share a portion of chips. The place is busy, mostly mothers and toddlers and babies, who seem very well behaved, apart from one child who seems to like to make a noise about everything. It's good that these places do cater for children and babies. Also, I notice that Wyevale as well as Dobbie's are now dog-friendly. I see no reason whey they shouldn't, provided all dogs are well behaved.

Left Wyevale and drove back towards Milton Keynes. We had intended driving back up towards Chaffron Way, but when we got to the traffic lights to turn left towards Kingston where Tesco is, the road was blocked off. So, where we to go? No advance warning of this,  or for what reason, so diverted inside the housing estate. It was like driving in some sort of maze of roads, not clear where I was to go exactly, but eventually got on to main road back towards Chaffron Way.  So we'd had quite a pleasant morning, quite a circuitous drive, but well worth it in the end.

Later. It's as well we went out when we did. It's late afternoon as I write this, 4.50 or thereabouts. The weather has changed. It's now raining and there's water running down the road outside. The snow is more or less gone, although there is a small amount left in the back garden.

Arctic Conditions

The wintry weather continues. It didn't snow over-night, but looking out of the window at the road in front of the house, it has the appearance of a Siberian wasteland. Not that I've been to Siberia, you understand. The car has a pall of snow across it. Alfie rushes out into the garden, but doesn't hang around for long, as you can imagine. Being a little dog, he doesn't take to the cold very well.

If I did want to go out in the car, I'd have to negotiate around a very annoying van which is parked in the immediate space behind the car. It's going to be quite difficult to get out and so avoid this van, made even more troublesome with the road conditions being so slippery. I don't think the grid roads in Milton Keynes are going to be too bad, but the roads in Eaglestone, the inner ring road in particular, are likely to be hazardous, with hard-packed ice. I just hope we get a decent thaw and the snow goes completely. There will be trouble if we get a hard frost and the surface of the roads around here become like an ice skating rink.

Saturday morning. There's been quite a considerable fall of snow over-night. The road at the front of the house has quite a layer of snow on it. The large van is still parked immediately behind the car as I mentioned in the post yesterday. I went out earlier to clear the snow off the car with a broom and cleared a path from the door down to the car. Quite a thick carpet of snow around the car, but it's not really a problem, you just have to be careful how you move about so to avoid slipping over.

I eventually managed to manoeuvre the car out of the drive and onto the walkway to the side of our house. I did this just to make sure I could actually get out of the house, because there was quite a deep layer of snow immediately behind the car and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get out. I had to get out to go to Sainsbury's as we were slowly running out of food, although we had some bits and pieces in the freezer just in case. The snow is making all sound very muffled, a bit like having something, such as material that absorbs sound in a recording studio or concert hall. There is a man further along our road clearing snow with a shovel.

 I drove out of the estate, leaving via the exit near the shop. The road surface along the inner ring road was covered in snow, so I had to drive very slowly as I didn't want the car to slide as it might have done if I'd braked suddenly. The grid roads going towards the centre of Milton Keynes was relatively snow-free, but you can't trust other drivers to drive at a reasonably slow speed so it was necessary to drive at less than the normal speed. The underground carpark at Sainsbury's looks like a lake. No doubt this is caused by snow that has come in via car's tyres. Just one huge mass of water. The actual store was very quiet and the carpark was virtually empty, do doubt because most people didn't want to venture out in such bad conditions. Who can blame them? Fortunately I was in and out of Sainsbury's fairly quickly.

Unless we get a further fall of snow, conditions should remain fairly reasonable to drive in. That being said, people need to reduce their speed when driving and just take a bit more care as well as respect other people. It's those who drive too fast who are responsible for accidents, running into other vehicles, sliding all over the place and possibly ending up in ditches and hitting innocent people. I just hope that we don't get a hard frost over the next few days and then we will have to contend with flooding when the thaw happens. Gary next door has been clearing snow at the front of his house. At least people are making an effort to keep going, regardless of the snow. On the television news this morning, people are complaining that there is too much coverage of the snow. Why does it have to be described as 'The Beast From The East'? Just a sort of tabloid journalism term. People being stranded in the snow, in cars on a motorway somewhere, I'm not entirely sure where, and some passengers on a train near Christchurch, Dorset. Did they not listen to the news? We had been warned about the current weather conditions, so why so surprised when things grind to a halt? Just don't go out and then expect others to risk their necks to be rescued. Although there was a more positive piece on BBC Breakfast about people who have four-wheel drive vehicles helping to ferry N.H.S. staff to various hospitals, somewhere in the West of England. It's good to see that some form of community is thriving, however small it might be.

We had a delivery from Very. We weren't expecting it until Monday at the latest. A Tassimo coffee machine and some clothes for Carol. The instructions for the coffee machine are quite complicated. It didn't come with coffee pods so we couldn't try it out, but we had to fill the water tank and flush it through so it is now ready to use. We have ordered some of the pods through Amazon which should arrive sometime before 8 this evening.

Later. It seems that the thaw has begun. By the look of things, a lot of the snow seems to be disappearing. The road at the front of the house is beginning to clear and you can see the tarmac surface. I'm just wondering whether all the snow, or some of it, will be gone by the morning, although if we get a sharp frost over-night I doubt if will mean the end of the snow.