We are snowed in

After a relaxing weekend doing not very much at all, Monday was when I started back to work. Cécile helped me reorganise my attic a little, for which I was very grateful, and then I started work on the floor of the shower room.

That's all completed now, at least as far as the first layer of flooring goes, and I've even managed to put a piece down outside the shower room to see how it looks on the floor. And what is so disappointing is that the extra packet that I had to buy, after I had managed (and didn't that take a while?) to mate up with the previous lot, has gone in perfectly and it looks really impressive. It almost made me wish to tear up what I had already done and start again.

After the Groupe Anglo-Français, I went round to Cécile's, and that's where the fun begins. She lives almost at the top of the Font Nanaud, the hill here that is the highest point around, at 2300 feet down a long, isolated lane. And that was when the snow began to fall quite heavily (the flurries on Sunday and Monday were nothing) and we are now snowed in.

Not that I'm bothered because not only is Cécile a charming host, she is a vegan and also quite a film buff with an enormous collection of DVDs, such that puts mine to shame. And so here in the relative warmth we've spent some time watching films.

We've also been out for a few walks too. Yesterday it was rather difficult as you can tell because there was quite a heavy snow falling for most of the day. Nevertheless, best foot forward and all that and we had a good ramble out into the wilderness and then into the forest where we took a startled deer rather by surprise.

I have to say though that I wasn't sorry to make it back into the warm and dry. It was rather grim out there as I'm sure that you can imagine by looking at the photograph. Still, cutting wood with a saw is an excellent way to keep warm in the kind of temperatures that we were experiencing.

Today it finally managed to stop snowing and in fact in the afternoon some strange golden thing amde some kind of appearance in the sky.

That prompted us to go for a walk in the other direction where there is an old fish pond or millpond or something. And that really looked very pleasant in the snow. What a glorious afternoon.

That prompted me to have a go digging Caliburn out of a snowdrift and we eventually made it down to the end of the lane without too many difficulties, but after a great deal of effort.

We'll have to see what tomorrow might bring. If it can hold off snowing for a day or two we might even be properly mobile again. You never know.