First Scrape

It was a bit of a shock to have to scrape the car on the first frosty morning of the season last Thursday, but even worse this morning as temperatures hit -2°C and the scraping was correspondingly more vigorous and knuckle-numbing.

There's only been a few years of my life (I could probably work it out exactly... hang on... *stares at fingers* ... 7) when I've enjoyed the luxury of a garaged car in the winter (and then only after a massive clearout and shelf- and wood store-building operation) and the benefits of that luxury were more than outweighed by the drawbacks in the end (!) but on mornings like this I must admit that a small part of me hankers after structural automotive protection of some kind. Even a car port would be enough to keep the frost off. Probably.

Water boy

We have a hosepipe ban here in the North West of England, as of last Friday. You might remember I blogged on United Utilities' incompetence a while back, and now the predicted ban is in place.

Information on how to save water, and how to keep your garden alive without a hosepipe (save the bath water, the washing up water, use a watering can, etc, etc) abounds. Businesses that rely on hosepipes, such as the dodgy five-minute car wash places that have sprung up all over the place, largely unmonitored and, I suspect, not paying an awful lot of tax beyond what they're forced to pay on account of their water supply being metered, are exempt. This is understandable. We wouldn't want people thrown out of work just because we're running out of water, would we? No matter what tax avoidance scams they're getting away with.

But even so, I'd expected (in my naivete) that most businesses would at least be doing their bit to avoid wasting water. Not so the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, apparently. I drove home this morning past a man with a van, and a handy hose-and-spray attachment, giving our nearest bus shelter a quick squirt. Because let's face it the one thing everyone needs in the middle of the worst drought since 1929, is a clean bus shelter.

The thin veneer of civilisation

Our plumber eventually called back in response to my plaintive cries for help with our failed boiler. He said he'd "put money on" it being a common problem with condensing boilers, particularly in the UK. A blocked condensate drain pipe.

Why particularly the UK? Because we're not used to such extreme weather conditions, heating engineers don't bother to lag the drain. Their customers are driven by cosmetic concerns, especially when the pipe traverses a visible section of exterior wall. The pipe is small-bore white PVC, and doesn't call much attention to itself on its own. Lagged, it doesn't look as good.

Pour some hot water over it, our friendly plumber suggested, and all will be well. So I did, and it was. Within seconds, I'd reset the boiler and the interior temperature was climbing from its nadir of 7°C. Trust me, I'll be lagging that pipe.

But those two hours while I was waiting for plumbing help, and the few hours before when we'd dressed in the cold, drunk our coffee in the cold, and where I'd sat watching daytime TV (I was on strike again yesterday) and failing to get anywhere near warm, brought it home to me how thin and fragile our veneer of civilisation really is.

It's easy to feel safe, secure and superior when you're warm and comfortable. If your attention is permanently occupied with staying warm, there's very little time for other considerations. Cold weather: a barrier to philosophy.

As a boy, and in common with most of my contemporaries, I regularly awoke on winter's mornings with frost on the inside of my bedroom window. Being a geeky child, I kept a record of the temperature, which often dropped as low as 45°F - only a little above the 7°C I was complaining about moments ago. I suspect that would be grounds for accusations of child cruelty these days. Back then it was just the way things were. When did I get so soft?

The old boiler

...is not that old actually. The first money we spent on the house when we moved in (October 2006) went on a new boiler. Three years is not old, particularly for such a high-spec and well renowned boiler.

Last night, it developed a fault.

The last hour of TV viewing had become increasingly uncomfortable even though we'd had the fire on, but I'd put it down to the extreme weather. Forecasts predicted it would be even colder in parts overnight than yesterday, with some areas dropping to -20° - same as the South Pole - and that fire always was more decorative than practical.

But when we walked into the hall and discovered the temperature had fallen two degrees below the supposed minimum, we knew something was up, and the flashing blue light on the front of the boiler (and the flashing error code beneath the cover) confirmed that this almost-brand-new boiler had chosen the coldest period in 50 years in which to turn up its toes. Great.

I'd been holding off booking a service expecting our heating engineer to be snowed under (haha!) with emergency calls, but it looks like we'll be another to add to his list now.

Minus WHAT?

So I'd seen the forecast and all, and it certainly felt cold when I stepped outside although, I have to say, not as cold as it has been on previous days. There was no wind, and the street lay under its quiet blanket of snow pretty much as it had done all week.

I'll admit to the flash of a brief thought across my mind as I turned the key in the ignition - "will it start?" - but the old war horse turned over slowly and fired up first time. And as the dashboard glowed into life I read the external temperature gauge.

-10.5°C

Huh? This may sound dumb, but I didn't know it could go that low. I've never seen double figure minus before. As we hit the motorway on the journey to Nikki's office the temperature dropped another half a degree. Minus 11. Good grief.

I learned later that it may well have been even colder. Maybe the sensor is not very accurate. A mate who lives only a few streets away drives a truck for a living, and that reported minus 15. News came in later that the coldest parts of the country were only a couple of degrees warmer than the South Pole. Lovely.

I think I may have left it too late...

...to do the last lawn cut of the year.
It's been snowing pretty much all day here. Last night's temperature fell to -7°C so this lot settled on top of the previous lot, which itself was atop another load. All that makes it the longest and coldest cold snap I can think of since the last time I lived on this road - way back in the winter of 1980/1.

I love it, but only because I'm off this week and - apart from ferrying Nikki to and from work - I don't have to go out in it. These days, snow is best appreciated from behind glass, with the heating turned up.

First frost

One of my annual checkpoints occurred this morning. The first day on which I'm forced to scrape the ice off the car before I can drive off. We've had an unseasonably mild November so far, but that's all over now. Now all we have to look forward to is three months or so of scraping, and waiting for the blower to clear the windscreen. Or driving off too soon, and bending almost double behind the steering wheel to peer blearily through the thin sliver of glass that's not opaqued by the dust and engine gases that belch out from the demister vents and mingle with passenger breath to create an immovable oily film.

I could clean the windows I suppose, which would make the demister marginally more efficient, but I've never got on well with car cleaning. Something for which the word "nugatory" was invented, if you ask me.

Niagara revisited

I don't write about the weather very often. I know it's supposed to be British to talk about it a lot, but for blogging? I don't think so. Unless it's extraordinary. Well this afternoon, it was.

In a moment of total awe I failed to take a photo of the deluge, or the longest and most violent hailstorm I have ever witnessed, but the memory will stay with me for a long time. So much rain that it overflowed the gutters back and front, delivering a sheet of water across my study window to almost rival Niagara. So much hail that the lawn turned white and the deck was completely hidden from view. When I left to pick Nikki up from work an hour later, there were still piles of hail beside the front path. When we returned 40 minutes later, two of them hadn't yet melted.

The good news: this was the first serious rain since I painted the damp patch on the study ceiling. After close scrutiny, there's no new evidence of damp. The roof held up!!

The bad news: all that water pouring onto the study window sills somehow found its way into the conservatory, saturating the dust sheet underneath my half-painted door and splashing up onto the door itself. Painting activities will have to cease until it's dried out. Rain stopped play, you might say.

Carry on Camping

The day dawned misty, and since breakfast wasn't served before nine, we were up, showered, dressed and out just as soon as the cleaner had unlocked the front door. A field of tents looks deceptively attractive in the early morning light but I remain unfooled. A feeling reinforced by Annie's later report that she'd spent a very uncomfortable night, having forgotten to bring all her bedding supplies, and was *definitely* planning a trip to Buxton later that morning to stock up on pillows, a duvet and possibly even a hot water bottle.

After wading through the first of Graham's enormous breakfasts (I think he may have invented the phrase "full" English) we set off for Poole's Cavern. An attractive underground jaunt for the totally unfit, as it involves only 26 steps to reach the furthest navigable point which ends up being 30 metres underground. Educational too, as our guide pointed out several broken stalactites. Apparently the Victorians thought they'd be able to sell the sparkling stalactites, and threw rocks at them until they broke off. Once the rocks were brought out into daylight, where they looked just like... er... white rocks, the cavers realised they were worthless and threw them away. Who knew the Victorians were such vandals?

After that we wandered into Buxton hoping to visit the antiques fair, but as they were expecting a £5 entry fee - each! - we skipped that and wandered aimlessly around the shops for a bit, dodging the rain. We bumped into a small party of campers in town and stuck with them for half-an-hour or so, until we heard the call of the coffee and ducked into a café for a drink and a sticky bun.

The weather brightened up slightly after lunch so, having "done" Buxton we headed off to one of Nikki's favourite villages - Ashford in the Water - and spent some time watching the ducks on, and the trout in, The Water (the River Wye). Around 3pm we decided it would be a good idea to return to the campsite and see if anyone else had arrived. Sure enough, Jamie & Lise had pitched up - literally - and with crystal blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead, we relaxed in the field in a small enclave of camping chairs and enjoyed a swift bevvy.

It was not to last.

A rather angry, low-flying, brown cloud approached rapidly from the West forcing us to seek refuge in Andy & Lara's canvas mansion. Which is where we remained, all conversation drowned by the spatter of rain on the polythene windows, until the rest of the group returned from Buxton. The rain passed over just long enough for four of us to assemble Annie's new portable barbecue (Focus DIY; £39.99) and once the charcoal was fired up, Nikki and I took the opportunity to return pubwards and sample another of Graham's delicious evening meals.

As we were awaiting the serving wench, the sound of hail hitting the pub windows once again briefly drowned conversation in the bar. And then, as if by magic, most of the campers ran in, trying to escape not only the hail but the flying hot charcoal released from the barbecues as they had blown over. Yes, for the second year running the Birthday Barbecue was wrecked by the weather. Better planning called for next year, we all agreed.

No snow!

And there it was: gone! After listening to the 10 o'clock forecast warning that another two or three inches were expected (that'll be a disappointment for someone) and that some areas could have up to a foot (way too much of a good thing - someone else would be choking on it), what did we have?

A huge melt. There's nothing left.

Which, if repeated across the whole of the UK in these credit-crunchy times would be A Good Thing. At least, if yesterday's news is anything to go by. 6 million people failing to get to work, £1.2 billion lost to the crumbling economy, roads closed or impassable, trains, planes and buses cancelled, people full of the great British spirit battling their way to their local train station only to find that's as far as they're going to get. We wouldn't have won the war if we'd had this namby-pamby attitude back then, I tell you! Cough! Splutter!

Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. Still, it is faintly ridiculous isn't it? It's not like snow in February is exactly unexpected. It was even forecast. I heard Ken Livingstone on the news (mind you, he'll say anything to beat the drum won't he? Still smarting from having to hand over to Boris I expect) blaming the worst of the travel problems on councils who didn't want to send the gritters out on Sunday and pay overtime. What a load of bollocks. I was out and about on Sunday night and followed several gritters all over the North-west.

I tried to work out, in my usual geeky way, what proportion of the UK workforce 6 million came to. There's about 65 million of us altogether. If you assume a linear distribution of ages from 0 to 80 (I know that's not right, but for the sake of argument...) that makes 34 million of working age (over 18 and under 60), of which there's about 2 million unemployed (32) and an unknown number who don't work, or try to, at all. But even if you leave the figure at 32 million that's one-fifth of the entire workforce couldn't get to work! Crikey.

Rather madly I'd decided to stick to my usual routine and go in to the office yesterday. I could have worked at home, but as it turned out (and not surprisingly) a much larger than normal number of my colleagues had elected to do that, and overloaded the corporate VPN shortly before 9am, so I wouldn't have been able to get much done anyway. I really needed some light relief while negotiating the roads into the office, and it was duly provided by Radio 4, where they read out an email from a listener pointing out that we were now suffering the 21st-century equivalent of traffic chaos as well as the more traditional sort.

Yes, not only were the roads blocked and the public transport cancelled all over the place, but the traffic and travel WEBSITES were all crashing too, under the load of people trying to find out whether they should set out or not. What irony! What symmetry! The British do farce SO well.

Snow!

Like, I suspect, much of the country we woke this morning to a snowy scene. This is the 6am version. It has become quite unusual for Manchester in recent years and probably won't stick around for long. It'll be chaos on the roads while it lasts though. The slightest hint of snow on roads and pavements means all the nervous and semi-competent drivers will slow right down making things extremely frustrating and delay-prone for the rest of us. Never mind that the gritters were out in force last night and most major roads will be frost-free; it'll be 10mph all the way this morning. Bet on it.

The snow also gave rise to another feeling for us this morning: satisfaction. Because we did, in the end, pull out our collective fingers and spend a little time in the garden, taking advantage of the two crisp, clear, sunny days that we've just had. The fern count reduced by two. No point in rushing things, these are big buggers we're talking about, and any extended period of digging wakes my back up to the fact that it doesn't do spade work and what am I doing forcing it to take part in such activities and if I don't stop soon it'll go TWANG and that'll show me. So I took it steady. One fern on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Plus a bit of a haircut for the remaining three, so that I can see what I'm doing when I take my fork and my spade to the next one.

Only at the moment, I can't see what I'm doing because they're under two inches of snow. Which my back is very pleased about.

Friday Five

Thank God for Friday Fives, cos there's no news on the flippin' roof today. The whole day was a wash-out, weatherwise.

1. When were you born?
On a Saturday, just before breakfast, in a 20th century November.

2. What's your favorite photograph?
This is a really tough one. Partly because there are so many, but partly because I don't really think of things this way. It's unfair to pick one, and even if I did I'd probably feel different about it the next day. Or hour.

3. What's the longest distance you've run?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Right.

4. What is familiar?
My home town. Family. Mates. Comfort food. The smell of a spring day. Weekend routine.

5. What do you count on?
Things never being simple.

Noisy stripper

We've had a noisy stripper on our roof all day today.

Yes, finally the weather took a turn for the better and some real progress was made. The gang were working at the front, but even so the noise of several hundred tiles slipping and sliding onto the scaffold could be heard all over the house, and went on for about an hour and a half.

Followed shortly by the noise of battens being nailed back on over the new felt. This created a serious cleaning up task in the attic room, as just about every clout nail on the ceiling has now popped and showered everything in the room in small pieces of plaster.

Felt a bit sorry for the men at the end of the day, actually. With only a small section left to do, the heavens opened and the rains came down like stair-rods. They must have been drenched within seconds, but having started that final section they had to finish it to make the roof weathertight.

One side to go - but it's the complicated side, since it has 3 Velux windows.

Conveying the tiles

The tiles arrived today, so the target for the day was to transport them all to where the action is. Remember I said you learn a lot watching tradesmen? Apparently you're not allowed to carry this stuff on a hod these days. Health & Safety. The only thing allowed on a ladder is yourself and your tools. Materials have to be conveyed with a crane, an elevator or, as in our case, a nifty little conveyor belt with a small two-stroke engine.

Such a small belt, actually, that had a special stick to support it halfway up. Bless.

When the tiles had all been racked and stacked, the rain started up again, so that was it for progress today. I reckon that's a day-and-a-half lost to weather so far (out of 3).

Rained off rip off

A day without action on the roof today, as the weather remained determinedly weathery all day. Here's the rear gable, taken from one of the upstairs Velux windows. These give a totally different perspective on the operation.

From ground level the scaffolding, as I've mentioned before, resembles a huge Meccano set. From above, it simply looks like a path around the top of the house. Maybe if I could cope with getting up there in the first place (and down again, of course) I could be a roofer after all! No?

No, you're right. It's a bit physical. I'll stick with hammering a keyboard.

The rip-off begins

With scaffold erection complete (yesterday! Much to the annoyance of my roofer who actually wanted to start last Friday), the stripping off of tiles could start.

Stripping off also entails re-felting and battening so that the roof remains watertight during the whole process (amazing what you learn when you're having work done!) which means when the weather is unpredictable it's prudent to work in small sections, felting as you go. This takes longer, but ensures you aren't stuck with an entire side to felt in the pissing rain.

As it happened, today, the team managed to strip only the front and back gables (or whatever the pointy bits are called) before rain stopped play.

Edinburgh

After a relatively leisurely start and amble over to Edinburgh, we arrived around 11am and found a 4-hour on-street car park in the Grassmarket with its clock set an hour forward, giving us an extra free hour's parking. Bonus!

The first thing to greet us was a complete refurbishment of the street masonry in the area, which proved to be just the first of many construction projects ongoing in the city. Everywhere we looked there were cranes, skips, diggers and workmen busily rebuilding every inch of the place, which made "tourist photography" a bit of a tricky endeavour. Even the Scott Monument (whose 287 steps I had climbed as a boy) was not exempt, its digger apparently in the process of reconstructing the nearby gardens.

We hopped on another city tour bus - fast becoming a feature of this holiday - and enjoyed an hour in the company of a very knowledgeable old gentleman who shared his history of the city with us, and oversaw the transformation of the day from crisp blue skies to cold grey ones. Even so the promised downpour never materialised. Once again we'd lucked out with the weather.

After completing the tour we left the bus at the castle stop. As you might have predicted it's approaching "30 years" since I was last here, and I recognised pretty much none of the Royal Mile, the interior of the castle or its layout. In my defence I plead that my parents took me round so many castles in my childhood and teenage years - often as many as six in a single week - that they've all blended together in my memory.

Conscious of the parking meter, and the need to shop for woollens, we left the castle around 3pm and wound our way back to Grassmarket via the various outlets lining that part of the Royal Mile. The early evening rush hour was only just beginning as we headed out to Peebles where we were to spend the night.

Peebles is a pretty little town. It claims to be Scotland's second favourite tourist town and although I found that hard to believe it certainly has a lot going for it. Especially the excellent haggis on offer in most of the local pubs. I like haggis, but even I don't eat it for dessert as well as main course. Enough said. Another early night - we were all pretty whacked after all the walking around - so I'll leave you with a panorama of the view from Edinburgh castle...

Frosty the Gardener

We had good intentions this weekend, honest we did, but staring out of the study window at the frosty garden, both yesterday AND today put paid to any ideas we had about

• Digging up the massive ferns that dominate the garden, and which we hate
• Filling the pond
• Cutting the grass
• Cutting back the dead bamboo/hydrangea/etc
• Generally tidying up

...so all that will have to wait for another, warmer, weekend. We're stopping in to watch movies and eat comfort food instead :o)

Plip, plop

Returning to bed after an early morning "visit" I was startled to hear a noise in the dark.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

I figured it out pretty quickly. The roof is leaking again. I'd found a wet patch on the bedroom floor on Tuesday morning but no signs of drips or leaks. Now there was a definite drip. The only question was - would I be able to get back to sleep with all that racket going on?

I almost managed it after about half an hour, but as I was drifting off Nikki gave me a sharp nudge.
"What's that noise? Is it a leak?"
"Yeah."
"We'd better get up then."

With the light on, two large wet areas were revealed directly under the beam that runs across the bay window, which was dripping merrily. I was puzzled where it was coming from. I'd already checked upstairs on Tuesday and there was no sign of any drips or damp patches.

It didn't take Nikki long to spot the wet patch on the wall though, which made it obvious why there was nothing to see in the upstairs room. There's a valley between us and next door. If the water can't flow down it properly and it backs up, it would overflow through the tiles at the lowest point. That could be because the gutters are blocked or it might simply be the volume of water - we've had torrential rain virtually non-stop for three days or so.

We fetched buckets, which guaranteed I wouldn't get back to sleep. The plopping noises in plastic and steel (we had to use a large cooking utensil too) was much louder than onto bare wood. I left Nikki to try to grab another hour's sleep in the rainforest while I made a coffee and sat worrying about how we'd certainly have to revise our thinking on when the roof needs replacing.

Wet wet wet

First time at Euston this year, and first time since they finished that escalator refurbishment. You know what? After all those months of effort, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME as it did before. Presumably it has all new gubbins underneath but the moving bits look just as scabby and the handrails just as worn and tatty. Glad we spent all that money on it.

It was pissing down when I emerged from Westminster tube too. Stupidly I'd seen the forecast but forgotten to bring my brolly. Maybe there'd be a handy taxi? No such luck. It was just shy of 9 o'clock and they were all full. I walked. I got drenched. I sat in the meeting steaming quietly to myself. Both physically and figuratively (it was an annoying and frustrating meeting).