I had to venture out of the house this morning. There were the parcels to collect and I was in dire need of certain necessities. I wrapped up well in multiple layers of clothes, put on my sheepskin lined boots, a hat on my head and gloves on my hands, and armed with a shopping bag and my walking stick (I'm having problems with my hip again at the moment).
I left via the back door (it's the one I use most) and marched across the snow-covered lawn. Actually, it was a bit more of a shuffle that a march. It only took me the few yards to get to the pavement to change my mind about picking up the parcels, but the shopping was absolutely necessary so I continued on my way to our local Tesco Express.
The pavement of the first road that I had to walk along was still fairly well covered with powdery snow so there were no real problems. I turned the corner and things became a lot more scary. Where the pavements had been well-trodden they were very slippery but there was some soft snow at the edges so I tried to stick to them as much as possible. I managed to get along this road without any mishaps and then I turned into the road where the Tesco Express is located. There had been much more pedestrian activity here so it was almost like walking on clear pavements.
Once in the shop it was apparent that they have not had deliveries of certain basics such as milk, although there was a good selection of bread. But this didn't cause me too much of a problem. I did need some milk and there was sufficient for me to be able to get some, but it was in one pint containers rather than the larger size that I wanted. I also managed to get a couple of tins of soup, and the loo roll that was an absolute necessity.
On leaving the shop |I made my way down the road and then turned the corner. I knew that it was going to be much more difficult to get home without a mishap because I was now carrying a full shopping bag rather than the empty one that I set out with. I was right to be concerned for I managed to slip over twice.
The first time wasn't too bad because I felt myself slipping and I managed to catch hold of the railing running along some one's front garden. Even so, I went down on one knee and gave myself a bit of a shock. I was helped up by a young lady who made sure that I was alright. I slipped for a second time about 30 yards further on. This time it was a full-blown slip with me falling face down to the ground. I banged my already bruised knee hard as I fell and felt my chin and nose make contact with the icy ground. This time I was not so quick to raise myself because it the fall had really shocked me. Fortunately, two ladies were walking along the other side of the road and saw me fall and came to my rescue. They helped me up and made sure that I was okay. I thanked them both and warned them that both pavements along this road were very slippery.
I only had a few more yards to walk before I turned into the road that leads to my house. By trying to walk in untrodden snow as much as possible I managed to make it home without further mishap.
The shopping is now unpacked and put away, and I am consoling myself with a bar of chocolate. I'm hoping that it will take my mind off the painful knee as I wrap myself up warmly under a blanket and watch a DVD for a while before settling back down to my studying.
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
It's Snowing in South-East London! Will The Capital Come To A Standstill?
Well, it looks as though I won't be going to collect my parcels in the morning. I've been lying in bed watching television and through my open bedroom door I can see through a long frosted-glass window at the top of the stairs and about half an hour ago I noticed it was snowing. I have just opened the window and we have about an inch of snow at the moment, but I am sure that it will carry on snowing through the night.
Fortunately I stocked up with most of my immediate needs when I did some shopping on the way home from seeing the HTT yesterday morning, so I should be alright for at least a day, but if it is a lot of snow I will have to venture out on Thursday to get bread and milk.
The snow has started to come down heavier since I started typing this post, so it looks as though we are in for a fair bit of snow tonight. I have to guess that there will be trouble with public transport in the morning, so it is as well that my two appointments this week relating to my mental health have already taken place.
Fortunately I stocked up with most of my immediate needs when I did some shopping on the way home from seeing the HTT yesterday morning, so I should be alright for at least a day, but if it is a lot of snow I will have to venture out on Thursday to get bread and milk.
The snow has started to come down heavier since I started typing this post, so it looks as though we are in for a fair bit of snow tonight. I have to guess that there will be trouble with public transport in the morning, so it is as well that my two appointments this week relating to my mental health have already taken place.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Another Cold Day
I'll start by saying that I really don't like the cold. Actually, it's the cold here in the UK that I don't like. As I sit here writing this, we in London have not had the heavy snowfall that has occurred in other parts of the country. Yet. Snow is forecast for tonight but whether we will get much remains to be seen. I hope we don't because I have to go to the local sorting office tomorrow morning to pick up a couple of parcels.
Today the temperature has barely managed to get above freezing, but it is the fact that we have a very moist atmosphere that always seems to make it feel so much colder. I have, in the past, spent some time in Bardufoss, in northern Norway, during the winter period.
Bardufoss is about 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle and has prodigious amounts of snow each winter. I can clearly remember the first time that I went there. It was in February 1988 and I was still in the RAF at that time. We went to this part of Norway to take part in major NATO exercises that were held each year. I remember stepping out of the back of the Hercules onto a taxiway that was ice covered and snow was heaped in mounds about 10 feet high. As I breathed in for the first time, I felt all the hairs and the moisture in my nose instantly freeze up. the temperature was -19 degrees Celsius, and this was the middle of a sunny day. The coldest temperature that I ever experienced up there was -37 degrees Celsius, and I can tell you that is pretty cold.
Although these were much colder temperatures than we are experiencing at the moment, I never really felt cold when I was there. Admittedly I was issued with Arctic thermal underwear but I would often spend time outside without a coat on. The atmosphere was always dry and this meant that although it was cold, very cold in fact, it never seemed to feel as cold as it does here.
One of the best things about being in that part of the world at that time of year was seeing the Aurora Borealis. This natural light show in the sky has to be seen to be believed. Seeing it on television or in the cinema really does not show it in its true magnificence. Sometimes it is just curtains of white light that move across the sky at speed, but the best displays are when you see the Borealis in greens, reds and yellows. It really is breathtaking to see.
So, I will continue to dress myself in multiple layers while this cold spell continues. And maybe remember what it was like to look up into the night sky and see those multicoloured curtains of light dancing all around me.
Today the temperature has barely managed to get above freezing, but it is the fact that we have a very moist atmosphere that always seems to make it feel so much colder. I have, in the past, spent some time in Bardufoss, in northern Norway, during the winter period.
Bardufoss is about 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle and has prodigious amounts of snow each winter. I can clearly remember the first time that I went there. It was in February 1988 and I was still in the RAF at that time. We went to this part of Norway to take part in major NATO exercises that were held each year. I remember stepping out of the back of the Hercules onto a taxiway that was ice covered and snow was heaped in mounds about 10 feet high. As I breathed in for the first time, I felt all the hairs and the moisture in my nose instantly freeze up. the temperature was -19 degrees Celsius, and this was the middle of a sunny day. The coldest temperature that I ever experienced up there was -37 degrees Celsius, and I can tell you that is pretty cold.
Although these were much colder temperatures than we are experiencing at the moment, I never really felt cold when I was there. Admittedly I was issued with Arctic thermal underwear but I would often spend time outside without a coat on. The atmosphere was always dry and this meant that although it was cold, very cold in fact, it never seemed to feel as cold as it does here.
One of the best things about being in that part of the world at that time of year was seeing the Aurora Borealis. This natural light show in the sky has to be seen to be believed. Seeing it on television or in the cinema really does not show it in its true magnificence. Sometimes it is just curtains of white light that move across the sky at speed, but the best displays are when you see the Borealis in greens, reds and yellows. It really is breathtaking to see.
So, I will continue to dress myself in multiple layers while this cold spell continues. And maybe remember what it was like to look up into the night sky and see those multicoloured curtains of light dancing all around me.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Why Can't We Cope With The Weather?
So it snowed overnight, and has continued to do so most of the day and into this evening, and this is apparently the most snow that has hit London for 18 years. Most of the buses are off the road and schools are closed; Boris Johnson has said there will be no congestion charge today. I have noticed the lack of aircraft around because the house is either under the flight path for aircraft going in to Heathrow, or if aircraft are landing at Heathrow from the west then it is aircraft from London City Airport that overfly the house.
Questions have been asked about why we were so badly prepared even though we have known for days that this weather was coming. It seems that we have become a nation that gives up at the slightest bit of bad weather. It wasn't like this in the past. I am old enough to remember the Winter of 1962-63 when London suffered pea-soup fogs in November and December and then it snowed on Christmas night so that we woke up to deep snow on Boxing Day, and it snowed and snowed and snowed.
We went to school each day during the fogs that were thick enough that you were unable to see much more than an arm's length ahead. I don't remember us not going to school each day once the Christmas holidays were over. We lived about a mile away from my primary school and I had to cross two major roads to get there. Wellington boots were the order of the day with shoes in the ubiquitous shoebag carried over your shoulder, so that you had something to change into once you got to school. The school was housed in a group of Victorian buildings and each of the classrooms had a coal fire which provided the heating for the room.
I had a bike that Christmas and I wasn't able to use it until about Easter. The snow stayed for weeks, and trees in the local park were coated in white and seemed much larger than they really were because of the layers of snow. Yet with all this bad weather I remember buses running and cars on the road and people went to work because that is what you did.
So why can't we manage it today?
Questions have been asked about why we were so badly prepared even though we have known for days that this weather was coming. It seems that we have become a nation that gives up at the slightest bit of bad weather. It wasn't like this in the past. I am old enough to remember the Winter of 1962-63 when London suffered pea-soup fogs in November and December and then it snowed on Christmas night so that we woke up to deep snow on Boxing Day, and it snowed and snowed and snowed.
We went to school each day during the fogs that were thick enough that you were unable to see much more than an arm's length ahead. I don't remember us not going to school each day once the Christmas holidays were over. We lived about a mile away from my primary school and I had to cross two major roads to get there. Wellington boots were the order of the day with shoes in the ubiquitous shoebag carried over your shoulder, so that you had something to change into once you got to school. The school was housed in a group of Victorian buildings and each of the classrooms had a coal fire which provided the heating for the room.
I had a bike that Christmas and I wasn't able to use it until about Easter. The snow stayed for weeks, and trees in the local park were coated in white and seemed much larger than they really were because of the layers of snow. Yet with all this bad weather I remember buses running and cars on the road and people went to work because that is what you did.
So why can't we manage it today?
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
I'm Hoping To Have A Very White Christmas
I know it's not September yet, but I am already looking forward to Christmas. For someone who lives on their own this is a very strange thing to say. In the past, except for a couple of occasions (once when I was on duty and another occasion, before I was married, when my oldest friend and I went to stay with her sister and brother-in-law who were serving in Malta ) my husband and I always spent Christmas with my parents. When my husband died I stopped enjoying Christmas; although I still went and spent the period with my parents, I felt very lonely, and it was not a happy time. My mother died in October 2003 so Christmas that year was a quiet occasion with just my father and I. Then a few days before Christmas 2005, my father died very suddenly. When I got back from the hospital (I had gone with him in the ambulance) I had to face phoning all the family and friends to let them know what had happened, but one of the things that was weighing on my mind was how was I going to face Christmas on my own. Fortunately one of my friends phoned me later in the day and said that I should go and spend Christmas with them (my husband and I are god-parents to both their children) so that I wouldn't be on my own. I spent Christmas 2006 with them too, and we had a wonderful time. God-daughter and her fiancé were there and we had a truly spectacular dinner and lots of presents, and truth to tell probably a bit too much to drink. But we enjoyed ourselves.
Last Christmas, I decided to bite the bullet and stay on my own. It's just as well I did because the week before Christmas I started to go down with a cold. I had my usual monthly appointment with my GP and he commented that I didn't sound too well and I told him it was a combination of being the anniversary of my father's death, the thought of Christmas on my own and the fact that the cold I had seemed to be getting worse and going to my chest. He checked me over and found that my sinuses were blocked and it sounded as though I might be developing bronchitis. Because it was so near Christmas, and I have a history of some quite severe chest infections since my husband died, he decided that I ought to have some antibiotics to take just in case the worst happened. It did, on Christmas Eve. I found that I could hardly breathe, if I coughed it felt as though my chest would explode and I felt like death warmed up. Christmas was spent wrapped up in bed, and Christmas dinner was a chicken curry warmed up in the microwave.
This year I am going to stay with friends in Canada. I had hoped to go to see them in June, but because I had recently started psychotherapy it was thought that it would not be a good idea to go at that time. I told them that I would be over later in the year and they were happy with that. Then a couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would like to go for Christmas, and I said yes.
I should explain that the person I go to stay with is someone who did her nursing training with my mother, and was bridesmaid at my parents' wedding. A couple of years after I was born she went to work in Canada and ended up marrying a Canadian widower with four children. They then had another four children, so it is a large family. My mother and her friend corresponded regularly through the years and my parents often went out to Canada to stay with them. Once the younger children had grown up, Canadian friends came over to England for holidays with my parents. Then friend's husband died and she came over more regularly and on one visit, the year my parents celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, she came over to England, and while she was over came for a couple of weeks in Corfu with us. Since my mother died I have been to stay with her three times, once when my father was also staying there, and twice since he has died. She is like a mother to me, and often talks of the things that they got up to when they were doing their training. Her youngest daughter, who is about 10 years younger than me, says that I feel more like a sister to her than her own sisters do even though we see each other so rarely; however, we do correspond regularly by email. All of her children treat me as one of the family so it as though I have a lot of brothers and sisters who live far away.
This evening it was my turn to phone (we usually speak each week) and we were talking about the weather (it's been a wet summer in the Toronto area too), how the humming birds seemed to feeding ready for their flight south for the winter, and how the leaves on the trees were changing colour early this year (the maples are truly spectacular when they change colour). Then the subject turned to Christmas and the hope that it would be a white one, like last year, and how youngest daughter was really excited at the thought of me being there for Christmas and how she was already planning things that we would do together.
A white Christmas at home is something that I have to think really hard to remember, so the thought of Christmas with snow maybe a couple of feet deep is like imagining scenes from a Christmas card. I'm going to have to get some clothes to keep me warm, but I don't expect to have too much of a problem with the cold because when I was in the RAF, one of my postings was to a squadron that regularly deployed to a base north of the Arctic Circle, so I have experienced temperatures of -35 degrees Celsius and lived to tell the tale. If you go out in that temperature without a scarf to cover your nose, when you breathe in you can feel all the moisture and the hairs in your nose instantly freeze. A truly bizarre feeling the first time it happens.
So there it is. After years of hating Christmas, I am looking forward to it again. I know that I will undoubtedly think of the people that I wish could be there, but I will have my other family around me, and lots of new experiences too I expect.
Last Christmas, I decided to bite the bullet and stay on my own. It's just as well I did because the week before Christmas I started to go down with a cold. I had my usual monthly appointment with my GP and he commented that I didn't sound too well and I told him it was a combination of being the anniversary of my father's death, the thought of Christmas on my own and the fact that the cold I had seemed to be getting worse and going to my chest. He checked me over and found that my sinuses were blocked and it sounded as though I might be developing bronchitis. Because it was so near Christmas, and I have a history of some quite severe chest infections since my husband died, he decided that I ought to have some antibiotics to take just in case the worst happened. It did, on Christmas Eve. I found that I could hardly breathe, if I coughed it felt as though my chest would explode and I felt like death warmed up. Christmas was spent wrapped up in bed, and Christmas dinner was a chicken curry warmed up in the microwave.
This year I am going to stay with friends in Canada. I had hoped to go to see them in June, but because I had recently started psychotherapy it was thought that it would not be a good idea to go at that time. I told them that I would be over later in the year and they were happy with that. Then a couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would like to go for Christmas, and I said yes.
I should explain that the person I go to stay with is someone who did her nursing training with my mother, and was bridesmaid at my parents' wedding. A couple of years after I was born she went to work in Canada and ended up marrying a Canadian widower with four children. They then had another four children, so it is a large family. My mother and her friend corresponded regularly through the years and my parents often went out to Canada to stay with them. Once the younger children had grown up, Canadian friends came over to England for holidays with my parents. Then friend's husband died and she came over more regularly and on one visit, the year my parents celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, she came over to England, and while she was over came for a couple of weeks in Corfu with us. Since my mother died I have been to stay with her three times, once when my father was also staying there, and twice since he has died. She is like a mother to me, and often talks of the things that they got up to when they were doing their training. Her youngest daughter, who is about 10 years younger than me, says that I feel more like a sister to her than her own sisters do even though we see each other so rarely; however, we do correspond regularly by email. All of her children treat me as one of the family so it as though I have a lot of brothers and sisters who live far away.
This evening it was my turn to phone (we usually speak each week) and we were talking about the weather (it's been a wet summer in the Toronto area too), how the humming birds seemed to feeding ready for their flight south for the winter, and how the leaves on the trees were changing colour early this year (the maples are truly spectacular when they change colour). Then the subject turned to Christmas and the hope that it would be a white one, like last year, and how youngest daughter was really excited at the thought of me being there for Christmas and how she was already planning things that we would do together.
A white Christmas at home is something that I have to think really hard to remember, so the thought of Christmas with snow maybe a couple of feet deep is like imagining scenes from a Christmas card. I'm going to have to get some clothes to keep me warm, but I don't expect to have too much of a problem with the cold because when I was in the RAF, one of my postings was to a squadron that regularly deployed to a base north of the Arctic Circle, so I have experienced temperatures of -35 degrees Celsius and lived to tell the tale. If you go out in that temperature without a scarf to cover your nose, when you breathe in you can feel all the moisture and the hairs in your nose instantly freeze. A truly bizarre feeling the first time it happens.
So there it is. After years of hating Christmas, I am looking forward to it again. I know that I will undoubtedly think of the people that I wish could be there, but I will have my other family around me, and lots of new experiences too I expect.
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