On the Common with the Sledge (by sarah)

Yesturday me and Dad went out to get supplies such as painkillers and the like - plus Barbara had run out of milk. We still have had no post and our last milk delivery they walked too us for quiet a distance.

Al and Jean however went for an exertion to the common with the sledge that belonged to Al's Dad. I made Al take the camera though when we finially climbed out of the village I slightly regretted this as I was presented with fantastic views but I would prefer to have pics of Jean in the long run!

He stopped at the church first though took a landscape and none of the church which was looking very postcard-esk.

Here are his landscapes of the common.

Jean sledging without her hat! (Bad Daddy)

Many of the villagers were out and about with shovels and there was a sense of community which I feel we are slightly missing out on. Still if it continues we will have to get up into the village more.

Al said the common wasn't very good for sledging as the snow was too fluffy and too deep but it was nice anyway - I got a phone call to say we were nearly out of hot chocolate so Jean had her statutory warm drink when they got home 🙂

The only down side to the day was that I started it off by having a painfull fall but I am amazed I got this far in without any misshapse.

Sledging (by sarah)

Yesturday the snow was strangly crunchy were the surface had frozen solid. Barbara also decided that it had been around long enough that we should clear paths - the only trouble with this is that we find where it has been cleared is more icy-slippery that the compacted ice!

The 'shovel' she's using was made by Ron Al's step grandfather and is a pice of board with a handle - its quiet intreging.

Dad spent ages clearing the first bit of the drive and the parking area inorder to be able to get out and get Al so that he wouldn't have to walk down from the Royal William with all his bags etc...

The main activity of the day however was sledging! First off Barbara and Jean were doing Barbaras washing up when Jean decided she wanted to go out and play in the snow. Barbara got ready and then tried to do up the buttons on Jeans coat - Jean got upset and run away - All we knew was a sad Jean turned up for a cuddle followed by a miffed Barbara.

Barbara had decided that she was going sledging anyway and headed off. I was in the middle of writing something up but realised that I should probably get us all ready to go and join Barbara. So I get us dressed and hurried out along the drive to the farmers field only to find that Barbara had already given up and was bringing the sledge back to use in the paddock.

With a few stumbles she climbed back into the garden behind the garage and I took the sledge to the paddock.

Fun then ensued:

Though I was the only one who managed to stay on the sledge! Though when Barbara decided to give me a 'push-off' I did struggle keeping control I have to say.

Poor dad didn't manage it at all:

He tried:

He convinced Jean he had lost his leg after one crash and she had to 'find it'.

He came off the sledge.

He went back for another go

and another

And another

It started to become a challenge to him

But no

He did get a fair way a couple of times

But others he didn't get very far

Determination is sometimes not a good thing

The result

He even ended up in a snow drift

But here's one where he can pretend it was all ok

Of course I have a video of him sledging with Jean and 'squashing her cheek in the snow' and how annoyed she was over this. She refuses to get on the sled with him now! I'm thinking I might have to turn this into a nice web-comic strip!

More Snow! (by sarah)

These steps were cleared off by me and this is what fell over night onto the pre-existing 6 inches.

If this keeps up then I will have to build an army of snowmen like I did when I was young - the story is chronicled by Yellow Monster in A Tale of Snowmen I and II.

This had been my plan with the memories of it ending up in the local papers and things but unfortunatly Dad and Jean saw to it that my snow women was knocked down by a bombardment of snowballs. I also had to cancel the meeting that I had had to cancel with the last lot of snow!

Snow Women (by sarah)

More snow and so bored of building snowmen from our sojourn in Highgate me and Jean decided to build a snow woman! But first some pics of the buildings:

To get the snow for the snow-woman and for saftys sake Dad and Jean set about clearing the steps up to the lawn.

You can tell they worked really hard! We filled one of our fermentation buckets with snow - Jean had a plastic mixing bowl to put her snow in though she mantianed it was a wiggly pets bath - poor things!

We pack the snow down in the bucket and used it as a sort of mould for the body - we did this twice and stacked them on top of each other - I then proceeded to make it safe before Jean was allowed near it!

Ok well it wasn't actually very good as its nose kept coming off and half the face came away at one point leaving it rather flate headed! I found that after a while my gloves became wet and kept sticking to the snow I was trying to sculpt.

Jean liked it though and we thought we'd make a whole clan of snowmen! Once that was finished we went inside for hot chocolate and then Jean went hunting Wiggly Pets - we had seen their tracks in the snow earlier on!

Poor Mini got herself stuck in the Stable as she refused to walk on the snow - she just kept mewing pathetically but was in a position where I couldn't actually pick her up to bring her in - I had turffed her last night and it snowed whilst we slept so she was very conserned. Finially she felt like braving the wet white stuff.

Jean got a bit over tired with the days exertions and fell asleep before I'd even gotten her snow boots off of her!

From Snowed-in In London…. (by sarah)

We are under snow here and with the van at least the roads are impassable so we are stuck!

I will probably take quadzillions of photos whilst this lot lasts so you have been warned. Turned out Barbara managed to crash her car (not badly) whilst we were away which isn't good 🙁 And we have had to cancel scouts which is sad too. The school is also apparently closed.

Getting home last night was not fun - we almost couldn't get the van down into the valley - the road across the common ways inch thick compacted ice with snow on top and trecherous.

It off course started snowing on our way home - we had waited to see if we would be ok going home.

Conditions rapidly deteriated.

Once it got really bad I couldn't take pics as the light levels were simply too low.