Brrr....

Bit of a winter wonderland round here at the moment. A couple of inches of snow and freezing cold - my outdoor thermometer struggled to get above zero yesterday, and was showing minus 8.9° at 7 o'clock this morning! Without wishing to be too much of a Jeremiah I am telling anyone who will listen that this is the same weather pattern that we had in the winter of 1962-3, I think it was, and that lasted for two whole months! Mind you, things have changed since then - firstly, I am now retired so I don't have to worry about traveling around in it (I just worry about my children travelling in it instead), and secondly, I now live in a double-glazed centrally-heated house. Back then, double-glazing had scarcely been heard of, and the only heating in the house I then lived in was a coal fire. Result - you got up every morning to find that the pipes had frozen overnight and you had to thaw them out before you could get any water, and you then went out to work to find that when you came back home at tea-time, they'd all frozen up again! Nostalgia's all very well, but...