Nice people

Someone built a tiny snowman in our garden on her way to work. I discovered him when I came home. We haven't had very much snow and he's now a bit melty. The rosebud (from the garden) is just to show the scale, but I also like the incongruity of the rose and the snowman. Louis MacNeice wrote a splendid poem about roses and snow.

Please, Australians, don’t think that we in the chilly, damp bit of the world don’t care about you. We care a lot, and when I read that Suse of Pea Soup http://peasoupoftheday.blogspot.com/ has a car packed full of her family’s vital documents, just in case they need to make a quick getaway, it really brings the awfulness home.

Forgive me, though, if I have a slightly cheery post. We’re not forgetting you.

First of all, HELLO to the Lady from Salford. Some of my blog friends may remember that from time to time I've speculated about the Person from the University of Salford who quite often looked at my blog but never commented. I don’t quite know why I picked this person to speculate bloggily about; all we bloggers spot regular silent visitors on our site listings. Anyway, when I’ve mentioned her / him, other blog friends have said that she/he visits them also.

Recently I realised that I had seen no mention of the University of Salford for a while, and wondered what had happened. It didn’t occur to me till later that he/she might have graduated, but I actually didn’t think that my middle-aged maunderings would be of any interest to even the most bored student. I thought that Person from Salford was a bored employee. I am sometimes a bored employee myself and blogs are a happy distraction over a cup of coffee.

Well – as you may have noticed from my comments – she has now very kindly peeked out from behind her veil via Meggie’s blog http://lifesfreetreats.blogspot.com/ Mine doesn’t accept anonymous comments (I didn’t know that) and Meggie’s does.

And - TA DA! - here is the Lady from Salford – in person:

"For 'In This Life' - I am still reading but am temporarily not in Salford as I am on maternity leave! (so now you know I am a woman and of a certain age...)I don't have a blog so can't comment on your blog."

How lovely to be on maternity leave! I wonder if you’ve had the baby? Boy or girl? Thank you so much for allowing yourself to be rooted out from your peaceful reading. Can you see us all waving at you?

By the way, I'll try to enable Anonymous comments so if you ever feel like letting your fan base know how you’re doing, Mum from Salford, feel free. (I hope I now don’t get a whole lot of strange comments from people who hate Scottish teachers or whatever…) Though actually I think you don’t need to have a blog to comment; just a Google account, which you can get on the Google home page.

And the other lovely thing is that Anna http://thimbleanna.com/ has sent us these sweet Valentine presents: beautiful home-made hanging pouches filled with such exotic goodies as Hershey Kisses and Tootsie Rolls. My brother lived for a while in Hershey, so I know about Kisses, but Tootsie Rolls are the stuff of fiction to us. Thank you so much, Anna! (These two pictures are in the wrong order but I really must go and do some marking and stop fiddling about.)

Sirius Cat was very interested indeed and spent a long time sniffing them. Clearly he thought you might arrive soon with some nice knitting for him to help with. If only… . We're all very touched!

So in these sad days with the awful fires, some - unbelievably - started by arsonists, and with businesses crashing, folk out of work and bankers pocketing big bonuses – all making one feel rather despairing of humankind – it’s so lovely to feel kindness and to remember that, on the whole, people are very nice.