... and this is what it looked like an hour ago. Yes, it's still snowing. I know this won't look much to Canadians and Mid-Westerners but this is Edinburgh, a coastal town lapped by the Gulf Stream, and we don't usually do more than a pickle of snow which melts in a day or two.
We live in a cul-de-sac of five houses; it's on a little hill, with us at the bottom. The street isn't exactly a priority for Edinburgh Council in its gritting operations and the road at the top of ours is also on a hill and never gritted till three days after the snow. Every day is a little adventure if we decide to use the car.
The cats are not impressed.
And Daughter 2 (who's staying for a few days, hurray) and I have nasty colds. We are expelling extensive goo from various orifices at regular intervals and keeping Mr Kleenex in business. Cough, cough. It's only a matter of time till Mr Life gets it and I can confidently predict that he'll get it more seriously than us.
Still, that was 2009, for better or worse. It was the year that our final child moved out, which was a bit of a shock to the system after 30 years of daily parenting. The year 2000 seems alarmingly recent; by 2020 I shall be 70. (Let's hope.)
On the positive side, Mr Life has found my camera, which was under my desk, where I thought it must have fallen and where I'd already looked several times without seeing it. (You know those crimes when the person who finds the body turns out to be the murderer...?)
Ah well, forward into battle as my father used to say, though in fact he used more often to say "Backward into fottle".