Snow, apple crumble and Mr Law

This is actually a picture of our back garden in February 2008, but it looks much the same today except that the hedge is much taller, alas. Our son had attacked it vigorously some months before. He was good at doing energetic and destructive gardening, the very kind I don't like. His father is all right at it too, but prone to exhaustion nowadays in a way he wasn't in his prime.

Anyway, it's cold and snowy and I don't like it. Grump. I took my mother's shopping up to her this morning and foolishly went up the usual way, taking a hilly, little-used road so that I would end up facing in the direction of home. But alas, I ended up stuck. Fortunately Mr Life, aka SuperHub, leapt out of his pyjamas (see him whirl) and into his clothes and boots and came to the rescue. The usual problem we have when it snows (which it normally doesn't, much) is that we live down a little hill in a dead-end with only five houses in it, so of course it never gets gritted and becomes impassable quite quickly. Thus we have to park up at the top of the hill in the adjacent street - not handy if we want to bring my mum to the house, which we'll be doing at lunch time tomorrow.

The cats are Not Impressed.

We were going to visit friends in the west today but sadly decided that discretion was the better part of getting stuck on the M8. Of course it didn't actually snow any more after we made this decision. However, I've got a cough which makes me sound like a sea lion so I was probably better not to give them my germs for Christmas anyway.

Must go and organise tomorrow's lunch. I've made soup and now must do main courses for both vegetarians and carnivores. I think the whole world should be vegetarian, myself; it would make my cooking life easier. But I suppose it would upset the farming industry, the world economy and Mr Life, so maybe it's not a very well-thought-out proposal. Then apple crumble to reward Mr Life for his heroism. (He also printed out the church magazine, of which we're the joint editors (I do the language bit, he does the technical bit) all by himself last night while I was coughing over my book group - Joyce Carol Oates's Middle Age - good, I thought. Actually he always does it all by himself but I'm usually with him to keep him company and sympathise when the Risograph misbehaves. Or sometimes it's Daughter 2 - who is quite enjoying her job in London, by the way. They're going for their staff Christmas lunch to the Groucho Club, where her boss's daughters were intrigued, the last time their dad took them there, to see Jude Law and Sienna Miller having an argument outside the Ladies. It's another world.)