That’s what we are told and I do believe it, but it hasn’t always felt like it in Wales; we had snow before Christmas and again several times since.
Here are some of this winter’s chilly images from our woodland.
Below is a strange phenomenon spotted on the surface of the frozen pond — a winter corn circle! I guess a spot of something organic has polluted the centre of the surface of each, diffusing outwards, lowering the freezing point (like salt on the road) and creating the perfect circles of melting frost.
Is that why it thaws around the margins and island or is that just the temperature differential between the ground and the water? Food for thought.
Most of us elderly folk are suspicious of the internet with its scams and plots to defraud us feckless incompetents.
Z Smagala (@Walls by Squidge) The Yard, Kettering
But that is not always the case!
Last week-end my friend lost his wallet in Llanidloes, in Mid-Wales — his real wallet, not a digital one. We rushed about the town telling everyone but in our panic not leaving any address. He cancelled his bank cards and the following day we drove to his home in Kettering, East Midlands.
On arrival his son from Stevenage phoned to say his wallet had been found in Llanidloes Co-Op.
“But?..” My friend hadn’t told his family. What was going on?
Sophie, the kind and conscientious lady at Llanidloes Co-Op, had received the wallet from an eagle-eyed shopper with a well developed sense of right and wrong, and then set about tracing him, from his driving license, on Social Media, which he doesn’t use. But in true Llani tradition (pop 2000), which was odd in Kettering (pop 70,000), his son’s mother-in-law’s friend spotted the Co-Op lady’s post on a Kettering community website. The rest, as they say, is history.
But it’s not — the following day — yes, the very next day, the postman rang the door bell. He proffered a parcel from the Co-Op, “I very much suspect that this parcel contains your wallet!” said the postie with consummate glee — seems he keeps his eye on the local website too.
“The posties know everything that goes on in this town!” say the Kettering ladies at my aqua-robics class.
Community is not dead — it is now electronically enhanced!
We had a blowy night and next morning Cwm Cudyn was blocked in 2 places, first with an Oak Tree which put our new electric chainsaw in it’s place — even with Roger helping! It lies right across the carriageway — no carriages will pass this way for quite a while.
Further up where the banks are steep and the soil thin, 5 tall pine trees lost their grip and had a go at skiing, skidding elegantly down the sloping bedrock leaving it glistening in the rain. Continuing the metaphor they all fell over in a tangled heap in the bottom of the cwm.
See how tenuous was their hold.
Still they managed to block the road.
At the bottom, where the lane is high above the river, you can see the lanky oak that normally stands on the edge of the stream with its roots in the water. It had a rough night, resisting the 90 mph gusts, and is now having a lie down. I bet that made the neighbors house shake.
Next day the levels have fallen here.
We worried about the impact of all this water further down stream but there was a news black-out — no power, no internet, no mobile coverage and the land-line was knocked out by the fallen larch on the hill.
We kept warm by cutting and moving the smaller fallen trees that were in the way and by unbunging the culvert by the house to release the Olympic swimming-pool of muddy water that had gathered on the road to stop the cars — not that there were many!
Once power was restored, Assad had fallen in Syria so there was nothing much to hear about trees or floods!
Its chilly here and the ground is covered and crunchy.
Food is thin on the ground and creatures need more calories to keep warm.
This is bringing birds that are usually wary of humans closer to the house.
This fine jay has been spotted foraging under the bird feeder and is battling for custody of the windfall apples with the local carrion crow, who sits in the tree posturing aggressively.
By and large jay defers to crow but sneaks back later.
Both hear the Raven up above, getting closer but still never coming to ground.
One regular is undeterred.
The Buzzards sit on the telegraph poles having removed the dead mouse from the patio, which I caught for him in my kitchen! Times are especially hard for him, and the fox as all the little mammals have gone to ground. We see the foxes prints prowling the edges of the fields but no rabbit tracks.
The one lonely fieldfare is not scared of the jay — there are plenty of fallen apples still.
But the little birds must beware!
The sparrowhawk visits daily and sits on the bird feeder — we know he’s there by the sudden eerie absence of everything else.
Time has passed, but judging from Kettering and Trefeglwys War Memorials both young and old are still aware of the sacrifices made by the wartime generations — the wreaths laid by school children are re-assuring that we remember.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.
R.L.Binyon from “For the Fallen”
The sun came out this morning over the War Memorial in Kettering.
The mayor read the evocative words of John Maxwell Edmonds:
When You Go Home, Tell them of Us and Say,
For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.
And still it goes on — another generation sacrificed today — how could the sun come out.
My new book is now in the publisher’s catalogue with a release date in December 2024!
My dog can’t read, but if I sent him a postcard, he’d sniff it and know I was fine and thinking of him. If I needed to tell him more, I suppose I’d send him one of my socks.
In an insecure world, be cheered by the landscape and friendliness of this quiet, green valley, with its unexploded bombs, stampeding cattle and life-or-death decisions. Diana’s off-beat take on life, honed by her years as a family doctor, is one of the things that made her first book, Iolo’s Revenge: Sheep farming by Happy Accident in Mid Wales, so popular. People who read it ask what has happened since?
Here’s what we saw from the cliffs at Land’s End, the most southerly point of mainland Britain on our recent stay in Cornwall.
A disturbance — turbulence in the water and excitement amongst the sea birds, swooping above the swirling and splashing.
Whatever they are they are large as you can see, we are looking from a long way off.
Is it a shark? It looks like a tuna but surely they don’t swim off Cornwall — all the photos of big game fishing show men in Edwardian dress.
Here you have it — It’s official. The Blue Fin Tuna has returned to British waters. Either because of global warming, or the demise of the inshore fishing industry or because of excellent fishery management — they are back.
Blue fin tuna chasing shoals of smaller fishes around the rocks where the bait fish try to escape by jumping, and the opportunist gulls swoop to pick them off, mid-air.
Will they be fished to extinction again — hopefully not, there are now strict quotas, and fishery vessels patrolling — we saw Fishery Protection vessels as well as Border Force vessels from our viewpoint. A Border Force high speed rib was very actively chasing a fishing boat — by evening, the local News revealed that they had caught 6 tons of cocaine but no tuna!
We are possessed — we tumble out of bed at the first ray of sunlight, Bill to rush out and be electrocuted in the morning dew, forgetting to switch off the mains before moving the sodden leads so that he can see what he has caught in his moth trap!
I follow, not to resuscitate but because the one thing I hate more than early mornings is being left out! And it’s like Christmas — you just don’t know what you will get!
Antler moth artistically posing on my rhubarb.
Buff arches
Black Arches Moth
Brown china mark
Canary shouldered thorn
Feathered gothic
Large emerald
Garden tiger moth
Gypsy moth male — slightly battered — not surprising, possibly blown from Europe.
Just a few of the 100 plus species of moth we have photographed since July — you can’t say they are dull!
But these are what gets me tip-toeing down the dewy track as the sun peeps over the hill!
Baby lizards
There seems to be a family of 7 or 8 babies and at least one adult that bask in the morning sun on the corrugated iron that we have put by the bench where we bask. They are charming and very brave — are they going to become accustomed to us and remain so as adults — I do hope so. We have made them an air-raid shelter but at the moment they seem to prefer to hide in the grass.
