Here in Yorkshire I have 5 inches of snow in my garden, and the snow on the tree branches has remained in place for several days. I'm not complaining; it's all very picturesque, and I've just read that Virginia USA has, in some parts, just received 2 feet of snow! (For the benefit of metricated readers, that's 130 mm of snow in my garden and 610 mm in Virginia).
Yesterday morning I ventured outside to do some energetic snow clearing and apply some rock salt. The salt idea didn't work out too well, because it had frozen into one solid lump. The snow clearance idea was even worse because I fell flat on my back and, whilst I was somewhere between upright and horizontal I managed to hit myself in the face with the handle of the snow shovel. It would have been highly entertaining to anybody watching, but they weren't, so my performance was wasted.
I therefore decided to return to the warmth of my home and succumb to the affluence of incohol.
My wife put scraps of food for the birds on the front lawn; she put it all on a flat baking tray to prevent the scraps becoming lost in the snow. A few minutes later a big fat pigeon made a fast landing on the tray, and stood there methodically picking up each scrap of food and tossing it remarkable distances across the garden, resembling nothing so much as someone tossing frisbees. Well, I thought, we put it there for the birds, and a pigeon is a bird, and if it wants to chuck stuff about instead of eating it, who am I to give it lessons in table etiquette?
I do hope the bankers are feeling the cold. I keep reading (and hearing) politicians, bankers, and political pundits wailing about the UK Government's proposed 50% tax on bankers' bonuses, and the phrase that keeps on coming up is, "If we tax the bonuses we are going to start losing talent to other countries". Excuse me, but would that be the same talent that got us all into this fine mess in the first place?!
By the way, I've just received from the UK Government my senior citizen's £10 Christmas Bonus. We really should be doing something about this Bonus Culture.
Merry Christmas to my two readers and their friends!
2 comments:
Me thinks you have a lot more readers than you know. Thank you for all of your writing. Your blog, the websites...they are a doorway to a different world. They're like Lewis's "wardrobe." I'm so glad I've had the chance to stumble inside.
He does!
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