The AIM ers, the Artisans in Miniature group, which publishes the free online magazine at www.artisansinminiature.com has had an advent calendar running since the start of the month. Each calendar window contains a miniature project; a new window, which is actually a miniature door, is unlocked every day. Many projects are simple and would be ideal for keeping snow bound children (and snow bound adults) amused.
I should probably have told you about this sooner but round here every snow bound moment is dedicated to the post kitchen project clean-up. With slight interruptions for seasonal diversions, the kitchen project, started, you may recall, on August 10th, is within a whisker of being really, truly finished. I still have the notice board to make and the 35 year old spice rack to refinish and then I’m done. However five months of woodwork have left the entire, open plan house coated in sawdust, so, before I complete the final finishing touches, I’m doing one of those ten-year deep cleans. The pub has a great scheme ongoing at present: regulars donate books that are resold for 50p each, with the proceeds going to the local hospice. When I heard of this I thought it would provide the impetus needed to clear the book towers. I have been utterly ruthless. If we’re not reading it, out it goes. Some were wonderful publisher’s frolics in the shape of elaborate coffee table books, some were well thumbed paperbacks. Whoever they were, they went. My other half took a box to the pub every night. (Because going to the pub is his religion and he is very devout. A couple of nights ago, after a fresh four-inch snowfall and a frost it took him half an hour to scrape the drive, dig the car out and get the frozen doors open. Anyone sane would have stayed at home and had a can of beer out of the garage. However, the pub being next to the frozen canal, the beer is nicely chilled for once and all the regulars are enjoying it. They’re all crackers.)
In the bedroom something strange has emerged, no it’s not me in my thermal pyjamas, it’s the carpet! Downstairs I have room in the bookcases for a book. Yes indeed I could buy one book and put it in a bookcase when I had read it! And I’m enjoying the clean up so much I think what I really wanted for Christmas is space – the final frontier. And I’m getting it. Unlike a couple of the pub regulars who wanted a holiday in Vietnam for Christmas; what they’re getting is a chance to sleep in Heathrow airport under a space blanket.
We may also be getting next door’s budgie for a few days while our crazy Russian neighbours attempt to drive the the south coast for a few day’s holiday. Yesterday after driving safely to relatives and back on a three quarter’s of an hour drive delivering presents we had a run in with a driver on a hill two minutes from home. He swung out in front of us and then began driving quickly and, without warning, suddenly braking all the way down the hill. We tooted him and at the traffic island he stopped, got out of his car ran to us and began swearing hysterically while the traffic queued up. He eventually got back in and lurched round the roundabout and up the hill on the other side. You would think it was too chilly for road rage, wouldn’t you? I think he was probably frightened of driving in the snow. Thirty years ago we lived in Nottingham on a hilltop that was regularly deep in snow for weeks. I was teaching at the time, some distance away and don’t remember the school ever being closed for snow. In fact children used to regard snow as a free thing to play with. Here is the web manager doing so, about twenty seven years ago.
Until very recently, what most children hoped they were getting for Christmas, was snow. Apart from the fact that we all seem to have gone soft and don’t know how to enjoy it, a restrained amount of the white stuff is the ideal present – it’s free, it’s pretty, you can play with it, you can build with it, it’s not fattening, it makes everything wonderfully quiet for writers and once you’re tired of it it self destructs. Above and beyond all other things it makes you appreciate the summer and your extreme forethought eight weeks ago when the other half said: ‘Do you really want to spend sixty quid on loft insulation?’ And the nagging it took three weeks ago to get us both out on the drive sawing up the foil covered foam boards and shoving them between the rafters at risk to life and limb, instead of doing it tomorrow or next week. But we did them all one night, because I insisted and emerged from the loft cobwebbed and filthy. And for lo! That night it snowed. It was a great pleasure in a year when so much went wrong to get one thing right. Though if I could guess that it was going to be cold in the winter, you would think major British airports would be able to do that too, wouldn’t you?
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JaneLaverick.com in the winter.