Oh so cold!

I’m sitting here, a hot mug of tea by my side. I’ve just been out to the freezer for today’s meat – sausages & black pudding for breakfast-for-dinner for tonight’s meal. My hands are frozen. I need something to warm them around, to thaw my fingers out.

Outside the temperatures are well below freezing point. The roofs at the other side of the street remain white with frost. The thermometer attached to the garden shed has gone up from -10˚C to the dizzying heights of -8˚C. Cold indeed.

I’m not the only one feeling the cold. At the moment the blackbirds are going through a fat ball a day. One seems to sit there for quarter of an hour at a time, just gorging himself.  I half-expect one of these days he will be so stuffed he won’t be able to fly off. Meanwhile another blackbird sits on the trellis above, head turning a full 360 degrees, keeping an eye out for predators, while he waits his turn in the pecking order.

I don’t begrudge them the food. They give us so many hours of entertainment over the course of the year, as well as doing a much better job of slug & snail control than pellets ever did.

But I do long for warmer weather. Unfortunately that doesn’t sound as though it will be coming very soon.