Livin' the dream

If I tell you this is a photo of what is probably the most exciting thing to have happened today, you have to understand (you will if you live in my part of the world) that this has been a vile day of wind and non-stop increasingly heavy rain and is now, just as the clock strikes four, growing dark outside. The empty freezer - apart from the few things in the bottom drawers that I've just returned to it - represents months, yes months, of trying not to buy anything frozen, as well as waiting till we were on the last of a three-serving batch of curry. It feels triumphant to have it only slightly full with food that I haven't forgotten existed ...

And I was doubly motivated to do this thing (or rather, to encourage Mr PB, who nobly volunteered his services) by the sight of a long-range forecast talking about snow and northerly air streams and lowering odds against a white Christmas - because severe weather, of either the cold frozen kind or the wild and windy kind, could put the kibosh on our Christmas, dinner and all. As usual, we're planning to drive to the other side of the country on Christmas Day, where family and food await - and every year I have this fear that we won't get away and will have to revert to the freezer for sustenance. At least there's room now for something delicious, just in case ...

Enough of these black thoughts. I've printed off the address labels, I've found some stamps that were surplus to requirements last year, I'm listening to some lovely Rachmaninov sacred choral music on YouTube. And this morning I was reflecting on what a great person Mary Beard - yes, that one, the classicist on the telly - is in the way she responds to comments on her Twitter posts. Apparently she and I began our studies of Latin with the same text book - The Approach to Latin, by Patterson and McNaugton. James Patterson was the headie of Hillhead High School when I started there, and my mother's church elder when he retired, so I always felt personally involved. 

There. Not such a gloomy day after all. But thank goodness for the internet ...