Snow.
It has been 'bitter' (as the weatherman calls it) for a few days and snowing vaguely so I cancelled my lift to the shops and rearranged for today.By this time I have run out of eggs and bread and used up my last milk wildly before ringing the lift this morning saying 'The snow looks a bit thicker so I could just manage not going'. This was a polite lie which expected the answer 'Don't be stupid'. But ... she said ' Well, we don't have much choice do we as I am snowed in'. Am I snowed in? It doesn't look that bad but the postman hasn't come and my drive is pretty steep. She only lives two fields away and I have a feeling she just can't be bothered. Bugg3r. I will now have to be creative with my food for a couple of days and drink black coffee.

I was looking particularly careless and strange as the biting East wind which somehow penetrates straight through my bedroom window glass had been blowing for two days full of extra ice. I live in my bedroom when alone as it is huge and attractive with a view down the valley and the only room in the house which is warm as I secretly have TWO heaters on at all times. These are totally wiped out by an East wind however and so I had been wearing an old cashmere jersey tied round my head and an incredibly freezingness-proof long Arab robe-thing, day and night.

Relaxing on my daybed watching a blizzard warning on teletext and eating last night's supper cold for breakfast, safe in my impenetrable snowed-upness, I heard a distant engine. WTF? There was the definite sound of a LORRY coming down the 'new' drive towards my bedroom and then the merry shouting of lots of MEN. Horribly close outside was a large truck full of huge trees. Are they insane? Not only is the ground frozen rock hard but there is practically a white out. They were expected next week when by lucky chance the weather was predicted to be back to normal.

I rang my husband furiously using the word f..k an unnecessary number of times. He swore he hadn't changed the day and got quite shouty when I refused to go out into the storm and question them tactfully. 'There is no way that another human is going to see me looking like this. I have been wearing a jersey round my head for 72 hours and my skin has gone grey and strange from intensive convective heating'. 'But ... I was meant to be there and show them the position for each tree'. 'Ars3 ... don't they have any kind of plan?' 'Only vaguely.' 'Well, f..k it. If it looks all wrong we'll have to move them. They're still dormant aren't they?' 'Are you insane .. MOVE endless large trees ourselves?' 'Well I'm not going out.' 'Well f..k you'. 'F..k YOU.' etc. etc. until the receivers were replaced.

As we speak I can still see, dimly, their burly forms dragging twiggy things about through the swirling snowflakes. Perhaps they will make groups and lines of trees that are more perfect and graceful than anything we could have conceived. And if they don't .... we're f@cked.
- posted by Iris @ 2/24/2005 01:14:00 PM (0) comments comment