I write this happy in the knowledge that we’ve had a good covering of snow since Christmas Day. That’s six days and still going strong. Doesn’t it look sickly glittering in the orange streetlights. It must be six or more years since we were ‘forcibly upgraded’, and if you’ve not noticed, Chilsworthy has still got its proper white lights - so was the ‘reason’ given for the sudden conversion of Bradworthy to orange a little white lie? If Santa Claus had walked down the street no-one would have been sure whether his tunic was red or the off-white/grey/orange hue of everything else in the village at night.
Anyway, it occured to me that this is the first proper covering of snow we’ve had for several years - so some of our youngest readers might be a bit bewildered by the strange things on the cover. Well nowadays they’re called snow persons.
As you’d expect from a good and loyal subject, I cleared the snow from the area around the front of our house and all up the drive. I dutifully bagged it in a load of old coal bags ready for the bin men to collect. I discovered, to my utter amazement, a few days later that someone had come along and stolen all the snow - but they’d left the empty bags behind. Why on earth would someone run off with 25 bags of snow?
What, after all, is the point of snow? It makes the roads impassable, it makes the pavements slippery, it gives people chilblains, what earthly purpose is there in snow? Why does it exist at all? For throwing snowballs, that’s what. Though I’m not so sure that Rosemary entirely agrees! Tee hee.
I was a bit surprised when Dodge left for the bright lights of Reading so soon after returning from Australia. Wanderlust I suppose. Well lusting anyway. The pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place over the Christmas period. It seems that Dessie’s mum recently had a magnetic cat-flap installed. No, in the door. It all sounds pretty clever. The cat has a little thingee on its collar, and only the cat with the collar can get in - though the flap obviously lets anything get out. So? Well our ace fitter, master craftsman, etc, installed it the wrong way round. Every cat in Bradworthy was sitting in Dessie’s mum’s kitchen - the only cat that had been able to get out was the only one that was supposed to be in there! I’ll leave readers to work out the identity of our ace fitter!
As usual, the deadline for the February issue is the 20th January. Please let me have articles, items, information, pictures, drawings, e-articles, e-items, e-information, e-pictures, e-drawings or whatever by the deadline - or there’s not really much point in having a deadline is there? (good point!). Someone rang last month and asked what the address is. I can guarantee that whatever bit of info I omit, someone will ask for it. Well your delivery options are any one from the following: post: Phil Mayhall, Hillcrest, Lower Village; shank’s pony: as for post; phone: 241748; fax: 241167; e-mail: woofwoof@bradworthy.co.uk
And, of course, have a Happy New Year.