Cockbridge to Tomintoul

 Traffic Scotland ‏@trafficscotland 55m ago

#A939 btwn Tomintoul and Cock Bridge - Snow Gates are *closed* due to severe blizzards and drifting snow :( #StaySafe

There's something really vicious and personal about sleet - it wriggles into your shoes and down the back of your neck; it finds all your weaknesses. Snow falls, gently, heavily or in flurries, but sleet sidles in, looking a bit dodgy.

I got soaked taking the kids to school this morning. I imagine they got a bit wet too actually, though they only walked half as far. I felt guilty about doing my usual thing of parking at the local shops and walking along to the school  - it's only 100 metres or so, but the weather was vile this morning, and I'd have been better braving the school car-park and dropping them off just for once. Mummy Guilt - it's ever-present. Also I'd have got much less wet. Hmm, must remember that in the morning if it's still horrible.

I follow Traffic Scotland on Twitter and they've been hard at work today with updates (Skye Bridge closed, Skye Bridge open, Skye Bridge closed again - it's been a bit fresh apparently). And now the surest sign of winter is here - the A939 Cockbridge to Tomintoul road is closed, among others. There's also the A93 Spittal of Glenshee to Braemar, B974 Fettercairn to Banchory and the B9007 Carrbridge to Ferness, which I'm including to add an air of exoticism to the blog. I live in the comparatively tropical Central Belt, well to the south, where we're getting sleet, hail and highish winds rather than blizzards, and I haven't been over that road in years, and never in winter thankfully, but from my childhood I remember traffic reports on the radio in the winter talking about the Cockbridge to Tomintoul road - mostly Terry Wogan joking about it as I recall.

Should you be interested, my second sock is about to have its heel turned, I'm getting stressed about Christmas shopping and tomorrow night I'm helping at the school disco. The very thought of the disco is making me want to lie down in a darkened room but I'm sure it'll be fine. Fine. Fine! (to be said in the voice of the mother in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang).

Every night I think I should write a blog-post, and I honestly do have things to ramble on about, but every evening it all trickles out of my head and that's that.  Evenings over the last three weeks were rather taken up with my annual trashy telly fix, that being I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which was fun but not startlingly so this year (possibly nothing will ever top the comedy gold that was Paul Burrell doing Hell Holes), and at the end quite mystifying - who exactly was voting for Foggy?  My Beloved said that his motorbike forum were equally perplexed.

Oh well.

Skies

 This was the sky just as I picked the kids from school at 3 o'clock.

And this is the sunset just before we set off for Miss M's dance class, so at about 4pm.

We don't often get beautiful sunsets here as cloud tends to be the dominant feature, but tonight's was a cracker - it got even better, and at one stage the horizon was a really delicate apricot colour, but obviously I was driving and couldn't take any more pictures. But really, driving into a beautiful sunset made up for not being able to take pictures. I should have had some kind of stirring soundtrack, but actually it was the usual low-grade bickering from the back.

Success! Tonight, while I watched I'm A Celebrity and had my feet numbed by a sleeping cat*,  I have Turned A Heel, having done some arithmetic to get it right as I'm doing a 72-stitch sock and the pattern is for 64. I'm perfectly capable of arithmetic, it's just I'm still at the stage of thinking that turning a heel is Magic, so working out what the decreases and turns are actually doing is a bit... intimidating.

 (Dubiously) But it looks as if it's worked.

I have no idea what the next line of the pattern means though. I keep re-reading it, hoping that the meaning will jump out at me.  I'll have to dig out the pattern I usually use and compare it.  I really do need a pattern that's written for the completely clueless. But, the rest of the foot should be pretty quick and easy anyway!



* You should have heard the cracking noises as I walked upstairs after having had Small Cat sitting on my ankles for two hours. Quite alarming really.

So I failed

I missed a day's blogging.  I just couldn't manage a post without a picture, not two days running!

But I've sorted out the thing with the pictures, and in no particular order as Dec would say, here are some for you.

The ghostly galleon, the picture I was going to use on my last post. Bit wobbly and blurry but surprisingly good given the low levels of light.

After the kids went to bed last night, instead of blog-posting, I spent a lovely evening with my cat and My Beloved (that's in no particular order of course). We watched I'm A Celebrity (naturally), we debated who we thought would leave the jungle, who we think will win, and of course who we'd send into camp. I'd send Ray Mears and Brian Blessed and Hugh Fearnley-Whatnot and similar people, and watch Ray blithely ignore the Snake Rock and Croc Creek camps and lead his Merry Men and Women (though I haven't thought of any suitable women yet) off into the (actual) jungle with the panic-stricken production crew and Ant and Dec trotting behind.

After that we watched an episode of Castle (love this), then an episode of Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated. The latter is an overlooked gem. The kids love it so we've seen quite a lot of it but it was good to watch it without them for once. Really a programme that produces a horror-writer character called HP Hatecraft who has taken to writing teen supernatural romances, well that's got to be good.

In other thrilling news I've bought some beads for the ends of my scarf. Aren't they pretty? So far they've been used to help Miss M with her maths homework (division! They're onto division already!), but one day I'll get round to sewing them onto the scarf and all will be pretty.

Right, must finish. Celebs and bugs and rats, oh my, in five minutes...

What passed for normality

My brother has been getting back into scanning The Slides - mysterious chronicles of our childhood and other parts of the olden days. The picture above more or less summarises what passed for normality when we were kids.

Peafowl are forest birds - they like to roost. Obviously roosting places were few and far between round us - we lacked jungliness somewhat. Percy liked perching at the top of my swing, occasionally on the car and sometimes on the garage roof. The wall would do at a pinch.

*sigh* Talking of jungles, sort of, oh dear. I love I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here but I'm despairing at the uselessness of Helen. Somebody put a lot of time and effort into designing and constructing those trials and their genius is going unnoticed! Actually I despair at the idiots who are 'phoning in and voting for her to do the trials - where's the entertainment in it? Really? Even Ant and Dec look despairing..

It's that time of year again!

Well, I am sticking to the shallows!  Ah, Ant and Dec, celebs and bugs, what more could I want? It started last night but My Beloved recorded it for me so I didn't have to inflict it on my parents and brother. I got home this afternoon after a four hour drive - probably not long to the likes of Mrs Micawber and others of you from BIG countries, but a Very Long Drive indeed to me. On the subject of big countries, I've been amusing myself looking up countries in the CIA World Factbook to see how they relate in size to US states. I've long been entertained by the way they do that - it adds an amusingly parochial note to their statistics! It won't let me search the other way though - I want to know the names of countries which are 'about as big as Wisconsin'. The UK is 'slightly smaller than Oregon' apparently. Australia is 'slightly smaller than the US contiguous 48 states but has more spiders than you can shake a stick at'. Okay, I made the latter half of that one up - all I know is I once flew across part of it and it took ages.


How on earth am I going to 'label' this post? I think 'it's a bit random' about covers it.