Snow. Much snow.

As in "enough snow to make Much complain." Well, it doesn't take much to make Much complain. If you see what I mean... It started early this morning, just a few flurries of small flakes, then it decided to go for it and started with really big flakes. And it kept on going, all morning, until the whole world was white and fluffy. The Hairy Bloke thought it looked nice, so took a few photos of the garden and the snowy hills. The Lovely Lady of the Stories was on a train, heading Up North to visit her parents. And Much was grumbling. He had snow on his head, and snow over his feet - he could still see over the top of it, but he was grumbling (well, that's what Much does...) Then the sun came out, and it began to melt. And Much was grumbling, because it was turning all wet and slushy. Then it began to freeze, so it stopped getting all wet and slushy. Yes, you've guessed it - Much was grumbling because it was freezing. I think he's only happy when he's got something to grumble about: it's being so miserable that keeps him cheerful.

Years ago, when we lived in Northumberland, we had an American student stay with us over Christmas. She arrived the day before Christmas Eve, and was a bit bemused by the fact that we were all getting very excited about the possibility of a white Christmas. I explained that it doesn't often snow at Christmas, so we get excited when it does, and the weather man said it was going to. She explained that where she lived, it snowed in November and melted in March, and you could set your calendar by it.

When we got up the next morning, it had snowed during the night - but not in the valley bottom. We were in the green and wet, and halfway up the hillsides it turned to white. I had promised to take her into town, so we went the pretty way, up the hill and along the top of the valley. THere is a road there which is built where the Roman Wall once stood, and a field halfway along where King Oswald of Northumbria defeated a pagan king and his army, so was free to ask the monks on Iona to send him someone to help spread the Christian faith in his Kingdom. That is one of those places where world history changed. The road was originally built by an English general to deploy troops in the years after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion (our Scottish ancestry doesn't like that part of the story very much, but it is part of the story). So, in one short drive, we touched Roman history, Anglo-Saxon history, and 18th C British history - about 2,000 years in one morning. She was suitably impressed, and had a whale of a time.

But what impressed her almost as much was the way we could drive from a green world to a white world and back to a green world in just 5 miles, and when we were up there in the white world, we could see the green world of the river valley snaking along below us. And the sun shone, and we enjoyed the day, and it was the beginning of a wonderful Christmas.

This was the view this morning from the front of the house.

And this was the view from the back garden, looking over the river. Lovely.