The Big Freeze

Like many people in Europe today we've been struggling with the weather.

This morning we had just a trickle of water from the kitchen tap. Luckily that trickle was enough to get the mains water moving through the pipes and eventually it became a glug-glug-glug-gurgle rush. Meanwhile the mains water at "our" end of the house remains frozen.

Today we discovered that when the pipework was first installed the plumber, optimistically,("but you live in the south of france mate") left a small length of pipework on the outside wall of the house, unlagged.

So, after a shopping trip, Lizzie and I found a tall enough ladder, and lagged it. We're hoping it will gently unfreeze without harm.

What else? The gas containers outside the house have now been replaced and zipped into Lizzie's old down jackets, the lemon and orange trees have been eased into fleecy bags, we've been chain-sawing wood fit to bust and we're fast approaching "three hat" territory.

Of course we don't live in Poland (-30 degrees) Latvia (-36 degrees) or Oxfordshire (-12 degrees) so our little world is only 6 degrees under at night and we don't have anything to complain about. But then of course we're built for heat and not cold, so we're not at all prepared for it.

Thermals at dawn it is then.