More snow...

We woke up to crisp, snowy scenes outside, and the short walk to the local shops for a newspaper and a couple of food items involved some careful navigation on sheet-ice surfaces.  Later I found that two large shrubs had been damaged quite badly by the violent winds and the snow of the last couple of days, so I've had to do some hasty pruning to take the weight and the broken branches off. A satisfying job, really, and being out in the snow was good too.
Tonight we have two old friends coming round for dinner, so we've been mixing cooking preparations with Greek practice (me) and online Christmas shopping (Richard).
What to say about the current Covid variant - Omicron?  Something like this was always on the cards; it underlines the cost of failing to supply vaccines fast enough, and in large enough quantities, to countries of the global South. More broken promises. Maybe we'll escape with something more transmissible but not more deadly? Too soon to say, as yet.
In the UK, the unusually speedy responses from the government suggest that they really are worried about it. But these are patchy actions, once again, served up with a side dish of Johnson's usual empty statements about everything being OK for Christmas etc.
However: when I went into our local Asda this morning, I noticed that almost everyone was masked. This is a total change from a couple of days ago, when masks were only worn by a few. Some grounds for hope, in a limited kind of way.