A crisp winter's day

It was a beautiful day today, blue skies and sunny but cold - in fact it felt colder than any day we experienced when we were in the Swiss Alps. I think in the mountains it is a dry kind of cold which is more tolerable, but this damp cold we get here has a way of eating in to your bones!

We walked Xena and met a couple who had a beautiful Boxer with only three legs, one of the hind legs was amputated right at the top near the hip joint. They can just be seen at the top of the path in this image. The dog coped very well with only three legs and was running around enjoying his walk as normal.

It has been a busy day - after our walk we went grocery shopping to stock up the fridge. Then while Gavin was precariously balancing on a ladder taking down all the outside Christmas lights I was inside doing post-Christmas sorting - changed all the bedding in the boys' rooms, washed and ironed the bedding. Then I made lunch and after lunch set the self clean on the oven which definitely needed it after the Christmas dinner plus other usage - the oven locks for about 3 hours and at a temperature of 485C it basically burns off any grease so now it is like sparkling new again.

I also filled up the bird feeders and set up my new bird feeder that Adam gave me for Christmas, it's the only squirrel proof feeder I have ever found that works.

Last night, as tired as we were from our car journey, we watched the final episode of Mr Bates vs The Post Office. For those unfamiliar with it, it was an excellent short TV series recently shown about the real life situation where the post office computer system failed and hundreds of sub-post masters were accused of fraud. What is incredible is that this case has gone on for about 20 years and this TV dramatisation of the facts have inspired the public to call for the person who was the head of the PO at the time, to be now stripped of her OBE. I hope it does happen as she was awful the way she handled the situation.

I am due to go to London this week and there are damn tube strikes - between the train strikes, tube strikes and the selfish junior doctor strikes life can be quite frustrating for many at the moment - well, life threatening in the case of the junior doctor strikes.