When it's cold outside...

Ah, a refreshingly baltic day for a change. Packed a bag including a shovel, a rug, some food & water and an ice scraper - it was time to hit the road.

Off to Stirling, L was going to try on some wedding dresses and I was going to attempt to stay warm in a Victorian house that prefers to donate any heat it's boiler generates to the outside world. Not that it is a bone of contention for my fellow offspring and I, on the winter occasions we return to the roost.

From experiences past L has remembered not to de-layer too much as she enters the house that built rosco, and she was wise to retain the now faithful snood. This raised a few questions from rosco senior - where are the ends, why are there no ends, how does that work...that kind of thing, but the most important thing was that L remained warm not frozen.

What I thought would be an easy time coffee supping, fire building and chatting turned into an episode of World's Most Dangerous Jobs* - remember, we already had a survival pack with us. We had to go find a christmas tree (bear with me). This seemed ok, but the unrelenting cold in Stirling has left the ground almost exclusively and ice sheet a couple of inches thick. The Council has managed to carve a single car-width furrow in said ice sheet on some of the roads (some), rosco senior's 4x4 had even slipped down the street while parked and was now nestled up against another 4x4 in the next space. Not inspiring confidence. So off we went to a rugby club car park that sits on prime flood plain, upon arrival at the newly opened local outdoor ice rink all we could do was aim our vehicle at the man with trees at the other side and cross our fingers.

Anyway, we got a tree from a cold looking man, and it seemed to act well (sticking halfway out the back of the car) as a kind of stabilising rudder on the way back. And this brings us to the fire, ahhh, the fire. There is nothing quite like a proper coal fire on a freezing day (even if all the heat heads straight to - and out - the huge, old, thin, single glazed windows). Just looking at his makes me feel warm(er, slightly).

And L got on well with the dresses, a good start she says - I want to know no more. And we didn't have to use our survival pack on the trip back, and there's still no sign of the doomsday snow...we shall see in the morning.



* slight exaggeration, ok