Storm Caroline

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bigyetiman

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Hope you are snug and safe Hen-Gen as Caroline sweeps through and any other P F members from up north
 
Was just thinking the same! It was so windy and wet here last night that I thought that was Caroline, but now this morning, they are saying it will be coming tonight! Along with very cold temps, ice and snow! Boo!
 
It has just started raining here in the Midlands. We usually just get a small taste of the extremes happening elsewhere but then we don't get to see the splendour of the landscape when the sun breaks through either.
Stay safe everyone.
 
I've been out this morning putting water buckets and feed troughs in the shed. Topped up the chickens feed and water because I definitely won't be seeing them tomorrow. Our all island Christmas Dinner on Saturday has been postponed. Schools shut, no ferries etc. Tilley lamps prepared and stocked up with gas cylinders for the inevitable power outage.
It's how I imagine the Blitz spirit. Should have bought a tin hat and a Vera Lyn CD!
But, as Rick says, it's a fair trade for all the benefits of living here.
 
OK I have to report that it was nowt special. About 75mph and twisted some sheeted hurdles but no other damage. Barely worth rummaging through my cupboards for hats and gloves!
On the theme of hurdles a neighbour has appraised me of the way to go. Galvanised sheeted hurdles are about £100 each and blow over in the gales. Or you can get wooden pallets for free, stand them on end and bang fence posts through the middle. Total cost about £3 each! They are resistant to the wind and the sheep are just as happy to shelter from the wind behind them whatever direction it comes from.
 
Well it looks like we will get to see if we are made of similar stuff down here Hen-Gen because its on route through the middle, north to south, for once.
I've got a new bow and was heading down to the archery field on Sunday but it doesn't look very promising now.
 
Glad to hear you managed OK, HenGen. We were due to drive to Lichfield today for family weekend but common sense has prevailed, us being only timid southerners. We are wondering if we might get a tiny sprinkle of snow tomorrow. We haven't had any down here for nearly 10 years and the dog hasn't ever seen it, though she gets very excited when I play her videos of dogs in snow on YouTube.
I used pallets and posts to make compost heaps when I had an allotment. Just tied the front pallet to the back 3 to make a square and then dropped it forward when I needed to dig out the compost. Added 3 extra pallets make the second container, and lined the pallets with scrap wood and plastic to stop the compost falling into the gaps. Nowadays I walk the dog past the allotments and am pleased to see that, 15 years on, the system is still in use. And my 7 pallets were free!
Interested to hear of another of your many talents, Rick. Are you keeping in practice for the next fox attempt?
 
Good tip with the pallets Marigold- we have a dozen here and a very tatty compost heap that needs attention.

Local forecasts are not very reliable, so three sources often gives three different predictions. They all agree however that Sunday and Monday are going to be horrendous down here, which is pretty unusual. The BBC forecast often reliably shows the prediction of front movement with precipitation across France and they agree with the French, but they show snow down here, which is a pretty rare occurrence indeed! There is no road snow clearing equipment or gritting around here and with the steep hills and no tractor we could be stuck in for a while? Fortunately we have a good fire and a stock of wine.
 
Best of luck to all you Southerners. As you say you don't get it often but when you do then it can be horrendous. I was a child in London in 1963 . Possibly the coldest that I have ever experienced.
Pallets are wonderful things. I have seen plastic ones but have not been able to get my hands on any yet.
Fire and wine, chrismahon. Sounds good to me and leads on to spicey buttered crumpets and mulled wine. :D
 
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In 1963 I was in my first teaching post, in a very small 3-teacher Victorian primary school in Somerset. The village was totally snowed in for the first three weeks of term so we got extra holiday, but made up for it on our return when we had to struggle a mile up the hill from the bus stop in Radstock. The bus couldn't manage the hill, and although I usually drove to school, the cross-country car journey from Bath was impossible until March. The school had outside toilets on the far side of the playground and the Head had to go out with a metal stake to break the ice in them every day, and then carry water from the main building to attempt to flush them. Heating was by a coke stove in each classroom, lit by the caretaker at 7a.m, and the teachers had to keep them going by constantly nurturing and feeding them throughout the day. Mine used to go out quite often because I was so busy with the class that I forgot about it, and then the caretaker had to be summoned again to re-light it. The fumes from the stove activated my asthma,in the days before modern inhalers were invented to help a bit. Also the head mistress was a horrible old dragon who made frequent use of the cane, the school was really under-resourced with old Arithmetic textbooks showing people in 19230s clothing, and the main subject on the top class's timetable was Intelligence, in the vain hope of getting someone through to the Grammar School one day. Not a happy situation for an inexperienced young teacher!
 
If you were in London in 1963 Hen-Gen you must remember those pea souper fogs to. I can remember the snow that year as well, with mum valiantly walking us to school, then getting shopping on way home. Funny how we all coped without cars, gritters etc and no central heating.
It's easy to get pallets round here, you just drive along and they appear to be growing by the side of the road.
 
I certainly do remember the smog. A real health and safety issue nowadays but we all accepted it then. I also remember walking three miles to school and then three miles back home. And in all that time I was never run over or kidnapped by a pedophile.
 
Me neither and we made it to school and back without hi vis vests, played with conkers without injuring anyone, climbed on things and fell off and survived
 
I had what I considered to be an over-protective mother, but so long as I left the house fully wrapped up, knitted balaclava and all, (removed once I was out of sight) I was free to play for hours in the local Council Grounds, making camps with my gang in somewhat unsavoury undergrowth. The only time anything nasty happened was when I was 13, on my way to the chip shop after Guides, when a man sitting on a bike asked me for the time. I replied politely and then he said he had something to show me, so in my innocence I went nearer, but couldn't see anything. Then he said 'Just put your hand here' so I did, and it was something sort of warm and squishy just above the level of the saddle. Coming from an all-female household and in the absence of any meaningful sex education, it took me a moment or two to work out what was happening. When I realised, I withdrew my hand, said 'No thank you' equally politely, and ran off down the dark lane to the chip shop. I wasn't going to miss my 2p.worth of chips, but was highly relieved on the way back to find he had disappeared. I never mentioned it to anyone, let alone my mother, for fear of being forbidden to go for chips after Guides, which in any case I was not supposed to do.
 
valeriebutterley said:
Marigold, I hope you washed your hands before eating your chips!!!!
Click to expand...

I'm shocked!!, shocked at you Valerie Butterley :o :lol:


You ought to write some memoirs Marigold, I would certainly buy them, it's fascinating stuff. When you wrote about your first posting as a teacher it conjured up pictures of Joan Fontaine in "The Witches", I hope they weren't running a satanic cult in Somerset into the bargain.

We used to have flashers on our estate growing up in the 70s and 80s and "strangers" were a huge topic of concern among our parents and teachers, I remember being jealous of my friend who got a ride in a police rover after someone had tried to pick him up. As is turned out the real danger turned out to be the risk of being beaten to death by people you rubbed shoulders with every day. Four kids from our school went that way in five years believe it or not. I say that as generally when I tell people that they think I'm making it up as it is so far outside of their own experience.

Snowing very heavily here in Buckinghamshire, woke up to 4 inches of snow and it is due to go down to -7 here on Monday night.
 
Don't know why you are shocked dino, it seems to me to be a clean thing to do, after handling something unknown and floppy. Could have been absolutely anything.
 
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