Happy New Year to you all and what a splendidly splendid New Year it has been thus far. Ms Playchute and I actually made it as far as celebrating the New Year in Paris this year and then, of course, we were awakened at midnight here by the enormous fireworks display which makes Byfield famous in these parts. (I’m sure I have written in the past but we have the tremendous pleasure of living in the same village as some fellow who works with fireworks and so whenever there is the most merest of excuses, the village is treated to a fireworks display which would put most large cities to shame.) This year’s pyrotechnic demonstration lasted only about thirty minutes but when you have already been asleep for some time the earth shattering, window rattling and bed shaking concussive explosions do tend to provide a bit of a surprise. The good news – Pippa is now clearly completely deaf and felt no need to join us in bed which is, believe me, a considerable relief.
And, as well as being a particularly fine New Year, it’s also been a most pleasantly enjoyable week, in spite of the BBC’s dire warnings of the inclement weather which we were due to experience from about Monday onwards – deep, deep, impassable snow covering parts of the country with the usual warnings about sheep starving in the fields and the dawn of the next ice age. Well, to be fair, we did have a bit of snow on Monday and Tuesday – in beautiful downtown Byfield I should think we mustered at least half an inch while in those areas most affected such as Kent, Sussex and East Anglia, they probably had about six to eight inches which was more or less gone by Thursday or Friday. Have to say, the weather was certainly cold and the frost on the trees presented a particularly pleasant picture but by Thursday we were back to our normal grey, dreary, overcast days.
The attached photos illustrate some of our activities during the past week. Firstly, on Wednesday Ms Playchute’s favourite Christmas present arrived – a huge mountain of manure with which she has set about covering every square inch of our garden (apart from the lawns) to a depth of about eight inches to a foot. The quantity delivered was somewhat larger than she had anticipated, I guess but there’s no question that the vegetables and herbaceous borders will love it. The photo of my sweetheart in her pink hat whilst on the phone is just so that you too can share in the experience – that was her muck-spreading uniform and she was summoned in to take a quick phone call. The hat, very kindly supplied by Ben and/or Donna for Christmas either last year or the year before, is the only appropriate winter head gear she has so it was pressed into action and, at the very least, kept the birds and other wild animals away. And finally, the photo of me on Nick’s bike was actually taken last week on the Friday after my birthday with my new cycling gear with which Ms Penelope presented me (and, in spite of the relatively modest nature of the temperature, it did indeed manage to keep me relatively warm. Well, at least as soon as I had cycled a couple of miles I was warm enough!)
Not much else, I guess, apart from wishing you all the very, very best for 2006.
All our love to you all,
Greg
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