By Thursday the garden was snow-free.  The only snow we had was the remains of the snowberg in the front "porch" which had come when the roof snow had avalanched off.  Otherwise everything was green rather than white and we were beginning to consider going out and rescuing the garden.

On Thursday afternoon it snowed again.  Not a lot, just a couple of centimetres.  But enough to turn everything white again.

And the temperatures plummeted.

The plan had been to head to London on Saturday.  I had bought tickets to the Wartime Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and we were going to run down in the car for the day, park at an outer London station and tube in.  The forecast for the south of England was dire for Saturday. Extreme weather warnings had been issued.  Traffic alerts had been issued.  Rather aptly we were getting lots of  "Is your journey really necessary" messages.  We decided not to go. 

So we stayed at home and rather vaguely began to think about next weekend.  We did go out, though.  We went to the local dairy which is now in addition to milk and cream selling bread from Jackson's bakery.  We bought some.  And then we headed off to Chatsworth for a final, pre-Christmas shop.  We took off along our usual route, which got icier and icier, and slippier and slippier, and scarier and scarier.  Granted we were up quite high and were out on the open moor, but the thought of the narrow, winding, steep slope down into Beeley was not enticing.  True, that road might have been less harrowing, because it is tree covered and more protected.  But it might not!  So we turned around and went back into Chesterfield and went out on the main road.

The shop was strangely quiet.  The lad who took our money says he expected it to get busier as the day went on.  But I had rather expected it to be busy quite early.  Still - nice for us that it wasn't.

Then we went home.  And that was more or less all we did all weekend.  It was cold and icy outside.  It was neither cold nor icy in our house. We have food and wine and bread and milk. No reason at all to go out. So we didn't.

In the meantime there seems to be travel chaos over most of Britain.  Airports are closed, railways are not running, motorways have become parking lots and it is veryveryvery cold.  But it's OK where we are, mercifully
.