Cheering up

Freda asks what we are doing to brighten up January.

May I submit my origami wreath

in colours to co-ordinate with a jam pot?

Also a possible kitchen floor colour change.
The blue linoleum of twenty years service
was mysteriously and irrevocably damaged
around the time that the new windows went in.
Yellow is being considered.
It is even more blazingly sunny than this photo suggests.

The cyclamen are doing their best to cheer up the view from the window.

Enjoying the Snow

from my trusty guide Something to Do.

Toboganning

For tobogganing you need wintry weather, snow, a slope and a sledge.

Or if you like, you can use a tray.

They then give comprehensive instructions for building a sledge. 
As well as the timber you'll need 7 feet of strip steel and some 
beeswax to speed up the runners. 
(Nothing in this book is for the faint-hearted.)

Eskimoes

(Not very p.c I know...it was published in 1966)

Eskimoes are contented people, very good-natured and generous to visitors. They have enormous appetites and two Eskimoes sitting down together can eat a whole raw seal.

They believe that if you scold a child his ears will grow too large, so they never punish their children, but pet them instead. The children grow up to be very kind and affectionate. They have a very complicated language, and use one word where we would use a whole sentence.

IGDLORSSUALIORTUGSSARSIUMAVOQ is Eskimo for 

'He wants to find someone to build him a house.'

A skilled Eskimoe takes less than three hours to build a snowhouse 
for his family. 

He covers the inside wall with skins and makes the bed from a shelf of packed snow

 Followed by a set of instructions for building an igloo.

Snowballs

This is surprisingly specific and involves choosing a Prisoner who goes away leaving clear tracks in the snow. The Prisoner has the count of one hundred to arm himself with as many snowballs as possible, and then to hide 

at some vantage point from where he can bombard his pursuers.

There are rules about what the pursuers are allowed to do while trying to capture him.

Nowadays snowball fights are the subject of serious debate in the media.

 Calvin and Hobbes There's Treasure Everywhere by Bill Watterson

A Winter Picnic

...if it is far away, you will have to go by bus or car or bike, or train (by pony if you are very lucky) and take with you the food and drink and some dry sticks and paper to start the bonfire.

 I have just attempted what should have been a ten minute journey to collect my son from a friend's house tonight with barely an inch of snow on the ground and had to turn back after half an hour having got no further than the end of my road.


We're just not made the same way anymore.

Our favourite walk 7 months later

I never tire of this view

of the Seven Sisters at Cuckmere Haven.

I never tire of the sight of the Downland flowers,

and butterflies.

The tide was in

so we had to wait to get down on to the beach.

Green taglietelle seaweed.

Let the cavorting begin.

Highly reminiscent of Bill Watterson's cartoon characters

Calvin and Hobbes,

much beloved of our family

Does anyone know what this is?

Precarious setting, (everything is tumbling into the sea),

but unrivalled views.