OK, so surely Spring should be nearly here by now? The snow was wonderful – mostly because we are so unused to seeing our landscape covered in a blanket of white, but now the green grass is back I am just plain cold. Freezing cold in fact. Sitting in my little office which has a decided lack of radiator – it is a miracle my hands are working well enough for me to type this – it may be I trail off mid sentence soon as frostbite sets in. I could, I suppose, wear a pair of those horrid fingerless gloves a la Fagin, but feel they are rather sad and sorry and would rather have blue finger tips instead. We have a holiday cottage in Stiffkey (Valley Cottage) that the good folk at Kett look after for us and it feels like the summer is a long way off. I have always had a passion for the north Norfolk countryside and when working in London would love nothing better than a weekend out of the smog. I actually preferred coming up to Norfolk in the autumn or winter rather than high Summer because there is something heart warming (and feet warming – equally as important) about a brisk dog walk somewhere rural and muddy and then coming in and plonking down by a roaring fire – rosy cheeks smarting and baggy socks flopping on the way to the kitchen to make an obscenely large mug of creamy hot chocolate. White hot chocolate is a current favourite of mine, incomplete without fast melting mini marshmallows that soon turn to a sickly sweet, shaving foam like flotsam on top! Anyway, all this talk of hot drinks has rendered me incapable of doing anything else other than putting a pan of milk on the hob – and probably ordering some more oil before we run out… doesn’t seem to last very long these days!
