We had a fantastic Christmas Day. The sunrise was stunning that morning.
Our friends Mr and Mrs H came for lunch which all worked exactly to plan and they were very complementary about my food, which I am very happy about as they used to own a restaurant and Mrs H is a food presentation expert. We sat by the log fire having several cups of after-lunch coffee, generally chewing the cud and relaxing. A lovely day.
Yesterday we had been invited to some other friends for the day. Mr and Mrs H were also invited and had kindly offered to drive us as it is at least an hour away.
An hour or so before we were due to leave a light sprinkling of little snow started.
'I'm so glad it's not us driving today' we said to each other.
By the time Mr and Mrs H turned up to collect us, it was a little more serious.
It would have been foolhardy to have driven in this, and we called Mr and Mrs E to say that we just couldn't make it. Mr and Mrs H had already taken 15 minutes to get to us, a drive that is usually 5 minutes maximum. We might just have got to Mr and Mrs E's by tea time instead of lunch and then there was no guarantee that we would get home again.
Our friends bid a hasty retreat home while they could, just in case it got worse and they couldn't get out again.
We had some lunch then decided to wander down to the main road to see what was going on. We could see a few vehicles crawling along the road from our house. On our track, our neighbour had abandoned his own car just before our driveway and had walked the rest of the way home uphill. Further down, another car has been abandoned too - we have no idea whose it is as it is registered in a completely different part of France!
Down at the main road, looking north we saw this.....
... but looking in the opposite direction up the hill we could see that nothing was moving and some lorries were completely stuck. The gendarmes had been called to supervise the traffic and were having a noisy conversation with a couple who had just left their campervan.
Just as we were turning to go back home, a steady stream of traffic crawled down the hill. Dozens of cars, lorries and trucks made their way gingerly northwards. It appeared that there had been a traffic 'incident' about which I can learn nothing at the moment, but these vehicles must have been stuck for at least two hours as we had seen nothing moving for at least that long.
We tramped back home and snuggled up in front of the log burner to watch 'Mamma Mia!' on DVD, then we scrabbled around and managed to make ourselves a very nice supper.
Today the snow is still lying. The cars are still abandoned on the track and we will be going nowhere again. The cats are totally bemused by this cold white stuff and only venture outside for the briefest of times to answer those calls which cannot be ignored!
The bird feeders are being well frequented and our resident pair of magpies are hopping around underneath hoping that the blue tits, coal tits and blackcaps will drop them some little titbits of food. Misty inside the back door chattering at them but not bothered about going to chase them off today.
So, if you want to know where we are today. It's just here.
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