Bonnie morning with a cold wind ....

 

13th February 2021 (Saturday)      10.00 ....we have a lovely morning at the

Centre of the Universe, but there is a cool breeze, so wrap up well when you go out.    And .... the pavements are icy so take care.   I walk on the road whenever I can.

We had a beautiful pre-sunrise sky this morning, but a bank of low cloud obscured the actual sunrise;   and it was too cold to wait the 15 minutes or so it was going to take the sun to climb above said cloudbank.   I’m no’ sayin’ that it’s cauld on the beach; but it’s probably warmer at the harbour!

19.30    It wasn’t warmer at the harbour, but there was shelter in the lee of the granary.   I remembered to pick up the paper....and to go to the Cash point to get ‘real’ old fashioned money.    This is the first time I have taken money out since April last year;  I’d almost forgotten how to do it!   The pavement at the Cash point is really icy... and you can’t avoid it.

I spent an exciting couple hour and a half watching the Scotland v Wales match at Murrayfield.   Scotland ended up with 14 men  and were beaten 24 – 25, but it was a good game right to the end.   When I went to make a cuppa at half time I noticed that it had been snowing:  I’m hoping that it doesn’t freeze and turns to rain by morning.    I’m orf to make myself another cuppa (the rugby just finished a wee while ago) then I’ll have a look at the photos I took today.

 

22.00    My word:   Jackie and Iain (Auchnagatt) are well and truly ‘snawed in’.   The snow blowing off the fields (‘blin’ drift’.... in those days;   ‘whiteout nowadays)) has filled up all the roads and they can go nowhere.   This has reminded me of the winter of 1947, when we lived at Myrebird (Crathes) and all the roads filled up with snow.   My Dad would dig out a path to the neighbouring croft, one day and it would fill up by the next day.     All the houses out in the countryside depended on the vans for their ‘shopping’...... you know grocer, baker and butcher;  the grocer came every week, the other fortnightly if I remember correctly.   Of course there were no vans at this time so, in an emergency you had to make a black cross on the snow (with soot) if you were in need of emergency supplies (by this time we were the owners of a (wireless’).   I remember seeing a plane fly over, with someone standing in a doorway on

the side of it.... but we didn’t need emergency supplies, as my Dad had met up with his friend, Ed Montgomery (‘Monty’), and they had walked to Banchory, a distance of four miles, to the nearest place with all the required shops.     I remember ‘Dad’ arriving back home with a pillowcase full of shopping....bread, flour etc. and he was ‘cauld’.    I don’t think I have ever seen anyone as cold as he was that afternoon.    Myrebird was a brilliant place in the summertime.... but it was cold in winter.  

Now that I’m in reminiscing mode re Myrebird:  I remember once walking to Banchory, with Mum and Henry, Mum pushing the pram (Janet would be in it), in the summer of 1945.   This walk I remember because one of the shops had a slot where you put a penny in and it rolled into a jar for our servicemen.   Mum gave Henry and me a penny each to put in the jar, for Uncle Lewis, who was a POW of the Japanese at the time.   Just in case you are thinking that Henry’s wee legs would be sair walking that distance;  there was a flat piece of wood (an old shelf) across the pram, where Henry would sit when he got tired.   Those were ‘the good old days’!

The snow we had this afternoon hasn’t come too much and I think it might well be rain by morning!