Snowfall

Snow was promised and so it came to pass. No late visit to the supermarket last night because that snow was falling steadily from 7pm onwards. Why risk skidding around and potentially having a costly accident when you don't absolutely have to go out?

And so this was the view from our kitchen window when I arose this morning - three or four inches  of the white stuff. Not cocaine.

With my quiz pals, I was meant to go to Buxton today for a slap up lunch and drinks all covered by our quiz winnings but we postponed yesterday when we saw the weather forecast. Buxton in The High Peak is the highest market town in England and they really know about winter weather up there. It is twenty eight miles west of Sheffield but in a different climate zone.  Talk about global warming up there and they'll laugh at you.

Yesterday, I needed a walk but I didn't wish to drive so I put my boots on, crossed the main road and walked the length of Bannerdale Road - right down to the bottom. Then I took a path up through the allotments that nestle below the woods on Brincliffe Edge.  It's a steep climb up to Brincliffe Edge Road so a bench near the top was very welcome.

Then a woman with two dogs came along and said, "I know you don't I?"

At first I didn't recognise her and my first inner thought was, "Oh-oh. Did I do something wrong?" but I needn't have worried.

It was the Irish lady - Fidelma - who gave me three car loads of free walling stone in the summer. See here. I did not recognise her at first because her hair was different and she was wearing new glasses. But soon we were rapping away with each other again. 

I find that that is how it can be with some people. You fall into easy conversation and could carry on interminably. We just seemed to be on the same wavelength - there under the trees, with the ground carpeted in bronze, russet and yellow autumn leaves and her two dogs sniffing hither and thither - not their names!

On Netflix I just watched a recent documentary film from Colombia called "The Lost Children" which is nothing to do with "The Lost Schoolgirl". A light plane came down in dense jungle and all three adults on board were killed but four children survived - the youngest aged only eleven months.

They wandered away from the crash site and afterwards the Colombian military along with an indigenous search party struggled to locate them. But forty days after the crash, the children were all found alive! Joy upon joy!

The style of the documentary was unfamiliar which made it all the more engaging. And it was nice to watch something that was so hopeful.

Below, a random photo of allotment No. 19 under Brincliffe Edge. There are around sixty allotments on the sloping ground that can all be rented from Sheffield City Council. Here citizens can grow vegetables and fruit. A few even keep chickens which is a popular pastime with urban foxes. Allotment No. 19 suggests that the tenant may be lacking in enthusiasm though clearly all is not lost.