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Raisie Bay

snow

My Sunday Snapshots – The Measure of cake and Snow

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This has been a difficult week and even though I was sliding down slippery slope I really thought I’d reached the bottom. But no! It ended with a massive crash. The good news is that things are on the up now. I think we really did fall to the floor and now it’s time to start picking up the pieces. Well, I hope so, fingers tightly crossed. The week started good though and there was a fair measure of cake!

chocolate decorated cake with nuts and candles that spell Happy Birthday
Mocha Hazelnut Cake

It was my eldest son’s birthday and I think he enjoyed his cake. I made it following the BBC Good food recipe and just for good measure I made another cake for the kids. This was just chocolate with buttercream and chocolate sprinkles and Star helped me to make it.

measure of cake, this time chocolate with white buttercream and chocolate swirls.

Never mind the Cake, Let’s Measure the Snow!

Last weekend we had a snowfall and I shared some snowy pics in my last post but I loved that my Little Man was obsessed with measuring how deep the snow was with his ruler.

four photos of a little boy measuring snow with a ruler

I think the deepest snow he measured was 9cm which was on the trampoline. That’s not a bad snowfall really, I’m glad it didn’t last too long though. As well as measuring the snow he also made two snowmen with his brother.

It snowed again yesterday but it didn’t stick around which I was grateful for. It’s nice to experience a snowfall in winter, but I wouldn’t like to have to live with it for any length of time. It disrupted the beginning of the week for us with Graham not being able to get the car out of our grove to get my daughter to work. I was surprised that the shopping delivery turned up, but he did although he was nearly an hour late. Then he got stuck. I guess that’s what we get for living at the bottom of a hill.

RachelSwirl

My Sunday Snapshot, Help! Stuck in a Vanilla Swarm

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Today I’m sitting here watching the snow fall, a vanilla swarm. We’ve had a fair bit this week but today it’s really falling and my eldest has just been out to measure it on the garden chair and it’s 6cm already. Yesterday I was fascinated with the snow that had fallen in the night and took some photos.

photograph of garden fairy lights covered in snow and ice in the vanilla swarm
snow on the fairy lights in the garden

Fifty Words for Snow

Kate Bush has an album called Fifty Words for Snow and on it is a track of the same name featuring Stephen Fry. ( I actually love to listen to audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry.) It has some real strange words along some normal ones. I did write a post about it myself three years ago when we had a fair bit of snow. Just like today.

The snow is still falling here and I can see my neighbours child at his bedroom window getting very excited. I hope his mum lets him go out and play in it soon. My kids seem disinterested, but I hope my little man goes out later, I’m trying to convince him.

Trees in Vanilla Swarm

These are the trees at the bottom of my garden taken yesterday morning. On my Instagram stories you can see a short video of the snow falling this morning.

large trees in a snow storm or vanlla swarm
snow trees

This morning the sky is pure white and full of snow. I think we are going to have a lot more snow. I’m staying here, snug under my blanket.

Fifty Words For Snow by Kate Bush

1 drifting
2 twisting
3 whiteout
4 blackbird braille
5 Wenceslasaire
6 avalanche
Come on man, you’ve got 44 to go,
come on man, you’ve got 44 to go.
Come on man, you’ve got 44 to go,
come on man, you’ve got 44 to go.
7 swans-a-melting
8 deamondi-pavlova
9 eiderfalls
10 Santanyeroofdikov
11 stellatundra
12 hunter’s dream
13 faloop’njoompoola
14 zebranivem
15 spangladasha
16 albadune
17 hironocrashka
18 hooded-wept
Come on Joe, you’ve got 32 to go,
come on Joe, you’ve got 32 to go.
Come on now, you’ve got 32 to go,
come on now, you’ve got 32 to go.
Don’t you know it’s not just the Eskimo.
Let me hear your 50 words for snow.
19 phlegm de neige
20 mountainsob
21 anklebreaker
22 erase-o-dust
23 shnamistoflopp’n
24 terrablizza
25 whirlissimo
26 vanilla swarm
27 icyskidski
28 robber’s veil
Come on Joe, just 22 to go,
come on Joe, just 22 to go.
Come on Joe, just you and the Eskimos,
Come on now, just 22 to go.
Come on now, just 22 to go,
Let me hear your 50 words for snow.
29 creaky-creaky
30 psychohail
31 whippoccino
32 shimmerglisten
33 Zhivagodamarbletash
34 sorbetdeluge
35 sleetspoot’n
36 melt-o-blast
37 slipperella
38 boomerangablanca
39 groundberry down
40 meringuerpeaks
41 crème-bouffant
42 peDtaH ‘ej chIS qo’
43 deep’nhidden
44 bad for trains
45 shovelcrusted
46 anechoic
47 blown from polar fur
48 vanishing world
49 mistraldespair
50 snow.

Source: LyricFindSongwriters:

Kate Bush 50 Words for Snow lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Can you guess what my favourite one is?

RachelSwirl

My Sunday Photo – Sunday Snowday

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Sunday Snowday

a black cat contrasted against the white snow

It’s Sunday, SUNday, not Snowday! I’m so fed up of snow days, enough already. Let’s have Spring now.

Yesterday the weather just couldn’t decided what to do. One minute it was snowing, the next, the sun was shining. But overnight, the snow won out…well, the sun wasn’t there to compete and I guess the moon just doesn’t have the same snow melting power.

This morning we woke up to….snow. Lots of snow. The garden is covered, the car is covered, the roads are impassible. My daughter has a hospital appointment that was re-arranged because of the snow and now we will have to re-arrange it again because of the snow.

Someone is not minding it too much though. My one remaining cat went out for a leap.

black cat leaping on the white snow

You are much braver than me Sabrina!

How is the weather bearing up for you today?

Photalife
Sunday Snap

Fifty Words for Snow

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Did you know that Kate Bush had a single (and an album) called Fifty Words for Snow? The single features Stephen Fry and he names fifty words for snow (bet that surprised you!)

I tend to think of Kate Bush a lot when it snows, one of my favourite songs of hers was ‘December Will Be Magic Again’ where the snow falls to cover the muck up…and it certainly does. But it causes so much disruption and it certainly doesn’t take the muck away. Our garden is currently a mud bath after the melted snow. We have had water disruptions due to burst water pipes and we lost our heating and hot water for a while.

Santanyeroofdikov

Okay, the song contains a lot of words that are made up and ‘santanyeroofdikov’ is one of them. I think it means that Santa is on your roof with a bit of a Russian twist?

The snow we had last week seemed to drift off the roofs, it didn’t want to settle. Well, not until Friday when it settled in force and we first became snowed in. The earlier snow was sort of powdery, you definitely couldn’t make a snowman from it. It was blown around by the gale force winds of storm Emma and it was so, so cold. Because the roads and pavements were not affected I didn’t think the kids were going to get a day off school, but they did. On Thursday evening the school sent a text to say they would be closed on Friday. They called it right, on Friday morning it was still blustery and cold, but by the afternoon the snow was coming down fast and sticking. It was soon forming drifts half way up the doors and fences. It was a proper ‘vanilla swarm.’

Terrablizza

By Friday evening we were snowed in, good and proper. My daughter had a hospital appointment but my husband barely got a quarter of the way there and had to turn back. The traffic was just not moving.

Saturday, we were happy to stay indoors. The kids had lost interest in the snow and didn’t want to go out and play, in fact there were very few kids out in the neighbourhood too. This snowstorm really wasn’t welcome. I was proud of our cat who braved the snow to go outside even though she was practically buried in it. Good job she’s black and not white, we may have lost her!

I didn’t take any photos of the snow. I guess even I was bored of it. Here’s one I took of the last snow fall just before Christmas.

In a totally unimaginative way, I called it ‘snow.’ Kate Bush would not be proud.

Slipperella

By Sunday the rain had started but it was like little drops of ice, ‘psychohail.’ The snow started to clear a little leaving a deluge of slippery slush. Still not good to go out. Which is a shame because we had been invited out to an event at Pizza Express which had to be cancelled. I guess I expected it would be, and the kids did too. Maybe they will do it again another day.

I don’t know if it was the snow, or cabin fever or whatever, but things started to get tense in the house by Sunday. I was hoping so much that the snow would clear and the kids would be going back to school on Monday. They seemed to bicker with each other all day, I lost count of the tantrums.

Stellatundra

Don’t you know it’s not just the Eskimo.
Let me hear your 50 words for snow.

Just so you know I’m telling the truth, here is Kate Bush and Stephen Fry with 50 Words for Snow and someone’s home video of an awful lot of snow.

The Snow has gone now!

Thank goodness for that.

 

Debs Random Writings

Word of the Week – Cold

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Cold

a frosty icicle bubble

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

So a lot of things have happened this week but how could my word be anything other than cold! I know most of the country will be feeling the same.

I think we may have got off lightly with a lot of the weather, I may be eating my words by the time this is posted, but we haven’t had a huge amount of snow, just an relentless flurry of the white stuff. It has been so, so cold though.

On Monday I had to go and pick up the kids from school in my wheelchair. There was a slight flutter of snow but it wasn’t sticking around. It was, however, incredibly cold and chilly and it didn’t matter how wrapped up I was I still felt the bite.

I vowed not to go out again this week, but on Wednesday I had to pop to the end of the street to the GP surgery, again in my wheelchair, again in the flutter of snow that didn’t settle.

I’m so lucky that my house is warm, we have only a slight draft in the living room but if we draw the curtains we don’t feel it, and we haven’t had the heating on that much during the daytime. All the bedrooms are cosy except for the Little Man’s room and he has a big duvet to keep him warm. If he gets too cold he can always come and cuddle with me, I won’t mind.

I look at the news and see how awful it’s been almost everywhere else and feel quite lucky. Yes, it’s freezing cold but we’ve had little in the way of transport disruption and the school has been open all week. The kids finally have a snow day today, I’m just glad they don’t have to go out in the cold.

My fingers are tightly crossed that the Beast from the East and Storm Emma are soon packing there bags and leaving our country alone.

Keep warm everyone, and don’t go out unless you really have to x

The Reading Residence
p.s. Don’t you think the photo I’ve used is beautiful. I love Unsplash for free images, there are so many gorgeous photos to choose from.