January.

Glory Be! January's dull. It has to be the worst month of the twelve!!! Normally I start feeling this fed up on about the 4th of Jan, when the children go back to school and the boxes of Christmas decorations wait expectantly on the landing for the 'Can you out the bloody Christmas Decorations back in the loft?' row to erupt, but this year the feeling has only just hit. There are two reasons for this delay. The first is of course the snow. It's still here but it's not exciting any more. There's no discernable thaw, it is simply receding. When it was really thick though, it caused an exciting extension to Christmas as normal day-to-day life stopped,  the schools closed (except ours of course) everyone had something to talk about and those who weren't talking about it were out playing in it. The sledges that had sat in garages, redundant for years (unless your children do the same as mine in the summer and spray the garden with a hose until sodden then drag each other round in the ensuing mud) were suddenly liberated from behind the bikes, rakes and paint tins, and dragged up and down anything remotely slope-like. Even we went sledging at the weekend-even me! Then miserable swineherds started ringing radio shows etc suggesting that we do the same as countries like Canada and carry on as normal and before we knew it, the snowy gift was shunned,  the sledges went back in the garages for another 20 years, and all this in favour of office chairs, long commutes and classrooms. BOO, HISS. We have more snow forecast overnight here-up to 15cm but I bet those same misers are on the phone to God asking for it to be rain please, 'As we've had enough fun this year. Thankyou.'

Anyway, my second reason for the late onset of my January blues. The Grumpster.