The coldest winter for 31 years

Rod Stewart wrote about 'The coldest winter in almost 14 years'. We've beaten that this year and though haven't got buffalo dying in the frozen fields, the Meteorological Office has announced that this is the coldest winter for 31 years.
We’re spending some of our time during this awful weather sorting out and organising what some people would call our junk.  It’s really the accumulated result of living over 130 years between us, collecting books, photos, souvenirs, hobby supplies and – well, junk.


Take photographs as an example.  We’ve both been taking photos since we were in our teens and so we have black and white photos taken when we had our first cameras, fifty odd years ago.  Then we each moved on to colour prints, slides and, finally, digital photography.   That is, of course, without counting snaps and postcards inherited from long gone relatives
We can scan the prints and convert the slides into digital files – but it’s slow, slow, slow.  It’s also, probably, a waste of time for many of them so we try to be selective.  No doubt Murphy’s Law will apply here and the one picture we simply must have will be buried at the bottom of a pile of crates in the basement.


I’m living in the superstitious hope that if we move things round fast enough some of them will find their way into a parallel universe.


A lot of time is spent (note: not wasted) in exclamations and reminiscences – “Look at this!”  Gatlinburg, with Vickie and Jay,  Groombridge, with Jon and Kerry.  Charlestown, with Rosie and Mike.  Monterey, with Dave and Tara, New York with David and Shirley, Charleston with Bengt.  Paris, Barcelona, Bruges, Athens, London, Valetta, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, San Diego, – the list goes on, bringing memories and making us wish we were there NOW.


But the mandolin wind doesn't change a thing. There's more snow forecast for the weekend.