The winter should have been over by now, as it was supposed to be spring, but suddenly a gusty wind sprang up, driving dark and evil looking clouds across the heavens. It looked ominous, and when I spoke to my friend Louise, she informed me that snow was forecasted! At first there was only small outbursts of icy cold drops being blown over my onion fields, but when I went to get my washing from the line, I saw what I thought at first was hail, but soon realised that it was indeed snowflakes! So where, I asked looking up at the grey heavens, was the spring/
Next morning it was worse, and I had a stream of water coming in at the chimney running across my kitchen floor, and making a nice pond in the small scullery! The wind that started the previous day was now howling at full force, and rain was splashing against the windows! It was bitterly cold, and as our houses have no heating, and electricity expensive, and of course scarce, and the government asking us all the time to cut down, the use of heaters was an almost no-no! The new government did not keep up with the continiously rising demand, as they undertook to provide electricity for every household, and with no new plants being built, we now have quite a lot of power sharing, and this is very inconvenient. Luckily I have a gas cooker, so I never go hungry, and the new freely available solar lights help a lot. It is only the heating that bothers! I am however trying to use mostly solar energy, and plan to get a new kind of geyser, that apparently take heat from the atmosphere, and so heats the water. It is difficult with my very old thatch roof to install a solar heater, so that is the answer, as it is free standing on the ground.
I looked out of my scullery window when I went to make my morning tea, and saw that the mountains on the one side of the village had indeed a light dusting of snow, so I just made a strong cuppa, and went back to bed with my two hot water bottles freshly filled. It was just to cold to stay up, so I read until eleven, when the pangs of hunger sent me scuttling to the kitchen.
It rained the whole day, and I kept on drying up the water coming in from the chimney, and chucking this water out, I noticed one huge white pig on my land. I was worried, knowing how pigs can just nuzzle everything out, and he was in with the onions, so I donned raincoat and shoes, and flew across the wet earth making ungodly noises, hoping the pig would leave quietly!
Thinking of Kevin Bacon, who bit me on my thy, I was just a bitty scared, but this pig looked like he had no intention of leaving, as he was gorging himself on the acorns underneath my two oak trees. I shoo-ed, and I out-ed, but pig was either deaf or insolent, and as by this time the rain was again pelting down, I just closed the gate, that the wind must have blown open with a piece of string, leaving enough space for the porker to leave when he had eaten his fill!