The Tale of the Lizard

It’s been an eventful (and exhausting!) week, spent cleaning and decorating the small granny flat we rent out at the mill. The idea is that the occupants keep half an eye on the place for us when we aren’t there and the rent keeps Neil in marble blocks. But recently we’ve had a bit of a blip (being a landlord isn’t all buttercups and daisies!) and found ourselves with only a three foot monitor lizard in occupation, staring balefully from the bottom of a tank. Apparently there had also been a Burmese python, but fortunately that had already left.


I haven’t a clue how to care for a large reptile. It didn’t look in great shape. The water bowl was empty - did they drink water? And if so how often? One of the heat lamps wasn’t working either; was the lizard likely to die from hypothermia? And what on earth do they eat? A friend called a friend who worked in a reptile house and I got the answers I needed.

We managed to keep the lizard alive anyway, and last night someone came and took it away. Very relieved. They have disgusting eating habits and they smell terrible! But it was an experience (might appear in a story someday). And yes, I did pick it up!

Why don’t we have normal tenants with normal pets?  There's no answer to that one!

Flood Saturday

There are floods everywhere, courtesy of La Nina - the bad girl of world weather systems. On TV the tragedies of Brazil, Australia and Sri Lanka fill the screen. Here in Cumbria we too have once again been inundated by a huge storm coming in off the Atlantic. Weather warnings went out on Friday night and then became more particular on Saturday morning, with Appleby being the lead feed on Yahoo.co.uk news as well as on Sky and the BBC. Flood gates were closed to protect the town and the low-lying road alongside the river was also closed and sandbagged.

What it normally looks like

yesterday, beginning to flood

The mill is outside the town and can’t be protected. We just have to sit and watch the river creep towards the building and make sure that everything that might float away is tied down. The speed and menace of the water is horrifying; even knee deep you can feel it tugging at your legs to pull you down. I took photographs at around 4.30pm as it was getting dark, but high water didn’t happen until about 2am, so it was a long night. Fortunately, although we had 160mm of rain in only a few hours, the way it fell meant that we avoided catastrophic water levels.

The disappearing landscape

The biggest flood we’ve ever had, in 2005, had the river almost 20 feet (6.2 metres) above it’s normal height. Last night was probably only 2 and a half metres. So it penetrated into the lowest part of the ground floor and drowned the garden but didn’t threaten the structure. We had the windows securely boarded up to protect them from floating debris. This is obviously going to be the winter for extreme weather.

It looks like Fairyland .... Feels like Siberia!

View from bedroom window early

Went for a brief walk today, dressed up like an arctic explorer and barely able to move for the layers of padding and fleece.  After almost two weeks of sub-zero temperatures everything is frozen solid.  Last night was -18  though by  mid-day it was a balmy -9.

kitchen window

 

Despite the central heating and the double glazing there was ice on the inside of some of the windows. 

But the view outside was spectacular - an ice fantasy.

Everything is clothed in ice crystals   - trees have morphed into coral reefs against the blue sky - every twig disguised in white.

 
Even the fences have become ice sculptures.

It is utterly beautiful - but as cold as Siberia and anyone who stops long enough to look risks hypothermia.  I took photographs until my camera froze.

I met a very cold horse

Getting in and out of the front door has become hazardous - the mill has waterfalls of icicles - some nearly six feet long.



Tomorrow I'm off on my travels again.  Down to London for a meeting with publishers and the sales team.  Authors are sometimes asked to meet the sales reps and 'pitch' the book to them.   The reps are the people who are going to sell your book to the book shops and you need them on your side.  So I will be working very hard to persuade them that it's a wonderful book - however nervous I feel about it! 

More and more snow

The mill through a blizzard

So here I am again in the cybersphere, courtesy of a new router, several yards of cable, and the help of a very kind young man in India who talked me through a foreign language of pinging, subnet masks and internet protocols,  being very patient with someone who doesn't know her DHCP configuration from her static IPS!  The benefits of globalisation!



Rafts of ice on the river

 At least, if I can't go anywhere today, I can get on the internet.   For the first time since the snow began, I've felt it prudent to stay at home.  It's been snowing for days and the temperatures haven't managed to get above freezing since last week.   Big, fast running rivers aren't supposed to freeze over, but that's what's happening at the moment.

We don't have temperatures as low as Scotland or Wales (-20 last night) and we don't have as much snow as Northumberland a few miles further east (more than 5 feet and still falling), but there's enough to cause havoc.    This is what the main road looks like and it's very slippery.

You have to dress like Scott of the Antarctic just to go to the Coop for a pint of milk, and  - yes, it does take some time!  But the snow is also beautiful and my inner child keeps eyeing the sledge under the stairs and thinking .......

The Big Freeze!

If I've been very quiet here it's because I have no internet access. Probably because of the weather, my router, my broadband filter and my broadband connection have all been trashed!    I'm posting this quickly at work in a gap left by a student cancellation.   We have a lot of snow here, though not as much as east of the Pennines, and there have been electric storms with thunder and lightning mixed in too.  I made it to Wendy's book launch (lovely party!)  but then woke up to six inches of snow and eveything frozen solid.  It took two hours to dig the car out because we live down a lane at the bottom of a steep hill which doesn't get used by anyone else.  Since then I've left the car on the main road.
On Saturday I managed to get to a literature festival event where I was booked to do a talk on Katherine Mansfield, but had to abandon the car at one point and walk the last three quarters of a mile on streets like ice-slides.  Driving back (very carefully) the temperature plummeted to -11 degrees.  It's rather like living in Scandinavia, though at the moment it's a bit warmer over there.   Hot water bottles, furry slippers, scarves, gloves, thermal underwear - you name it, I'm using it!  Even the cat is curled up on a cushion next to the radiator with his nose under his tail.  If I look at him he opens one eye as if to say 'If you think I'm moving, you must be mad!'
Hope to have the internet up and running again tomorrow when I've solved the mysteries of network connections and ISP addresses.  

Home and 'let-jagged'

Rose hips in the garden

Predictive text has a very creative lexicon. Put in ‘jet-lagged’ and you get ‘let-jagged’. But it’s perfectly representative of the upside down nature of the condition! I’m coping with a twelve hour time shift and a complete reversal of seasons. The daffodils and baby lambs of a New Zealand spring have been swapped for the pale sunlight, migrating birds and yellowing leaves of early English autumn. Trying to re-programme your mind and body to accept the idea that night is now day and vice versa has a strange effect. I feel rather wobbly and unreal and have only a vague notion of where I am in time and space. I’m clumsy and knock things over. I wake at 3 am and wander round the house drinking mugs of tea and eating biscuits because I’m ravenously hungry.

It’s good to be back home though and in my own bed. Hopefully this year I’m not going to be travelling so much. Last year I spent only a few weeks at home, and the house and garden feel very neglected.

The big surprise is that the cat is back! Let no one ever tell you that cats have short memories. When I left for Cambodia last September and then for six months in Italy, followed by other long absences, my beloved Heathcliff went to neighbours who thought they were getting a permanent resident. I never imagined he would remember me at all and had resigned myself to losing him. But no. As soon as I arrived home he appeared in the garden, rubbed himself against my legs and followed me into the house as if he’d never been away.  He is much fatter than when I left and has obviously been well looked after.  Heathcliff is still Kathy's cat. I just hope his foster family don’t feel too insulted by this abandonment!