Snow, it isn't.

Someone somewhere near here seems to be operating a very powerful snowcloud repellent; as the rest of the country freezes to a halt, we have had a thin sprinkling of snow yesterday, which largely evaporated during the day, so that today there has been some snow and a little ice around.  All of which makes getting around the village that much easier.  The roads are pretty much okay, to judge by the speeds some folks are still attaining, but maybe the speed heats the air up a little more?

However, some people aren’t able to carry out normal plans so I should not have been too surprised by a visit first of all from Jenny, to ask if I had a kindle and could I please download a book by Talli Roland called The Hating Game.  I wondered if she needed to borrow a copy but it seems there is some campaign to ‘fix’ Amazon’s chart of top download figures.  Much as I would have loved to help thwart the aims of big business, being a very small business myself, I pointed out to Jenny that being almost a technical luddite, I did not have a kindle and had only recently started either blogging or Facebook.

“Oh, in that case, mention it in your blog,” she told me. Splash, apparently.  I’m going to have to have a long chat with the kids when they come home for Christmas.  My attempts to keep up to the 21^st century are clearly finite.

Jenny toddled off after some coffee and chat to go and persuade someone else to be part of her campaign and I had just settled down to planning a shopping list for the next batch of biscuits, when Delyth dropped in.

“Aren’t you at work today?”

“Apparently not.  Any biscuits going spare?” Delyth has been trying to lose weight but in her efforts to eat less than 1000 calories a day, she is so hungry that she picks at all the wrong things.  I pick at all the wrong things too, but not because I’m on under 1000 calories a day, more because I just like the wrong things.

After we’d finished the last of the biscuits, Delyth headed home for some lunch and I went back to my shopping list.  I should have known better.  The phone rang.  Annie.

“Could you possibly collect the newsletter from the printers? I’ve got extra kids today because of the snow and I can’t fit them all in the car.  And then drop them off here?”

Fortunately, I had more or less completed the shopping list by then so decided I could combine the two trips.  However, by the time I got round to Annie’s, she appeared to be a child-free zone and was sitting gazing at something out of Star Trek Voyager.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I handed over a large box of newsletters.  “Where are the kids?”

“It was amazing,” Annie said.  “About two minutes after I spoke to you, all of them were collected by their mums whose offices had closed early after the heating broke down.  I thought you might have gone already, so I downloaded an e-book onto my kindle that everyone’s been going on about.”

“The Hating Game?”

“Have you got it too?  I didn’t figure you for a kindle owner.”  She at least seems to have the right idea about me.

“No, but Jenny mentioned it.  Is it good?  I might buy the proper version if it is.”

“You can’t yet, the paperback’s not out until next year sometime.  Yes, it’s good fun.  Romantic comedy.  Probably what you’d call chick lit.” She absently allowed her eyes to stray back to the page she was on and didn’t really engage in conversation.

I left her to her newsletters and e-book.  Well, mostly e-book.  I don’t think she was overly bothered about the newsletter at that moment.  Anyway, the deli may be closed today for no reason to do with snow whatsoever, but I have biscuits to bake for tomorrow and some Christmas cards to write.  The first one has already arrived...