As most of the country will have realised by now, last Thursday’s centimetre of snow was just the beginning! We now have 30cm of it outside, and as our little uphill road is unadopted, there’s no prospect of it getting cleared. We spent yesterday afternoon digging tracks to get the car shifted to the bottom, as we are low on hen food and felt panicked enough by the forecast of heavy falls today to get out and stock up. Back home, now, burning logs and drinking last year’s sloe gin… the only foraging to do will be from those toilet rolls sprouting oyster mushrooms on the window sill! Being snowed in does allow you to catch up on jobs that tend to get left – I have baked and frozen cakes, and shelled and roasted all the hazelnuts. Eaten some, too…..

The snowy landscape is beautiful, and people in Bankfoot are out on foot and meeting neighbours they never spoke to before, while the kids swarm all over the little hill of the Monny on sledges and are not missing school. But I have some anxiety – it’s only the first of December. We can only expect winter to deepen. Is this the landscape for the next three or four months?