Come on, 2016, do something...just not that.

All right, so I'm a couple of days late, but I'm just surfacing from the rigours of Christmas. In this house, Christmas is a little bit like white-water rafting, only with more turkey, so it takes a while and a lot of deep breathing to shrug off.  And anyway, I hate to judge anything on first acquaintance, so I felt it was only fair to give 2016 a few days to get its feet under it before I started making judgey-pants comments about its weather and general demeanor.

So....  Here we all are, then.  How is everybody?  I know some of you had truly dreadful 2015s, so I'm hoping 2016 will be an improvement...it's a lot curlier, so that bodes well.  I like curliness in my dates, so I'm really looking forward to 2018, anyway, we're all here now, and there's that to be thankful for.  Anyone for a marshmallow?  Or some cheese?  I seem to have seriously overbought this year, probably due to the transitory nature of my children, who sometimes descend all at once and stay for weeks, rather like locusts, and at other times they sort of hover in and out of view, like ghosts, manefesting only occasionally to lick the middles out of cherry liqueurs and drink the milk. Since this year has been more of a manefesty year, I have a serious backlog of foods that it's going to take me well into March to eat my way through.  Sigh.  I'm sure I'll manage...

Now I feel that 2016 and I are sufficiently well-introduced to one another, I do need to take it round the back and ask a few pointed, Jeremy Paxmanesque questions about what it's doing with itself...I mean, I hate snow and cold weather as much as anyone who can't afford to put the heating on, but, honestly?  On Christmas Day it rained so much that the dogs shrank, (I know that I have 2015 to blame for that) but now we've had three days to get a bit of chilly winter sunshine into the house, and what is it doing?  Well, nothing, is the answer to that. There is a total absence of any weather at all, and, as someone who spends the majority of their time working behind a till and making conversation in thirty-second chunks, a lack of weather is simply not good enough.  What am I meant to say?  How can I chat about the weather when all there is to say is 'I see it got light again this morning'.

It's not thick enough to be fog, it's not raining, there's no sunshine, it's just sort of...hanging there.  And this means I shall be forced to make conversation about my Christmas socks and my Christmas Eve rendition of YMCA (with moves), whilst standing behind the till and fully spotlit.



Hang on...a branch moved!  I'm sure I saw a branch move, and it wasn't because a rook was doing its New Year exercise regime...oh, thank goodness!  I am saved! 

"It's getting a bit breezy out there again, still, good for drying the washing..."