Saturday 9th January

See? This is how great blog lags start. You miss a day, you miss a week, before you know where you are, a whole month goes past... but here I am, back again. Kudos to those of you who read this thing, it's hardly the world's most exciting blog!!
Anyhow, right now I'm indoors - we had more snow this morning, and the temperature out there has to be below -5. Probably more like -9! I had a minor water alarm this morning when all of a sudden the water coming out of my cold tap started showing rather nasty little brown bits - needless to say I'd ditched my very aged filter jug when I moved, and wouldn't have had any new filters to hand anyway, so I improvised with a sieve and a J-cloth. Yep, definitely bits in it. Anyhow I can't say that I've drunk any unboiled water in the last 24 hours or so, and after about half an hour it cleared up. I checked with those upstairs and downstairs and needless to say no one else had noticed anything funny, so way to go Tess, another panic started needlessly! Still maybe the other's will keep their eyes open, and if it does come back we'll have to contact the water board I guess.
Yesterday I went off into town - had to renew my bus pass before uni starts next week. You know what it's like, first day back, you're inevitably held up by something, and I'll be damned if I have to start fussing around looking for change for the bus. You don't get change from a driver in Glasgow, Bristol girls, it's full fare on the spot or you loose whatever extra you've put in their slots. Mind you, I have to say that I definitely agree with this business of referring the bus companies to the OFT, because you pay about half here for comparable distances in Bristol. And the bus passes are a huge chunk less. And yet, guess what, most of Glasgow's buses are Farcebus. If you ask them about it, they'll tell you that Bath buses are a 'different' company from those in Bristol, which accounts for why you'll pay a different price for a ticket even in Bath and your day ticket won't take you there, despite it being a shorter distance from say Brislington to Bath, than it is from Brislington to the Mall, which your day ticket takes you to quite happily. For those of you who don't remember, bus deregulation was another of Thatcher's minor triumphs - the non-FB companies who survived this have a really tough time of it, ask your friendly local ABus driver about what happened when they started running a single service from Keynsham to Bristol city centre. Not only did FB suddenly clog the route with their own buses, but they suddenly and unexpectedly reduced the fares.
Anyhow I get carried away with myself, get me started on buses and you're likely to be sitting there reading for a long long time.
I did get into town and bought the statutory chicken with my bus pass - along with - hooray, some really nice fresh veg. Nothing against my little Sumerfield, it does a really good job, but their veg & meat aren't exactly top hole. The statutory chicken has been roasted, denuded of it's flesh, and the carcass is now gently simmering away creating soup stock. Weather like this, you can't beat a good home made chicken soup.
Apart from all this, I've not done a great deal else. I'm listening to the few football matches that are still on, although Arsenal-Everton are reporting a sudden blizzard has hit the match. They're still playing, but I guess the officials will be hoping that this passes so they can get the crowd safely home. Apparently the reason for so many cancellations today is more to do with crowd issues than pitch issues. Villa were supposed to be playing at Wigan, and that was called off this morning because of local road conditions. The most dreadful news from Angola too, the Togo team bus attacked and the driver dead - more than just the single victim too by all accounts, possibly the trainer and an under-coach as well. Given Angola's past circumstances, you've got to ask yourself why that team where travelling in a single bus, and apparently without any escort.
Well I feel I've wittered on enough for a very cold Saturday, and I'm off to make myself a nice hot cup of tea. Water allowing that is!