When I opened an overflowing cupboard I found a pile of unused envelopes left behind by Sotheby’s after the contents sale in 1994.  All of them had lost their gum in the damp air.  There is a further room waiting to be tackled, full of boxes from London which haven’t been opened since I moved here in 1995.  They will have to wait for another wet day. 

Now I need to find a system to stop the piles growing again.  Perhaps I will finally succed in my aim to have everything tidied into logical places where I can find it - ie all sewing implements together, all candles in one cupboard and so on.   Then I won’t keep buying new every time I can’t find something and think I have run out;  I might even save some money as a result. 

 I wonder!  Perhaps someone could ask me in a few months how far I have got …… ?

But now, like a miracle, they have caught up and are coming into flower, just in time. Some on the northerly sheltered slopes are still coming out, but the displays are there to cheer us up despite the grey Shropshire weather.

We are open on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (1.30-4pm), serving teas in the Victorian kitchens until 5pm. The kitchens rely for heat largely on the old kitchen range which was lit today for the first time in weeks and we held our breath to see whether it would smoke out the room. To everyone’s relief the smoke went straight up – and out – of the chimney. My dream is one day to restore the range and see it working properly again – with the price of oil it might even become economical to use.

So, keeping fingers crossed for a fine(ish) weekend, a warm welcome awaits you ….

Contrast this with the frustration of my new fridge/freezer. Bought from Currys at New Year to replace one with a freezer door that wouldn’t seal any longer, it only works intermittently. After many calls to those numbers which ask you to choose from endless options and state clearly what it is you have bought, I got through to a person, and was then visited by an engineer. Who informed me it works perfectly. The small print in the instruction manual states that the appliance must be installed in a room with an ambient temperature over 10 degrees. Ha Ha! In Stokesay’s kitchen the temperature in winter drops below 10 degrees as soon as the heating goes off.

Some yorkshire puddings may have frozen and defrosted over and over again and have been thrown out. It could have been worse. As they say, it’s a known unknown.

Unfortunately Curry’s doesn’t accept that it isn’t fit for purpose. It’s all my fault, they say, I should have read the instruction manual before purchasing it and it isn’t their responsibility to inform customers of this particular problem. And no, they will not exchange it as it is working properly. When I asked them what I should do with it, they suggested asking the Council to come and take it away!! But it’s new, I said…..

So it seems I am expected to heat the kitchen to warm up the fridge, or get rid of the appliance and buy another one. Why does Alice at the Mad Hatter’s Tea party spring to mind?

And yes, I could and should not give up at this point – but complaining is draining, and I’ve decided I need to conserve my energy for happier things.

Like the wonderful lights which put it all in perspective.

In the early days of the big freeze before Christmas the postman came regularly and the sight of his van was one of the reassuring signs that we were not cut off from the outside world. I confidently ordered Christmas presents online for delivery before Christmas. Then one day he didn’t appear, nor the following day. Rumours went round the village: deliveries had failed to arrive at the local sorting office; Health and Safety had forbidden the postmen to venture out. Older members of the community said it was the first time in over 40 years the post hadn’t been delivered. The sorting office was closed at 1pm and all staff sent home so we couldn’t go there to collect when we realised no-one was coming. The last rumour I heard before I left for the family Christmas visit was that the decision whether to deliver had been left up to the postal workers themselves.

Now the post has been delivered here for far longer than I have been in residence and it has never let us down before, except when the postal workers have been on strike. In the past the postman has extolled the engineering of the postal vans which he said could get almost anywhere in all weather. He finally did arrive before Christmas, but after I had already left, and the thought of all that mail (and the presents) waiting for me was heartbreaking.

Post has been arriving intermittently ever since while I suspect a big catch-up has been taking place. The extended holiday no doubt added to the backlog. Just as I thought we were getting back to normal, I woke up on Friday morning to find several inches of snow on the ground again – and guess what – no post, despite the fact that it was thawing hard by 3pm (the time at which he has started arriving). All of my wonderful helpers arrived here without mishap as they have done throughout the freeze and not all in 4 x 4s. An 80 year old has been up and down the drive every day.

But not the postman! In the post which finally arrived at around 4pm on Saturday is a letter forwarded to me from a Bank dated mid December and sent to the wrong person at the wrong address. It bears the dread words “Please provide the information requested in the next 25 days. ….. If I do not hear from you within the 25 days I will assume that you no longer require the amendment and the case will be closed.”

Please Bank, keep the case open! Freezing weather, a two week Christmas break, and wrongly addressed mail which then gets held up in the post is not a formula to get the New Year off to a good start. I shall console myself by watching those DVDs I had planned to give away.

Update Tuesday morning: after several hours frantic telephoning yesterday I am pleased to say that the Bank has agreed to keep the case open while I attempt to assemble the forest of documentation I am required to submit to them.

This is how it looks.

Time to hibernate, and there’s very little to distract me from sitting down in front of the woodburning stove and watching Atonement again, which gets its first national tv showing tonight. It will be nice to be reminded of a summer’s day, though the thought of swimming may be a bit of a turnoff.

We put up a Christmas tree in the hall on Friday and it glows brightly (the lights don’t show up in the photograph). This year it really is helping to lighten the bleakness of the winter solstice and the landscape actually looks like a Christmas card.

Wishing you a happy Christmas