...then winter arrived

So much for our sparkly autumn! Friday and Saturday had maximums of 7 degrees, strong winds, gusty showers and general wintriness. Snow on the hills and you could feel the chill in the air. Friday I worked from home so enjoyed the fire and the company of my family - walked number two son down to the shops for his haircut (someone had to pay for it, unlikely to be him) then went for a brisk stroll before back home to the fire.



Saturday I got more ambitious and did a 8 kilometre walk around the base of the hill then back through the streets. Not very scenic, but it was grey and cold and I spent most of the time with my hood pulled up and my hands in my pockets.



I desperately need a haircut as well but I'm not sure if my hairdresser is open - I will check and see what can be done. It's too long to wear loose if there's any wind (which is why the pigtails above, practical if not stylish) and I got sucked into lockdown-supermarket-hairdye (it's a thing, google it) and of course the only dye was blueberry. Which went a sad brown.

Number two went into town to get more books and was luckier with his cheap hair dye score - some kind of royal blue. He only put it on half his head and it went a sad dull green. Luckily he won't be back at school before it washes out, and no-one at my work cares what I look like. My hairdresser will roll her eyes though, so another reason that I keep putting it off.



I believe some of the restrictions have eased but we're paying about as much attention to the easing as we did to the restrictions (not that we don't care, just that our lives are so uneventful that everything we want to do is allowed). Number two seems to be coping with the remote learning quite well, but it's hard to tell. He is currently making a grapefruit and lemon meringue pie - which we can do today but not yesterday because OUR BRAND NEW OVEN STOPPED WORKING. Bloody outrageous, it just went completely lights out, wouldn't turn on. The electrician said power was going in OK, so it was a problem with the oven, but the manufacturer couldn't get a repair call out for two and a half weeks! I don't think so I said, so had a wee chat with the store we bought it off, who were fantastic, found us a new unit, dropped it off today and it's working like a wonder. I hope it doesn't happen again, that would make us very sad.

And just to wrap up today's home maintenance news, the insurance company sent someone to fix the melted patio roof at the beach house yesterday. Which he did, a lovely job, sent us through photos and it looks fantastic. Except he fixed the patio roof that wasn't damaged. He did the one at the side and never made it to the one at the back. They are completely different sizes, so he must have thought the assessor who did the measurements was a lunatic .... we were just wondering how to break it to him when he sent through a very sad text saying he thought he might have made a mistake. No worries, happens to us all, we said.