Sunday night

Sunday's blog (which I forgot to post...)

It is freezing cold; a dry kind of cold, where little flakes of ice seem to be drifting aimlessly in the air. The footpaths are lethal. The snow has turned rock solid.

I picked Nathan up from Stansted airport at lunchtime, and we drove to Thaxted to collect the coat I'd left there on my last visit. I usually only wear an overcoat for two months of the year, and under normal circumstances the coat I left could have languished in Thaxted for another 10 months, but they say there's no apparent end to this unseasonable cold snap, so the only option was to retrieve it. 

The north Essex country lanes were covered in drifts and the snow was piled high on the edges of the fields. The temperature remained at minus two from the moment I got in the car at Highgate to the moment we arrived at my parents' house. 

The parents themselves were with my Aunt on the Isle of Wight, where it's apparently not snowing. Their hotel room, somewhere near Shanklin, has a sea view, and my Mum's pretty sure it would be absolutely lovely during the summer! When I last spoke to them they were drinking sherry in my Aunt's room. Oh dear...

We let ourselves into the parents' empty house and keenly gobbled down a delicious bowl of home made vegetable soup which my Mum had left for us on the stove before wrapping up and heading back to The Smoke.

The evening was a relaxing one, spent in front of the telly eating pizza. We watched a programme about the closure of Television Centre, which I found rather depressing. I genuinely can't understand why the BBC is leaving that place. It's an iconic building, which is important both historically and artistically; as important, I'd say, as the Royal Festival Hall, and no one would be allowed to sell that off and turn it into a hotel!