"Little snow, big snow. Big snow, little snow."
It means that when "little snow" is falling, there will be lots of it, and when "big snow" is falling, there will be less of it. He is unable to provide any kind of verification as to who "the Indians" are, or indeed how they measure the size of snowflakes, or the total volume of snow that falls. How much snow falls in India, anyway?
None of this stops me from thinking it's a great saying, and one which I intend to trot out at every possible opportunity from now on.
We woke up to about 6 inches of snow this morning, which has increased throughout the day, giving a pleasing sense that the End Of The World Is Nigh. The only traffic I saw on the roads for several hours was tractors and the occasional Landrover, braving the elements to get to the garage to buy lottery tickets and fags. And maybe chicken and bacon pasties.
Mr WithaY went off to work this morning with a spring in his step, Christmas cake in his bag, a shovel and wellies in the back of his truck, ready to face the worst that the weather could do. I think he was hoping to have to dig out people who were stuck in their cars, and thus get a whole page to himself in next week's local paper. Mystery Shovel Hero Saves The Day kind of thing.
He was back home again at lunchtime, one of only a handful of people who made it into the office. They all made an executive decision to head for home when it started blizzarding again, which I think was a wise thing to do.
We sat having tea and crumpets this afternoon, and I mentioned that perhaps we ought to go out to the supermarket to pick up some supplies.
"What do we need?" asked Mr WithaY, butter and honey all over his face.
"Bread. Milk. Eggs. Fruit. Veg. Just some essentials really."
"We can make bread in the bread machine. We have some fruit*. We have loads of frozen veg." Mr WithaY ticked off the list on his fingers, clearly disinclined to go out in the weather again. Especially while there were hot buttered crumpets to be had.
"True. Oh! I think we have a carton of soya milk in the cupboard, we can use...hey...where are you going?"
He was off, gone before I even finished my sentence, half-eaten crumpet abandoned on the plate, shoes hastily pulled on, out into the snow to the garage to buy milk. He really doesn't like the soya stuff, it seems.
I took some pictures from the cosy warmth of the house. Well, I am still suffering with the Black Lung, after all.
A snowy rose arch. The climbing plant on it, under the snow is in fact a clematis. The rose I bought to climb up the other side has mutinied and refused to get any taller.
A snowy bird bath. I like how the snow has followed the contours of the bath, making it look like a posh cake.
A Verbena bush. In the snow.
I particularly like the one of Rosemary the Sheep standing in the back garden with a large snow hat on.
There is no more snow forecast overnight, but as any fule kno, the Met Office simply make up the weather forecasts at random, so I will not be overly surprised if we can't get out of the house in the morning due to ten foot snowdrifts.
One of my mates once told me the best thing to do was to ignore the weather forecasts completely and simply look out of the window, then dress appropriately for whatever the weather is doing at that moment. It works more often than you'd think.
