Snowbound

'View' (??!!)  from the window Tuesday morning

They're calling it 'The Beast from The East'.  It is a Siberian weather system which has all of the UK in its grip and which is causing road, rail and communication chaos. It must be bad: for the first time in a 27 year teaching career, I've had snow days - normally, we're too close to the North Sea Coast for the snow to make much of an impact but the last three days have seen almost constant snow and temperatures well below freezing. 

As someone with a natural tendency towards hibernation, the chance to stay in doors, huddled under my newly-completed patchwork quilt, and comfort-eat has been a real delight.  Feeling like an intrepid explorer, I've only been as far as the nearest post box and the 24hour garage over the road since Tuesday, coming back with bread and soup and Jaffa cakes and vowing not to stir forth again until I can see pavement.  I've done lots of work for work, and so I think I might spend the rest of today Benson hunting.

We're actually cossetted from the weather these days - winters in the past were often much colder and snowier than this.  What would it have been like, moving the Company from place to place in the extremes of a bad winter?  Less than a minute of Googling found me at this British snowfall table, and the temptation to try an match it up to the data base is proving irresistible!  I'm quite sure FRB would have simply soldiered on, regardless of any blizzard!

I also remembered a book I'd downloaded onto my Kindle several years ago but which I haven't read yet. Snowbound is a collection of short stories written by Bram Stoker, famed author of Dracula as well as being Sir Henry Irving's right-hand man.  A Touring theatre company, travelling by train, finds itself stuck in a snowdrift somewhere in Scotland.  To pass the time, while they wait to be rescued, they tell each other stories.  First published in 1908, it sounds like exactly the thing I need to sit and read as I wait for the snow to go...

Stay warm and safe!

UPDATE!

Finished Snowbound last night: some interesting ideas about how one might start a 'safe' fire in a railway carriage using props and basic theatrical equipment - amazing what one can achieve with a 'thunder sheet'! Some interesting stories particularly those told from a backstage perspective. Too many attempts to reproduce dialect in non standard spelling does make parts hard going. However, the highlight was the story about the Star Trap. This stood out as having been much more carefully thought out and considered. All in all, a pretty good book to read when actually snowbound!