Angels in yellow waistcoats

This jolly picture, taken on the path from the Rectory to Holy Trinity church, is not of a member of our congregation, though there were a few of us up there this morning. No, this is a jolly roads department employee - one of a crew who made our morning.

Here's the story. At 9am, five of us de-iced our cars and set off through the fog to meet at the Roads Depot. There we hoped to take some grit in buckets from the public bins and get it onto the really hairy bend on the church drive. We found the bins empty, though we could see a grit mountain inside the perimeter fence. But suddenly, after a short conversation with a foreman (or whatever - as far as I was concerned he was simply the first of this morning's angels, in a beard and woolly hat) we had not only the grit we needed, but also a lorry, three men, a small boy, several shovels and a hand-operated grit spreader.

By the time we'd all parked our cars out of the way and headed up the drive - where the work two of us had done on Tuesday had really paid off with two black pathways in the ice - the lorry was halfway up and the men were cheerily spreading grit - all the way up to the church, round the carpark, and up the steep bit to the rectory. I don't know if they had any church affiliation themselves, but they worked like Trojans in the best possible humour until the foreman pointed our that that was their teabreak time over and they ought to get back so that he could organise the next shift.

So there you have it. Angels in reflective waistcoats making it possible for us to have our Midnight Mass after all. And after a pretty grim Advent on my part, and a stressful week agitating about the church, this morning felt like the coming of the light.

Thanks, chaps. Oh - is it all right to call angels chaps?

Snow dahn sahth

I'm having an adventure break. Not in Tenerife, yet, but in London, in the snow. We arrived last night clad, as it was pointed out, for a ski-ing holiday in boots and fleecy hats; I had thought that the gear might look a tad odd in South London, but no. Our first thrill came when the cabbie balked at the side roads and dropped us off to walk to the house - about half a mile of rutted, frozen snow, dragging a suitcase and struggling to maintain momentum every time we came to the slightest incline. We made it, though I felt as I used to after a couple of hours of sledging.

This morning we went out with the pram - for coffee, for exercise and fresh air, and for the shopping. McIntoshes are not easily deterred from the important things in life, especially the first two. The photos show us nearing the house. As it rained in the night, the car-tracks in the middle of the road have actualy thawed a little, and that is where we walked some of the time. But the pavements are still lethal - and there is no sign of grit on them. I recall the stushie in the Dunoon Observer after the sudden cold snap a the beginning of December - all these complaints that only one side of the road had gritted pavements and so on. Dunoon, I have news for you. London is ten, twenty - fifty times worse. This is like life in '50s Glasgow, when the snow lay till it turned to brown sugar and your slides stayed slippy for days on end.

As you can see, Mr B used the pram to overcome his horror of icy roads; I pretended I was in New York and found I got used to the motion after a bit. It feels a bit as I imagine Tai Chi does - all that controlled effort. But I'd hate to be one of these frail elderly folk I saw near the supermarket, with no-one to help them and no pram to hold onto. They looked terrified. Apparently it's just not worth it to have snowploughs and gritting lorries for such infrequent snow - but a grit bin on every corner? Surely.

Once again, Blogger is proving tricky to format - hence the widowed "I'm" above. Put it down to a visual representation of a break, please...