Made a 5 mile round trip through the deep snow to the supermarket and back to buy food for today and tomorrow’s dinner..

Tonight is barley and kabocha stew Tomorrow is mixed mushroom and black ale pie

Even helped a stranger by pushing their car through some tricky snowy roads.

The plan that my wife an in-laws’ came up with for how to spend tomorrow was that we’d take the presents for the kids and stay at their place this evening..

Under normal conditions it’s a 10-15 minute walk.. but we can’t walk there with kids and presents and there is just no chance that the roads between here and there can or will be cleared..

So, I guess we’re going to be staying her after all, which is good because here is where my bed is.

Seemingly there will be no further snow today, so it’s a perfect time to clear the ~100m road up to the house of the 3+ft of snow, without any useful implements as my wife wants to go shopping..

.. aye, have at it, good luck.

The snowfall took out our electricity.. our only source of heat in the glorified shed that we live in.. thankfully it was only temporary!

Was meant to be going to the brewery today.. about a foot of snow has fallen overnight and is still falling.. the road to the brewery is narrow, windy and mountainous.. I have never driven in snow before.. undecided .

Cheeky wee rascal jnr. was this evening attempting to stand of her on volition for the first time. I was pretty impressed by her determination, I’m jumping to no conclusions but she does seem to demonstrate some of my traits, more so than her sister did.. anyway.. she managed 3-4 seconds a few times and was beside herself with excitement.. pride²

I obviously knew of the existence of fingerless gloves in Scotland, I just didn’t understand their place in my hierarchy of needs.. I was lucky enough to live in places that were warm enough to not risk frostbite indoors.. and outdoors I wore thick gloves when warm..

.. now that I have a pair and am wearing them for the first time, I am not sure that they will be coming off before Spring! Though, I ordered another pair of indoor gloves today (with fingers) too.. indoor gloves.. what an eye-opener!

We’re it not weird enough that I had a photoshoot yesterday afternoon.. we have a meeting tomorrow morning about another photoshoot.. oh how I wish I still looked like my profile picture and not a sleep-deprived barbarian Santa..

Today was our presentation in front of the mayor etc. my nerves just about held together and I don’t think I did a bad job though mainly as we chopped it down into about half the size as we realised we prepared way too much. Glad that I don’t have another presentation in Japanese anytime soon and that all of the high stress tasks for this year are now done!

Hopefully we did enough to get the mayor (and his funds) on board for our plan A situation.

The vegan event went well today, at least from the catering perspective.. time will tell how well the workshop went .. if even one village cafe or restaurant puts a vegan option on their menu enabling me to eat out in the village the. I’ll consider it a success.