PLATEAU

Sunday - had to drag myself out of bed and haul my tired ass straight to church this morning. Didn't go to bed till around 2:30am as I was manning the MP3 production line. Church was good - the visiting vicar was the one to whom I have an aversion - he started the service by announcing that he was to become Rector of Tenby, and so would be leaving our parish around February next year, which cheered me up no end. I'm sure he's really a nice bloke but I see him as a "career vicar" - he has ambitions, and I'm sure if he thought it would aid his progress he'd take up Freemasonry, or whatever it took. He isn't one "of the people" and seems very aloof, not something I see as a good quality in a religious man. Fine choice of hymns today, including For Those In Peril On The Sea, a personal favourite, though the clarinettist and choir managed to pitch it somewhere close to a dog whistle.
Made a curry laced with ginger and garlic for dinner, which went down very well, and will hopefully go some way to easing the nocturnal coughings. Kids have played quietly upstairs most of the afternoon and have allowed me to chill out listening to Radio 3 (absolutely STUNNING solo piano interpretation of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition) while converting Mojo CDs to MP3 and reading some good interviews on the Idler website (Damien Hirst particularly impressive).
I'm hearing on the radio that Derbyshire is under snow. Now that makes me feel nostalgic. Winters here in Pembrokeshire are pretty dismal affairs in my experience, lots of dullness and greyness and unremitting rain, with little to break the mon-o-tony. The only exception I can think of is a couple of years ago, when I attended a 3-day Union course in Cardiff. On the second day, snow was forecast, and people immediately ran for home. I didn't understand until the following morning, when the only two people to arrive were myself and Paul Stefan Jones from Cardigan, who had been staying in the same hotel. He offered me a lift to Carmarthen, and as we made our journey it became apparent why everyone had been thrown into such panic. I got to Carmarthen just in time to catch the last train that would run that day. Snow was thick on the ground and everything was grinding to a halt. As the train neared Tenby the snow turned to rain, but as I got off at Pembroke Dock it was just turning back to snow, and within the hour roads were blocked and chaos reigned, and splendid chaos it was! By the following morning the snow had gone and all was back to normal. People muttered darkly of a winter a few years ago when the town was completely cut off for three or four days, so I should be glad that snow is such a rare commodity here, really.