Snow

It seems like ages ago that we were snowed in here - and I never posted - doh!!

Oh well the snow is gone now and spring really is in the air - we have snow drops out, daffodils well up and ready to go. The wildlife is up for it too - the hairs are boxing and pairing up, seeing this for the first time when we moved here fascinated me and it still does. I bought a lovely little bronze of hairs boxing with my first royalty cheque - money well invested.

Half the reason for not posting is the getting back to work - which has been more tiring than I thought. I still have to take pain killers which is very boring. However work is going well and I really enjoy the students. It has made me realise why I had such struggle getting back - having cancer "makes ya fink" and I suppose I thought I should make some radical changes - but actually I enjoy 90% of what I do - which in the run of things cannot be bad.

My pictures of the village in the snow

Words and what they mean

This really is a bit of grump - my spelling has always been awful and my handwriting illegible. Until I got a word processor, thanks to Alan Sugar, I could not write anything meaningful - which accounts for leaving school with no qualifications, but once I did get my PC I had the confidence to go to college and graduated when I was 40.

So it is no surprise, having struggled to write, I find the modern idiom of using text language or substituting media for the written word is dumbing down. Our language is rich with hidden meaning, I wish I had learnt Latin - as so many words can be decoded and their origins understood, but all languages are the same. The old story about Eskimos - sorry Inuit, having a mulitude words for snow is probably true because they need them. Equally when a new subject area emerges one of the first things we need is a language in which we can discuss it - so every specialist disciplin has its own language. Interestingly detractors often refer to the language used as jargon - but I suppose what they mean is the inappropriate use of specialist language - lets face it if you are trying to communicate with a non specialist you need to use 'plain english'.

So if like me you are interested in language, words and their origins, which is where this post started I have come across an interesting site on the meaning of words - word origins.

Winter winds and wood chopping

Yesterday as the weather threatened to turn wintery I had to get over to Grafham Water to deliver fishing GWFFA club newsletter, so took the dogs for a walk around the reservoir. We started out in clear bright conditions, but returned to the car with grey skies, wind and some flakes of snow.

When we got home high priority was to get logs in - just incase we were sowed in. I still have an enormous pile of green logs for splitting and stacking. Old stocks of logs are running low - I always forget that I seem to use more wood after christmas than before. We had pheasant hot pot - supper winter food - I trade trout for pheasant and we live very well.

Finished the day preparing my flyfishing lines for next season - having seen a the film A River Runs Through It - I am looking forwards to the next season.