Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all and good wishes for a very healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year too. 

2010 has got off to a rather interesting start courtesy of Mother Nature.  For the first time in our baking lives we were unable to even get to the bakery to bake during the first week of the recent snow.  For two days we were effectively stuck at home because the roads proved impassable.  Courses had to be cancelled and no deliveries could be made, because, of course, there was no product to deliver and no way the vans could have got around had there been anything to deliver!  That was the first week of the snow.  The next Wednesday it snowed again, not as much, but enough to effectively bring traffic to a grinding halt.  We made it into the bakery without incident, before the snow began coming down, but it took Rachel 4 hours to make a delivery round which usually takes 90 minutes, and Andrew - who does the delivery round to points west of the bakery, and who owns a 4x4, which has been a God-send this Winter - made valiant attempts to get to Lewes, Brighton and Alfriston, but was rebuffed at each turn by road closures and police activity.

And then the rain came last weekend, the temperatures rose, and the snow melted away.  Despite the driving woes and the frustrations of not being able to do anything about it, the snow was beautiful and the countryside transformed into a winter wonderland.  And to my jaded city-slicker eyes, it stayed miraculously lovely and white for several days, rather than almost immediately turning to horrible grey slushy muck as has been my more recent experience of post-snowfall landscapes.

As I write today, the sun is shining and bulbs are starting to emerge in the garden, but I'm fully aware that Winter is still with us for at least a little while longer, and dire predictions of more snow to come in February are being proclaimed by arm-chair weather people ranging from students on courses to the guy who delivers our bakery supplies.  We shall just have to wait and see if those predictions come true.

P.S.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to write more regular blog posts.  Watch this space...