Hibernate Hill

There is ice on the inside of some of the windows at The House on the Hill and the fine, icing sugar snow which fell a few days ago is frozen solid.  It cracked underfoot as I walked up the garden yesterday to upright the bird table which fell over during the high winds of a month or so ago.  I noticed it but did nothing about it, any more than, to my shame, I did anything about refilling the bird feeders.  It was a robin I saw through the kitchen window, puffed up against the cold so as to be almost wholly round, bibbity-bobbing about on the terrace looking for food that induced the guilt trip and I wiped my doughy hands on a tea towel and went to find the bag of bird food.  Freezing temperatures which are set for the whole week have raised my hibernation requirements even higher than before and I cried off going to a yoga class yesterday, preferring to salute the sun on my own with a DVD whilst le chat wound himself round my mountain posed feet, licked my hands whilst downward dogging and drooled all over my mat.  I cancelled my French lesson for today, delightful as my French teacher is, as the idea of conjugating verbs frankly filled me with dread.  Concentration on French studies is proving difficult, mindless mixing and kneading is far easier.  The furthest I’ve been in the last few days is up the road to the post box.  Tellingly of insulation levels in our house, ours is the only roof in the street which has no snow on it.  I think the turrety thing up the road has more snow on its roof than we do.

My recent forays in to breadmaking, both sourdough and otherwise, despite a perfectly good breadmaker, has produced disappointing results – loaves are somewhat flat like ruptured implants rather than the huge inflated airbags I’d envisaged.  I’ve now learned that this is likely to be due to French flour being different to British.  Who knew?

My pasta however, is fantastic.