Winter Wonderland

It started snowing on the eve of my birthday and has hardly stopped since! Unfortunately, it's not turned our corner of London into a ski resort yet as the daytime temperatures have been too high for it to settle for long.

When I went out to Witham last week though, I'd never seen Essex look so pretty! The bare trees shimmered against the bleached winter sky and even the pebble-dashed semis looked like they'd been lifted straight off a Christmas card.

The snow seemed to lift everyone's mood too. At least half a dozen cars stopped along the main roads to let me cross on my way to and from court. At court, the security guards were reminiscing with the witness support team and the ushers about winters in years past. About the time when it snowed from Christmas until Easter without stopping, when local men had just returned from the tropics of Malay. When the sea at Southend froze over!

The fun had evaporated by the time I reached Canterbury this morning. I left the house at 05h45 to catch the 06h41 from Victoria. All was going well until I reached Faversham. The dawn had arrived with blue skies and beautiful views of snow-encrusted vineyards and oast-houses.

At Faversham though, the train ground to a halt. We waited for fifteen minutes at the platform until the conductress announced that Canterbury College was closed and so all the students could head home again - how parochial! And then they threw the rest of us off for good measure. The line to Dover was closed because of the wintry weather and so I resorted to sharing a cab to reach my destination, four hours after my departure.

After court, I cheered myself up with a walk through the picturesque town, past the many quaint buildings, the cathedral and the remaining segments of the city wall. I found an incredible leaning shop and The Sugar Boy, a confectioner's which had featured in the Guardian the week before. The only cinder toffee was covered in chocolate (in Lent!) and so I settled for New Zealand eating liquorice to keep me occupied on the train home.

A short time later, I was fortunate enough to be on one of the first trains out of Kent and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for assignments close to home for the rest of the week...

The Dizzy Heights

With renewed enthusiasm for my trips to the climbing wall, I invested in some kit. It seems that women are a different shape from men - including their feet! So I ended up with ladies' rock boots which are cut lower for a lower ankle bone and are softer for softer skin. And they're pink! And my special ladies' harness is called "primrose"!

I had hoped that with such a combination, I would be pirhouetting up the wall in no time. Regrettably it seems that I am back to square one, having taken a break for a longer time than I had been climbing in the first place! 4As are now impossible without a cheat hold here and there and a 5A simply impossible.

To distract myself from the disappointment, I went in for an alternative experience this week: the long abseil from the tower in the corner of the Castle. The tower, in the corner of the Victorian water pumping station, is hollow with a metal spiral staircase running up the inside.

We climbed the steps with our hearts in our mouths, not yet tied in. A platform at the top offered us some respite until the trapdoor was opened in the floor, beneath the metal A-frame where the ropes are attached. I was alarmed by the similarity to the gallows in Melbourne Old Gaol.

I was volunteered to go first and was suspended over the trapdoor opening, being urged to lift my feet up and hover them over the abyss. I sat there terrified, wondering if it was really necessary to prove myself again after all those adventures in New Zealand.

I could see no way of going back though and so slowly began to tease the rope through the belay device, slipping inches at a time. I lowered myself down into the tower which echoed with the jokes of the instructor at the top.

I hardly dared look down, even when I reached the end of the thirty metre descent, as I remained at least twenty feet above ground level. A huge concrete pipe led off from the base of the tower, down into an abandoned underground reservoir. The instructor took hold of the end of my rope and swung me from side to side until I could pull myself over the bannister and set foot on the landing. Once there, I undid the knots with trembling fingers and released myself, relieved for once to be heading for some much lower climbs.

The Seven Signs of Ageing

I may be only 90% of the way to 30 but there are definitely signs that I'm getting older:

1. I was pleased to discover recently that my short-sightedness is vastly improved. But mortified to hear the news from an optician several years my junior. I've come across many police officers younger than me over the last few years but this was a bit of a shock...
2. Some of the fashions this year will be mutton dressed as lamb on me. Rara skirts? I don't think so.
3. Our boiler broke down. A true sign that we're grown up now.
4. I've known some of my friends for over twenty years. I never believed I'd be able to say that.
5. I really want a dog. A retired greyhound perhaps... But at least I've decided that I can't take the plunge quite yet because I'm not ready to come home every night.
6. When Bowling for Columbine was hailed as the first in a long line of documentaries, I didn't really think that I would follow the trend. But au contraire, I've seen them all! And living with Skene means I'm more likely to watch a nature programme or anthropological feature than E.R.
7. Woe is me! I can't stay in bed beyond 11am now! I used to happily lie under my duvet until just before Neighbours. These days, I'm restless long before that.

And the white hairs started years ago...

It's Not My Party!

Last night, Johnson held a party, not in my honour, but just strangely coinciding with my birthday party. So we all went west to Newbury, donning a cacophony of hats, as required, to eat Lorna's deliciously authentic onion bhajis and Johnson's fried cheese delights.

Seeing as the flat was filled with engineers, a tower of Heineken cans was soon constructed in the living room, complete with a spring constructed out of a paper plate, to keep it upright. Unsurprisingly, someone knocked it down almost immediately - spoilsport!

The behaviour continued to deteriorate with bottle tops hidden all over chez Richard and a lot of knife sharpening by Ron in the kitchen (a proper little tinker).

Soon, sufficient intoxicating liquor had been imbibed for it to seem a good idea to undertake the next stage of The Long Walk in the summer of 2006. Memories of blisters have faded too much, it seems. Madness!

For party pictures, Dan obliges again.

This evening, we continued in the same vein with a few drinks at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping - this time to celebrate my encroaching old age. Everyone was suitably impressed by the view of the river from our vantage point opposite Rotherhithe and predictably disturbed by the noose hanging over the tide outside the window. I caught up with lots of people whom I'd not seen since my departure last August and was pleased to see Robert, who is probably officially my oldest friend. Very appropriate that he should come to my birthday!

To top the weekend off, as Skene and I meandered home along the waterside, it began to snow. Huge feathery flakes enveloping us! Happy birthday!

Gong Hei Fat Choy and Happy Birthday!

We celebrated Skene's birthday and the first day of the Chinese Year of the Rooster with a visit to the Science Museum.

Dan was keen to see Babbage's Difference Engine. I was disappointed not to find a Turing Machine. Having learnt all about mobius strips and polyhedrons, we moved on to my favourite collection - the model boats! The area is always deserted and toasty warm and I'm always happy to spend half an hour there mooching around the junks and outrigger canoes, the barges and wherries. I'll then move on to the 3D map of the Port of London in days gone by, to try to work out exactly which dock is underneath our house.

The trip reminded me of one of my own birthday parties when I was about 11 years old and Ian and Jennifer took Katie, Charlotte Collier and I to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester where I was enthralled by rockets and spacesuits.

I wasn't allowed to go to the pub though, when I'd just turned 11. Tonight, though, we headed over to the Yorkshire Grey, near Regent Street, for a few drinks. Lots of friends and colleagues turned up and we took over the snug at the back of the pub, hidden from the rest of the establishment by snob screens and cosying up to the roaring fire.

For a photographic record of the day, visit Dan's website.

Ash Wednesday

In the absence of any inspiration, I've given up chocolate for Lent again. And it's still as hard as ever!

Skene suggested that I might want to give up nagging for forty days and forty nights. I didn't think that a good idea though - I'd fail at the first post!

I have, however, purchased a copy of "Change the World For a Fiver" and so will be spending Lent turning the television off standby and reducing the thermostat by a few degrees each evening in a bid to reverse global warming...