I had a couple of ‘firsts’ today, and both before 8.30am. I wonder what the rest of the day has in store?

We’ve lived here for over 12 years now and, apart from last year, we have experienced very little snow.

In the early years I used to make sure our cupboards were stocked with tinned stuff in case we got snowed in, but as we ate them (due to ‘use by’ dates not snow) I stopped replacing them.

When the newspaper headlines a few days ago heralded 6″ of snow, we both dismissed the notion, at least in this neck of the woods. How wrong could we be.

It has been snowing on and off for a couple of days, nothing too drastic, but today I got up to not 6″ of snow but 12″+, certainly over the top of my wellies.

And that was the problem, wellies, shovels, spades, snow pushers were all in the garage, shed or boiler house. That is why for the first time in my life I dug myself out of the house with a stainless steel frying pan!

It was hard work but at least it got me to the boiler house with dry feet where I could get my wellies.

My next job was the bird feeder. It was almost unreckognisable. Fortunately I always bring my bird food in at night, so what I was able to put out was at least dry.

Writing it down makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. There was a lot of digging involved. I do hope the little guys appreciate my efforts. They must be tough as old boots to survive the freezing nights, but are on a real hiding to nothing when they can’t even perch anywhere properly during the day.

It didn’t take them long to appear, which brings me nicely to my second ‘first’ of the day. (Is that an oxymoron?) Until now I’ve only ever seen 3 robins at any one time. Today I clearly saw 5 queueing for the bird food.

Now all I have to do is manage to feed the 2 of us without my store cupboard tins.

Incidentally there has been no sighting of the one-armed squirrel, or any other squirrel for that matter, since the 23rd. I do hope he’s OK.