Tim Difford

Next time you watch a football match, imagine that normally they’re allowed to use their arms and hands but that, just before kick-off the teams secretly agreed to play the whole game without doing so, just for a laugh. It transforms the game and adds a comically entertaining subtext to even the most hard-bitten nil-nil affair.

We’re in meltdown here at Difford Mansions.  The last month’s stratified piles of snow have all decided to melt in one day, so the already stressed land drain running under the farmer’s field next door is fit to bursting.

In turn this is putting undue stress on my Broadband.  Why?  Because when I collared a bloke from Yorkshire Water earlier as he was perusing the river running down the road next to our house and wondering who to point the finger at other then YW, i.e. the council or the landowner, he suggested filming the water which is currently circumnavignating our house on both sides.

Good idea, methinks and off I trot to capture a few seconds on video.  I then debated where to send it and sort of decided to park it on YouTube for now… two hours later and it’s still uploading.

It’s nice living in the sticks but you do realise that urban areas get all the salt, drainage and bandwidth.  On the upside, we now inhabit our own island.

I haven’t done a post like this in sooooooooooo long.

Of course, the the Day After Tomorrow arrived about three weeks ago now, so waking up to a scene from Wallander is pretty standard now.  I kinda like this proper winter.  Hey, we all knew it was coming, didn’t you see all the berries on the holly trees in the autumn?  Yeah, well the upside for me is that even when f2f meetings get rearranged I can pretty much work from home.

Of course, that’s something of a downside too, because, on the days when the kids were snowed outta school I had to sit inside on conferawebinarcalls and telecasters watching them build igloos and snowmen in the garden.

Actually, I got across to Manchester the other day, even the buses are running up here in the hills.  In fact, the roads up here have been cleared and gritted better than the main roads down in the valleys.  We reckon that’s because getting snowed up here is pretty dangerous, especially for the elderly as it’s miles to the nearest shop.

This morning Mrs D has headed out on the car to Ice Sheffield (I know) to take the littlest one skating.  I suggested that the frozen pond at the old brickworks would be fine, I mean, what could go wrong?  Anyway, she was having none of it, so there was muggins scraping the latest patina of sparkly white stuff off our remaining car at 7.30am on a Saturday.

Of course, the instant they set off, it starts big-time snowing again and I begin to panic that I might have to miss today’s Soccerette and go and dig them out of a drift in Thunder Bridge again.  It’s still coming down… I’d better set Sky Plus and get my hat ready.

Not looking forward to tomorrow morning… I’m supposed to be taking four of our Under 8’s to Manchester United’s Academy for a game against them.  It’s indoors, but it’s the getting there.

As of now, I’m imbibing some decent coffee and flicking through WiReD (the one with the upsetting Jamie Oliver cover), whilst mourning the end of the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip DVDs that we finished last night.  I’m listening to a Fridge CD whilst doing all this, for obvious reasons and thinking about rereading Nicolson Baker’s The Mezzanine.

I struggle rereading books though because even though I can never remember what happens when I pick it up, as I start to reread, it all floods back 3 pages ahead of whereever I get to… I’m like my own personal spoiler-machine.  I also struggle to start new books when I’m stuck in the middle of another.  I’m ok reading a fiction and a non-fiction at the same time, but two novels at the same time kills me.

I’ve been reading Cory Doctorow’s Makers for weeks, using Stanza on the iPhone.  Don’t get me wrong, the Stanza ereader app is great, but with the constant ‘page-turning’ I feel like I should have finished the damn book weeks ago and I’m stil only 52.4372391% through it.

I’ve got to go, the boy’s decided that as it’s ten minutes to twelve he wants a tuna butty.  I said it’s only ten to ten.  He wants a tuna butty anyway.