Well, we really did bask for a few days in record setting heat.

It was wonderful to feel the sun beating down on my head as I hung out three loads of laundry one day last week; I waved at neighbours all over the neighbourood, smiled at the emerging grape hyacinths, thrilled to see the tulips in my own front garden that I really had NO idea were there.


**Note to self: try to mark those bulb locations so that they can be transplanted to a more formal arrangement.

Sunday night the UK was placed under weather alerts-our area in particular went quickly from a 'be advised' to a 'OH NOES!' status. We shrugged. The weather services have got it wrong too many times the past couple of years. We stocked in some extra milk and bread, put the wellies by the back door, and stacked some extra logs by the wood stoves. Then we went about our business.

I haven't been feeling well so a lot of the happenings here in the UK (and the world in general) have erm, kinda sorta slipped past me.

Long story short I'm having some more dental work and really, I do hope this is it, and that I get back to feeling as great as I had been feeling after the last round was over. My dentist and I suspected we weren't really done, of course, but oh we tried mightily! The truth arrived as another infection, and the offending unit will be removed at the end of the week. I asked the dentist yesterday "So, do you think I'm going to lose any more teeth here?!" And he was very quick to say everything else looks great, it's just this last one that we'd always known was iffy anyway.

**Note to self: in the next lifetime, if one should be so unlucky as to take several severe blows to the face and jaws (car wreck, surf boards, horses, and bounding dogs, such is life), GET ON THAT RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY A TOUCH EARLIER!! Before it screws with the rest of one's health. Heart problems are a real downer, ya know?!

I mean, I knew there was a petrol 'panic' and the government was taking a lot of heavy flak for suggesting people might want to top up their tanks and maybe fill a jerry can or two, you know, just in case there really was that loudly threatened tanker driver strike (who promptly lobbed verbal grenades at Number Ten saying "Oh my word, never, we would never strike over the Easter holidays?!"... 

Walking home from the bus drop yesterday (after my dentist appointment) we stopped in at the small grocery attached to a petrol filling station forecourt; it was, to be frank, eerie to see because first thing-no queues, and second thing-a sign announcing no diesel could be had at that forecourt.

We'd somehow happened to be at the same forecourt grocery the day the so-called panic began. On that day we walked into the grocery-no cars filling up. We walked out of the grocery about thirty minutes later to see every pump in the 15 pump forecourt busy, and a growing queue. People were calm and determined looking as they steadily arrived to take a place in the queue for petrol. During the rest of last week Paul made regular walks out to see if things were better or worse, the queues lengthened, and tempers shortened, and several petrol forecourts near us closed pumps, then entire petrol filling forecourts as the increased buying seemed to be causing a shortage.

We thought it had gone back to 'normal' until yesterday when we saw the eerily empty forecourt with the prominent 'NO DIESEL, we apologise for any inconvenience' signboard placed across the driveways.

We ambled home (it was still warmish) talking about the new bus fare price rise set for the 16th, and how we might be seeing the real McCoy of a Post-Peak Oil New Normal. Higher bus and train fares, petrol and diesel shortages. Higher prices on just about everything, and more business failing here in the UK every day.

Because I am not feeling well, it's all seemingly sliding past me without me imagining all sorts of extreme scenarios.

I understand there was a rather large after shock in Mexico yesterday, a lunatic ran amuck and murdered seven people at a Christian college, an enhanced video shows a few scratches on George Zimmerman's head (but still no blood stains or swelling, taped broken nose) to prove "oh no Mr DA, he did NOT murder a kid for 'walking in the rain with his rain hood up while black"... A lot of really horrible things have been happening, and because of this dental infection I am not really registering much of it. I know it's happening, I'm just not feeling it. But I think I will be once this last bit of dental work is done, and I'm on the mend.

And it's snowing again, it had been snowing from before I got up at 0630 until about 3pm and had started to slowly melt off in places; now fat swirling flakes threaten to again cover what's left of the tulips and grape hyacinth: