A Safe Pair of Gloves...

At close of play on Saturday, a light film of snow had fallen on the freshly cleared ground, but this was snow mist, with flakes even finer than those that had refused to accumulate on the patio table. Overnight the rain arrived, and the snow was noticeably less by the morning. We all gave a collective sigh of relief and got on with our Sunday lives.

After morning service, G3 (aged 8) invited herself to lunch, but to her disappointment, it wasn't a proper cooked meal, or even an omelette. Sandwiches were on the menu.  

After lunch, it was decided that we would go and build snowmen in the adjacent field. To her total disgust, I kitted out G3 (aged 8) with a pair of waterproof gardening gloves.  She looked disdainfully at the fence paint stains, that betrayed the fact they had been put to good use.

"These gloves are far too big!" she protested.

She didn't actually say 

"These gloves are a horrible shade of green with poo coloured splodges on them", 

nor did she say 

"I want pink sparkly gloves decorated with unicorns", 

but I know the latter would have been received with far greater enthusiasm than the utilitarian pair on offer.

"You will be grateful of them when we get over the field.  Just ignore the fact that they are a little on the large side!" I advised. 

In other words, pink sparkly gloves embellished with unicorns do not exist in this house!

Now G3 (aged 8) is not very good at ignoring things that she does not approve of, and tried protesting a second time about the gloves on offer, but, surprise, surprise, no sparkly pink gloves festooned with unicorns materialised.

Meanwhile, the KHT had spurned a similar pair of waterproof gloves and opted for the black woollen ones she had worn to build her shepherd yesterday. 

"Well, she was fine with them yesterday," thought I, "So she should be OK today..."

My walking boots, which I had been wearing in the snow, have sprung a leak. Well, to be more precise, they have come unstitched, so I haven't bothered using waterproof spray on them. They were fine when the snow was fresh but didn't cope with this morning's slush paddling. There's only one thing worse than a soggy pair of socks, and that is discovering that both the pairs of socks you are wearing are sopping wet!  For this afternoon's excursion, I was going to have to find my wellies out of the garage.  Having successfully retreived them, I undertook the precautionary measure of checking for spiders before I committed to putting my feet in them. Meanwhile, the G3 (aged 8) was running around the garden, urged on to greater madness by the KHT.  G3 (aged 8) successfully avoided the pond which is still half-buried by snow, but still managed to get snow over the top of one of her wellies. G3 (aged 8) decided that the solution to this problem was to tip the snow out of her welly. So far, so good. Unfortunately, she performed the manoeuvre in the middle of the garden, where there was nothing to hold on to, or lean against. She soon discovered that your foot gets both wet and cold, if you place it on the snow-covered ground, whilst removing the snow from the aforementioned item of footwear...

Finally, we set off on our Grand Snowman-making Expedition. Unfortunately, we hit a couple of unexpected problems...

 

The first snag was the discovery that there was virtually no snow left on the field!  Crumbs, there is loads by our house, mountains of it!

The second was that the KHT's gloves were probably still wet from yesterday, so she very soon decided that her hands were far too cold to make a snowman. 

G3 (aged 8) looked at her gloves, which were a horrible shade of green with poo coloured splodges, and saw them in a new light. 

Ugly, they may be, but practical they certainly were! 

Meanwhile, the  G3 (aged 8) persevered....

Valiantly...

Having completed her snow heap snowman as best she could, with the paucity of resources available, G3 (aged8) went for a run around the field, but before she reached the first corner she ran into deep snow and, guess what, she got snow over the top of the other welly...

"At least I didn't put my foot on the ground this time" she informed me, with a certain amount of satisfaction.

By now fine rain was falling, so we headed back to the house.

"You can keep track of where you are going by retracing your footsteps in the snow" advised G3 (aged 8).  I admired the sentiments but looked doubtfully at the well-trodden snow

"Can you actually see any of your own footprints?" I enquired.

G3 (aged 8) examined the footpath intently, before declaring excitedly

"Look there's one!  I can see my footprint!"

In the evening we were due to go out and ring for the evening service at the parish church. I went upstairs to get ready when I noticed that the sky was glowing, as the sun shone through heavy rain. I grabbed my camera.  

"There might be a rainbow!" declared the KHT, and went off to look.

Sure enough, there was one close by, growing out of our neighbour's roof... Definitely a double rainbow, and, I think I caught a glimpse of part of an extra arc inside the brightest rainbow. However, as I didn't manage to get a photo of it, so it could just have been a trick of the light...

"It's not true what they say" advised G3 (aged 8) "There isn't really a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow."

"Thank goodness for that! I have done enough digging over the last day or so!" thought I.

There was gold at the end of the rainbow this evening, in the form of a successful length of bellringing in a new method brought safely to a conclusion. A very pleasing end to the day, even if we had three attempts before we really worked out what we should be doing!  We had allowed plenty of time for this eventuality, and it meant that we finished close enough to the service that we didn't have to do anything else, other than chime the treble for the five-minute bell. 

Now all we need, is for the roads to be as clear as a bell...