Welcome to my perfumed garden

This locking-out of voters is a bit of a rum do and no mistake and Penistone one of the constituencies who turned people away. There's going to be one heck of a stink about this for the forseeable, you mark my words. With any luck they'll declare the whole election null and void and we can have the fun of doing it all again next week and won't that be as delightful as a summer picnic, pop pickers? :o)

ETA: Twittering as events unfolded, @Raksky was prevented from voting in Sheffield. Really interesting Twitter - some serious shit is going to hit some truly massive fans over this.

ETA2: Peter Robinson has lost East Belfast! Holy bejezus ::she said ironically::

on the Now Show!!!!!

...Of walking a mostly-blind dog in wet snow in the almost-dark when school's turning out.

Almost an inch deep now. Buggerbuggerbugger.

We're still planning to drive back to Withnell tomorrow - srzly, they're going to have to close the M62 to stop us, we are so ready to be home already!

I am, however, starting to wibble about the proposed weekend in Matlock. I mean, the met office are saying the snow will be gone by the weekend, but then they said this weather wouldn't be here till tomorrow teatime so once again, I point my angry finger in a south-westerly direction and indicate by means of semaphore and Aldis lamp that they are made of purest  F.A.I.L.

ETA: Oh, now  you change your forecast NOW you issue your warnings. Bit  bloody late when there's already an inch of the stuff on the ground, y'shower of bastards!

...quite heavily.

I rather wish it wouldn't.

Methinks (heh) it is the best thing on Radio 4 by far right now. A thing of beauty indeed.

Well, I'm mid-workout and still have a bathroom and 2 bedrooms to clean. Been to the shops and the bank though, replenished supplies of Winter Nips and dried milk. Dear God. It's all go, isn't it?

It's absolutely ARCTIC out there! All water is solid ice, the roads are impassable.

What happened? I demand an explanation for this climatic outrage

We are still in Yorkshire and it's all my fault.

It was thawing late yesterday, Mark said - let's go, but it was already gone 1pm, and we'd be getting home in the dark and I was worried about Dad, who needs a lot of forewarning about any kind of change to his routine and I said, no, the snow ploughs have been through, it's thawing, it's raining in some places now, it'll be OK, we'll leave tomorrow morning...

What the ploughs left behind has frozen into an inch of solid, shiny ice - everywhere. No buses are running anywhere between here and the motorway, not even central Huddersfield. More snow is forecast today, the sky is full of it.

We're buggered.

As I suspected would happen - the reason we stayed in Yorkshire yesterday during the only weather-window since Christmas - Tesco couldn't get the van up our hill. We've had another five inches over night and it's still coming down hard.

So Mark and I trundled down to the bottom of the hill with rucksacks, loaded up as best we could then we and Tesco-Boy (they're like policemen, you know?) brought the rest (and there was a lot, we really were scraping the bottoms of our collective barrels at Dad's house, gentle reader, we were out of whisky, we were almost out of tea!) on his trolley and we got it all here. Tesco-Boy wouldn't even come in for a cup of  coffee anxious to get back and finish his shift. He really did go beyond the bounds for us today bless him and his little woolly hat.

There's a splendid Dunkirk Spirit out there with grinning, snow-crusted people walking icicled dogs. We were offered a sledge to help with the shopping (alas it was no use at all, the shopping kept falling off ). It's all rather jolly and thoroughly splendid

Anyway, we're all warm and cosy by the fire now, mugs of well-laced tea, watching The Professionals, giggling at bad daytime ads on ITV3.

Would you like some more pictures? Just taken around and about the house, I wasn't about to venture too far afield in this. Like Rik the People's Poet says, a man could lose his bearings in weather like this.

( Cut for the already bored )

We spent the day twittering with Chorley (bloody) council yesterday - we and many others - demanding to know when they were going to grit our village to which the answer was -we're not. Withnell and Brinscall lie high in the hills, you've got to go uphill (or down, as the case may be) in any direction to get in and out and, since Thurlstone is likewise ice and snow bound (despite the ploughs and gritters who arrived in force yesterday), I guess we're going nowhere.

It makes no sense to leave a warm and cosy house and risk life and limb on motorways and Pennine roads to get to an ice box of a cottage that it'll take us 3 days to warm up (and no idea how much wood and coal is left and I doubt very much if deliveries will make it up our hill anymore than we will).

So, like the man on tthe Guinness ad, we wait. I'm only mildly worried about our house, we're well lagged so not anticipating burst pipes, I have parcels arriving - they can be collected but Oh Dear God I want to be home in my own space!!!

Mark's just set off to walk to Penistone. He spent 2 hours yesterday trying to dig us out  - with the rest of the street, there's quite the wartime spirit in the village. :o) - with little success; despite the snow ploughs and rampant gritting yesterday, it's the ice that's the problem, rather than the snow. I'm not sure what he'll find up there, the shops have been emptying steadily with panic-buying and scant deliveries (we got on Look North because of it! ::does excited little shimmy:: - well, no, not really. Look North does not excitement make.) - on Wednesday they were rationing us to a loaf a head. Thank goodness for my sister's bulk buying tendencies and leftover Christmas alcohol.

I myself am going nowhere. I seem to have developed an inner-ear problem with mild dizzyness; went arse-over-tit twice yesterday so no snowy trekking for me. Oh dear. What a shame. Never mind.

( Have some pictures while we wait for the thaw )