So, here we are just three days away rom the beginning of British Summertime and there’s still snow lying on the ground. What a wonderful country we live in.

As usual, I’ve been desperately trying to think of some advantages to our crappy climate – it’s a typically British pastime, making the best of a bad job – and I’ve actually added a second benefit to my usual one. Our conservatory roof is real, fully transparent glass to enable us to see up into the trees which surround us. Most conservatories are built with translucent, not transparent, polycarbonate roofs. Our downside is that cleaning a glass roof is, not to put too fine a point on it, a pain in the arse/ass [pick your preferred word/spelling]. My newfound winter benefit is that a hefty covering of snow, as it slides down the roof and off, is that it cleans and polishes the glass as it goes. I guess it’s a bit like a glacier polishing the stones over which it flows. Saves me a job.

The only other benefit, the usual one to which I will admit, is the variety of birdlife that descends upon our garden in search of food during harsh conditions. There’re no berries left on our bushes at the moment so we haven’t seen any Redwings, Waxwings or Fieldfares since returning from Singapore and Cambodia, but we have recently been being eaten out of house and home by a veritable flock of Siskins (Carduelis spinus). This morning Carol counted at least eight occupying all the permanent perches on our feeders, both sunflower seed and nyjer seed feeders, and there were others in the trees beyond. At least the food’s not going to waste and we’re delighted to see them, though I think the year-round resident tit population might be a little distraught ‘cos they’re having a hard time getting a look in.

The Siskins have been around for a while vacuuming up the food but just recently they were joined by our first Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) of the season. Blackcaps are great little songsters in summer but difficult for us amateurs to distinguish from a Garden Warbler – very similar songs. Not that it’s got much to sing about at the moment, of course, though it is doing a good job of holding its own in the battle for feeder space.

Our cunning plan in arranging our trip to Singapore and Cambodia when we did was that Spring would be upon us when we returned. So much for that hope! Let’s fervently hope that change in our clocks brings a change in the weather, otherwise the dragonfly season won’t start, as it should, before we go to Spain.

With a positive attitude, this afternoon I drove the 10 miles to Billy’s field intent on getting him out and delivering him for his final warranty service tomorrow. A sinking feeling began to take hold as I approached, the bushes beside the roads appearing more snow-covered than chez nous. The fields looked decidedly white, too.

Not wishing yet to admit defeat, I unbolted the gate into the caravan storage field. At least the bolts weren’t actually frozen into their keeps this year. I drove into the snow-covered field. My positive attitude turned to foolish optimism as I released the tethering straps that secure our caravan’s cover. OK, so here’s the essential numbers of Billy’s dimensions (body, not including the draw bar):

• length = 5.5m
• height = 2.6m
• width = 2.18m

If that’s Billy’s size then that is also the size of his snug-fitting all over winter coat. Since Billy’s field was covered in about 3ins/75mm of that irritating white stuff, so was Billy even, I might add, about a metre of his slightly sloping front.

Foolishly, I began trying to raise the front of Billy’s cover, complete with ~2m² of 0.075m deep snow – let’s call that 0.15m³ snow.

Even that much snow is heavy – it’s difficult to shift it and it’s quite impossible to raise it to a height of 2.6m using what amounts to a broom handle, the implement provided by the manufacturers of the caravan covers.

Foolishness gave way to blind stupidity; I brushed off the front snow and actually succeeded in raising the front panel of the cover up onto Billy’s roof. What on earth was I thinking I was going to do next? I might have brushed off the relatively modest amount of snow clinging to Billy’s nose but the roof was also covered side to side and front to back in 3in/75mm of the blasted stuff.

• area of roof = 5.5m * 2.18m = 12m²
• volume of wet snow = 12m² * 0.075m = 0.9m³

I’ve no idea what nearly one cubic metre of wet snow weighs but I do know that even thinking that I could get the cover out from under it was dumb in the extreme.

I returned home, mentally calculating the above as I drove, suffering from a severe attack of reality.

In my naïveté, when we placed our order for our caravan, Billy, and the dealer said one would be available for delivery in February, I was quite pleased. “Great”, I thought, “we’ll be ready to start enjoying it when spring gets going.” And so we were and so we did.

Billy is now six years old and, despite a bunch of new technologies being introduced in caravan manufacture, we remain convinced that Billy is the pinnacle of caravan design for empty nesters. In our case, of course, we never actually filled the nest but that’s a different issue. For a couple wishing to enjoy travelling freedom on their own, Billy is the bees knees. I have, however, learned a valuable lesson that will come into play as and when the time comes to consider a Billy replacement: never buy a caravan in February. Come to that, don’t buy one in January, either.

OK, so what’s the problem?

Fortunately, given British manufacturing skills, modern caravans come with a so-called “water ingress” warranty. Baileys exhibited a fair amount of confidence by supplying Billy with a 6-year water ingress warranty. Another manufacturer, Lunar Caravans, earned the nickname “leaky Lunars” for obvious reasons. I know, our previous van was one and it did, indeed, leak to the tune of over £1000. Longer running warranties are very nice but the problem is, in order to maintain that warranty you have to have the van serviced at an authorized dealer within a few weeks of the purchase date anniversaries. Sod’s Law being what it is, in the middle of February that pretty much constitutes a snow guarantee. Quite apart from the delights of facing a journey towing a trailer on slippery roads, I have to go to Billy’s field, remove his frozen stiff cover, refit his battery and water pump (the water pump needs removing over winter to avoid frost damage) and drag him over to the dismal depths of dismal Luton. Joy unbounded!

Right on schedule, tomorrow is time for Billy’s sixth annual service and, for the second time this season, snow is precisely what we awoke to. I’d have put money on it happening. The birds were clearly impressed! You can just see that Blackbird thinking, “you’re not seriously going anywhere near a caravan in this, are you?” 🙂 One year, I had trouble getting Billy’s gate open because the bolt was frozen into the keep. Getting Billy’s cover off covered in two inches of snow is probably impossible so I hope this stuff melts tomorrow. Then I’ll just have to get very cold and wet.

Being Billy’s sixth year, this is the last year of our warranty cover and, despite any future problem being on our own bank account, I’m quite looking forward to being able to schedule future services at a more clement time of year.

The construction technology used on Bailey’s latest incarnations come with a 10-year water ingress warranty. You definitely don’t want to take delivery of one of those in January or February.

In the world that we’ve created, it seems all too common that we feel the need to write about some event or occurrence that was, shall we say “sub-optimal” [to quote some painful management mumbo-jumbo]. It is too easy to overlook praise, where it is due. The following, therefore, makes a very pleasant change.

Last week when we were going through the checkout at our local Morrison’s supermarket, we were presented with a discount voucher. The voucher was for £10 off an Internet order of wine, costing £30 or more, from Morrisons Cellar. The words wine and discount instantly made me take notice, though I assumed that there might be some hidden gotcha – delivery charges might dull my assumed pleasure, for example. Once back at home and with the unpacking and storing away to do, I forgot about it.

On Monday, I came across our voucher and, for want of something better to do, I dived onto the good ol’ InterWeb thingy to check out Morrisons Cellar. Right at the top of the page I spotted the appealing phrase, “FREE STANDARD DELIVERY ON ALL ORDERS” [and yes, it was in caps]. The phrase was linked and read:

Whatever size case you choose, whether it is a case of 6 or 12 you go for, we will deliver to your home or office, wherever you like in the UK, and delivery is free for all our wine. For full delivery or return information click here.

“Standard Delivery” was defined as 3-5 days, which is not unusual and follows good ol’ Amazon’s lead. We had no great plans for the week ahead so 3-5 days would be fine. I still couldn’t find a gotcha.

I rummaged around in Morrisons Cellar for mixed cases and found several of them “out of stock”, but I eventually settled on one that was in stock and that seemed worth trying [Fresh New Year Dozen: £66.00]. I applied our voucher code and the price came down to £56.00 with no delivery charge showing up. I went ahead and placed my order.

I received a confirmation email almost immediately.

Late that afternoon I received a text message that our order had been passed on to the courier service (Yodel, I think). “Excellent”, I thought; “it should, indeed be here in a few days.”

At 10:15 the following morning a van parked outside and our wine was walked down to our door. This was less than 24 hours since I placed the order.

“Stunned” may be going a bit too far but I was certainly surprised – very pleasantly so.

I’d never heard of Morrisons Cellar before so this may be a new operation in its honeymoon period but nonetheless.

One other thing is worthy of note. My chosen mixed case (which I notice has now joined those that are “out of stock”), has thus-far proved to contain quite lightweight, very drinkable wine. I have personally been “suffering” recently from wines, particularly red wines, that seem to be in competition with each other to increase their alcohol content and jamminess to such a point that they get somewhat overpowering and/or cloying. These days, 13% alcohol is on the low side of normal with 14% being not unusual. I remember reading years ago that a Chateauneuf-du-Pape had to be at least 12.5% in order to bear the name; 12.5% was like its badge of office. Nowadays, 12.5% is low. Where are the 11% and 12% easy going, quaffing wines hiding?

Well, some, at least, are in this (sadly now out of stock) case.

We are blessed with a splendid array of woodland birds in our garden, largely because our garden backs onto a broad-leafed, silver birches being prominent with the occasional beech and oak. Though we are very keen to feed and observe “our” birds – we get very possessive of them – we have to be careful doing so because we are plagued by three much less welcome visitors: Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), Magpies (Pica pica) and Woodpigeons (Columba palumbus). Our bird feeders need either to be squirrel-proof or be defended by a squirrel baffle. We’ve been mostly successful but, regrettably, at least one of the Magpies has worked out a way to raid our sunflower seed feeder.

Our welcome “residents” include about six Blackbirds (Turdus merula), members of the thrush family, who’ve proved difficult to feed without attracting the unwelcome guests. Put out a tray with seed on it and it quickly gets vacuumed up by a combined assault force of Grey Squirrels, Magpies and Woodpigeons. One blackbird, like the Magpie, has managed to crack the sunflower seed feeder but, in general, its kin have had to content themselves with scraps dropped onto the ground by the smaller birds. In the recent snows, however, we weakened and tried another blackbird-friendly approach: a modestly sized bird table. We were hoping that the larger Magpies and Pigeons would be unable to negotiate the bird table’s roof and be unable to land on it. That may have been a contributory factor but I think our choice of feed was more crucial; we put out just dried fruit and suet which the Magpies and Pigeons seem to shun. Result!

In our harsher winter weather, we’ve become used to seeing Redwings (Turdus iliacus), a  winter migrant species of thrush, dining on the Cotoneaster berries overhanging our garden. Our resident Blackbirds have been quick to defend this food source and chase the noticeably smaller Redwings away. [See Berry Defensive.] This year, though we were delighted to be visited by another member of the thrush family, a Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). [First Time Visitor.] Though I managed to snag a shot of it, a fence and its post were involved and I was keen for a better chance.

A couple of years ago, I remembered seeing Martin Hughes-Games, on a BBC Winterwatch programme, mention Fieldfares being fond of fallen apples, so I pinched Carol’s last Cox’s Orange Pippin, quartered it and put it out on the ground as Fieldfare bait. My Carol’s apple lay there untouched for five days. “So much for Fieldfares liking fallen apples”, I mused.

Things changed this morning, however, when we awoke and peered out of the window to be greeted by the sight of a Fieldfare very calmly breakfasting in the snow on Carol’s 5-day old apple pieces. Our guest had clearly been sitting there a little while because some of the previous contents of its gut had already been deposited on the ground where it sat. Well, snow makes that sort of thing fairly obvious. We watched. It continued sitting there, peering about watchfully, every now and then pecking at the apple.

Our resident Blackbirds arrived for their breakfast of dried fruit and suet. The Fieldfare stopped sitting calmly, became very animated and began chasing away any Blackbird within reach. I didn’t seem interested in the dried fruit and suet but it flew at the bird table and dislodged any Blackbird there. If a Blackbird chose to sit in the Cotoneaster bush, the Fieldfare flew up and chased it out. If a Blackbird simply landed on our patio, the Fieldfare hopped hurriedly after it puffing itself up and flaring its wings and tail feathers. This was a single-mindedly determined Fieldfare. The Blackbirds were outnumbered 1 : 6 – they’d met their match. 😀

My book has Fieldfares being about the same length as Blackbirds but to my eye it looks a tad bigger. Certainly, Fieldfares seem to be slightly more heavily built. I refreshed my Fieldfare bait with yet another of Carol’s apples, opened an upstairs window, dressed in coat and gloves against the freezing air and sat in wait hoping my quarry would follow a Blackbird or two into the Cotoneaster bush and sit in a more advantageous position. As I hope you can see, it eventually did just that.

So, here we are in grips of a proper winter again; by proper, I mean one involving noticeable amounts of snow. We have now been in our current house for 25 years and, for the great majority of those winters, we had very little or no snow. The last three winters, though, have been a very different story. We’ve had significant snowfall in all three.

Prompted by the country currently being disrupted by the inconvenient white stuff and having last week screened their now annual Winterwatch live nature extravaganzas, our good ol’ BBC took the opportunity for a bit of cheap telly by digging into their archives and screening an old black and white programme on the devastating winter of 1963 in the guise of a Winterwatch special: Winterwatch, 1963 – The Big Freeze. 1963 was the most severe winter of the 20th century.

What a trip down memory lane that programme was – I loved it. I was 10 at the time and I have vivid memories of struggling back with my mother, on foot, from the town hospital where we had been to visit my father. The snow came down and we slipped and tottered our way to the train station where we joined a lengthy queue. Finally we managed to get a taxi which slithered and skidded us the three miles home in awful driving conditions.

Firstly I loved it because my memory did not extending to the severity and duration of the conditions we endured, and the old black and white programme demonstrated it admirably. I’ve never particularly enjoyed snow, other than a few skiing trips, but perhaps as a youth it might have been more fun than it was for my poor mother who had to do her best to keep me fed, with shopping excursions being difficult, and reasonably warm, before the days of modern conveniences like central heating. I think the thing I loved about it most, though, was the delight of hearing good BBC English once again. There was the charming Cliff Michelmore, along with Kenneth Allsop, both speaking clearly and with grammatical precision, in the way that the BBC used to do. I am only too keenly aware of the way in which language standards have dropped, even at the BBC, but I didn’t realize just how much they’ve plummeted in 50 years. This blast from the past was music to my ears and made me distressingly sentimental.

Cheap TV it may have been but the BBC did put some extra value into this latest broadcast by adding an assessment of the effect that the 2-month long spell of arctic conditions had on our wildlife – an aspect that was missed from the original 1963 programme. I’m sure that indicates a very welcome, generally increased interest in wildlife throughout much of our society. I was staggered to hear it estimated that 50% of our birds died that winter. That adds weight to the need for us to do our bit by putting out plenty of food to help birds through this current spell of snow.

There are few highpoints to any winter, in my view. To a small extent, I even used to think of skiing as making the best of a bad job, though, I must say, the Austrian Alps blanketed in crisp, fresh snow is an awe-inspiring sight and there’s no better way of seeing it. The only real benefit I see now (that we don’t ski) is that we do get visited by some interesting migrant species of bird. We are lucky enough to have some of them turn up in our own back garden. We’ve become used to winter visits by Redwings (Turdus iliacus) and Eurasian Siskins (Carduelis spinus) in most years. This year, I managed to snag a much longed-for Siskin shot without a bird feeder propping it up. Hoorah! Last year we were thrilled when our red berries attracted a passing flock of Bohemian Waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) and, a couple of years ago, a single Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla) turned up.

Yesterday, though, there was a considerable amount of dashing about the house caused by the arrival in our garden, for the first time ever witnessed by us, of a Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Actually, there were two, I think, and I spotted two flitting about again this morning. They supposedly love apples so I may have to put one out as bait. I’ve seen them before on just a few occasions but certainly never snapped one. So, although this shot includes our fence together with a rather unattractive concrete fence post, I was very happy to have it to add to our catalogue. Nice one!

Let’s hope this lot doesn’t continue for as long as it did in 1963.