Bloody cold. And dark.

A power cut hit Ruralville in the small hours and power has yet to be restored. Our heating, though gas, requires an electricity supply to function. Thankfully, our log burning stove doesn’t require electricity, so there is a little heat in the house as snow falls steadily outside. Thank goodness for laptop batteries (mmmm, warm knees) and redundant dialup accounts.

Snow, dropping

Much happiness at Graybo Towers this morning as a parcel arrived containing a consignment of snowdrops (Galanthus for those that like botanical names) and winter aconites (Eranthis). As is typical with these things, I had The Man From The Ministry here at the time who, it turns out, is a Galanthophile and has offered to give me some of his fancy named varieties of snowdrops. For free. Bah.
Anyhow, I ducked out earlier to plant the new arrivals before the cats shredded them in their packaging. Now the snow is falling, so here is a picture of snowdrops in the snow.
newly planted snowdrops and aconites

Meaningless Statistic of the Day

From Which? via the BBC comes this gem of a meaningless statistic – "one in four touched by identity fraud". Apparently, one in four Britons (based on a survey of just 975 people out of a population in excess of 55 million – not a statistically significant sample, I’d suggest) has either suffered identity fraud or "knows someone who has". This is fear-mongering at its worst. You could say just about anything about any subject if you include people who know someone who has…

Gravatar

I now have a Gravatar and I’ve implemented gravatars in the comments. I was slightly concerned that Gordon’s didn’t show up, but that is because he adds anti-spam text to his email address when he comments. Any comments or suggestions on the formatting of gravatars in the comments will be welcome, although as I have struggled with this for the past half hour, you may get short shrift.