Horrible phrase, isn't it? Used by the TV weather forecasters to remind us that we continue to suffer 1 degree cold and damp caused by that stationary polar air.
I should be working away at the Calculus of Variations, but I'm tired after a week of getting up at ten to seven, out of the house into the Reading traffic at 7.25 and back home around 6.30 p.m. So the morning has been spent relaxing, listening to Radio 3 while Clare was having her bath ... I'll get to the maths a bit later. Maple has been kind of prioritised down a bit: it's interesting but not yet central to what I have to do, which is much more conceptual.
Adrian called yesterday evening from Canada, a good-voice-quality Skype call punctuated by latency and drops. He'll be back April 9th to the UK and after a few weeks here will be off to Chile for the summer (their winter). Then it's back to western Canada for the next season.
Meanwhile as I write Alex is doing something high and cold in the Lake District - he's taken the opportunity to get away for a few days.
How is the building work for our new house in Wells, Somerset coming along, you ask. The reconstruction of the kitchen and its transformation into a kitchen-diner should by now be complete. The carpets are in. The downstairs bathroom should shortly be rebuilt.
March 3rd will see the kitchen equipment arriving: fridge-freezer, washing machine, cooker, and once the kitchen lino is in they will be installed. On March 9th it's planned for the furniture to finally be delivered from store and from that date the house should be habitable.
In the next phases various outbuildings will be demolished, the front drive widened and resurfaced, double-glazing installed and cavity wall insulation applied. By the summer we will have spent a large sum of money and brought the house up to modern standards. I say 'we' but Clare has done all the project management: my contribution is purely on the financial side.
