Quote of the day

From The Independent (here):

Are your feet icy cold despite you wearing thick socks and slippers? Is your boiler revealing itself to be on its last legs? Did you go to work in dank darkness and return in the very same dank darkness? Are you fatter than you were in October and have no one to blame but yourself and a tub of Lindt milk-chocolate reindeers? Has a curious despondency over the point of human existence enveloped your soul? Well, this is what January in Great Britain feels like. The sooner you accept it the better.

Being back in Edinburgh is not actually as depressing as the above might imply.  But "dank darkness" rings a bell.  Meanwhile my chums in Spain are still sipping their beers on the terrace in the sunshine. As the taxi driver from the airport said "why did you come back?".

But needs must.  And there is a perverse calvinistic pleasure in tholing the worst that the weather throws at us.  Besides, it is difficult to find a decent mutton pie in Andalucia ...