Cold, colder

Apparently last night was the coldest night over the UK as a whole for some forty years, or something like that. Very cold, anyway: Jack Frost patterns on the inside of the car windscreen this morning, which we haven't seen for years; iced-over ponds, and so on. Yesterday morning we woke to snow, which depressed J and Jreturning to work and school (not that J had really left work much over Christmas, anyway).E and I drove up to the Chilterns, to see some Papillon puppies, which we may end up accidently somehow getting one of - more detail to follow if we do. Yesterday I managed to finish taking down the Christmas decorations, and today I boxed them up; there's a car boot full of boxes waiting to go into store.
Only it's not actually in the car boot yet, but in the dining room still.
The poodle still isn't scissored, but I did lots of dull, useful ironing type things today, and got the new car serviced, and went to work, which was busy enough, including, sadly, the PTS of a cat which was as yellow with jaundice as anything I've ever seen. Acid yellow skin and gums and eyeballs, literally like a lemon. Poor thing; at least there was not the shadow of a doubt what the right thing to do was. Thai beef rice this evening (that makes 13 meals from the joint of beef so far, and counting). Ellen back to school tomorrow. Not much book reading done the last couple of days; I seem to have stalled both on Riders of the Purple Sage and The Bone Garden (Tess Gerritsen), which I started last night. Moving progress: just the decoration boxing, but at least that's something.