In my world there is no such thing as STOP……or at least, not voluntarily. I, stupidly it transpires, had big plans for this holiday. BIG plans.

I was going to:

1. Dig out the roots of the hedge I cut down last winter then build my second new “eco-fence” on the boundary between our home and our neighbours. I’m pretty sure they’re very pissed off with me because they asked us to take down the hedge but I doubt they expected the eyesore that’s been left there to last for more than a year before being sorted out.
2. Clear out my greenhouse ready for 2010 planting, which should start in 2-3 weeks, weather permitting.
3. Build a series of interlocking compost bins in the veggie garden using old wooden pallets that my kind boss found for me. (This by the way, is a photo of one of the pallets.)
4. Plant the broad beans.

You’ll notice that these jobs are all out-door jobs and you’ll also know, if you live in the UK at least, that for the entire three weeks of my University’s Christmas break it’s been frozen or snowing or both. So, not one of my “to do list” got done. Not even the measly easy one of planting the broad beans.

So, at least there is a good reason for not achieving any of the above.

Still, what I should have done was make a new “to do” list of indoor jobs, such as fitting the under-cupboard lights in the kitchen, except we’ve not been able to get out and about to buy stuff so they’ve gone undone too.

Instead, I find myself having spent three weeks engaged in a quotidian world of seemingly endless cooking interspersed with a bit of daytime telly (alright, bang to rights, a lot of daytime telly) and learning to knit.

I’m not sure what this says about me but I’m also not sure I want to examine what it says because I might find myself thinking of myself as a sloth. If I think about it in a “kind to Linda” charitable way on the other hand I can see that I badly needed a break from “doing stuff”, having worked a seven day week every single week and every single day since I began my college course in September. From Monday, I go back into seven-days-a-week working, back at college and back at work too so, snow excuse I know, perhaps an enforced break was just what I needed to happen to me.