'Clocks Spring Forward' in spring. My brain did not. The clock by my bedside is a radio controlled one so I had not noticed there had been a change and had not heard there was an imminent alteration to the time. I thought I had got a really good rest and lie-in on Sunday morning, only to find out about midday, when we were visiting mum-in-law with a mum's day pressie, that the clocks had changed for springtime.

I have been in flu mode so ears and grey matter have not been concentrating on anything other than combatting the pest and getting through to the other side. I am miffed though, that I lost an hour.

Up here in the far north of Scotland where I live, spring does not visit us till about six weeks after it has reached the balmy south (that latter point, refers to both sides of the border). Our daffodils are still in glorious bloom - if they don't get blown to pieces with the variable winds we get - when yours down south have already bowed out but, by then you have other super blooms bursting out to take their place.

Our climate and daylight/night-time patterns are very different to those many miles south of here. There are times in the year when we have no real daylight to speak of and time changes do not favour us at all, it makes for safety concerns, especially for kids walking to and from school. But in the mid year months (note I do not use the seasonal descriptor)we are almost the land of the white nights and I have read a credit card outside at 11pm quite easily. That was a long time ago, I do not know if I could still do that with the need to permanently use specs. Again, time changes do not mean an awful lot for us far northern mortals other than, it is a disruptor of routines and sleep.

My personal view is that I would be happy with a regional time zone; other countries have them and accept the difference. We can't all be congregated in the same zones and it is time this fact was accepted with good grace and appropriate arrangements for suitable variations put in place.

Late last year I came across some music cassette tapes my mother had bought and which I now own. I played them for the first time since I brought them home. The sounds of the Viennese music she loved lapped through the house like gentle waves and transported me back to the days when we would turn up the volume on our cream coloured cathode tube radio and sit round it, to listen to, and enjoy The Blue Danube, Vienna Blut or Tales from The Vienna Woods. When the tapes had ceased their concert of those pieces, and more, I spent some quiet and peaceful moments continuing to reminisce. I thought about the lovely gift my mother had given me, a deep and special appreciation of a beautiful art. I felt very close to her.

I have never ridden a horse, I have never sat in a saddle atop of one so what on earth possessed me to obtain a saddle chair! As it has just been assembled and I have had a short 'training' session using it, I shall have to consider its overall merits at a later date.

Hi ho silverD

The north east wind blew today and with it, it brought in heavy snow showers; not light fluffy snow, but snow balls! I heard on Aunty Beeb this morning that the whole country had burst into spring; as I looked out of my window, my eyes told me otherwise. I am pleased to report that the following BBC weather forecast made an attempt to correct that collective illusion.

Because it was blizzarding here, my friend and I decided not to go westwards today to partake in an aquarobics session. The roads for those 40 miles are very tricky and if a white-out occurs while you are driving, then the situation can be very unnerving indeed.

With the decision made,we were going to go it alone without our motivator and so we nipped into our local community swimming pool during the window of opportunity that existed between public swimming and reserved sessions.

We fully expected a very cool pool, as pools not designated for leisure can run a lot colder than leisure facilites. However, we found a nice warm pool, made comfortable for the disabled groups who would also be using it today.

We did the exercises we could remember perched on our yellow foam spaghetti poles for balance, the pair of us posing as pretty ungainly riders on weird sea horses. In crossing lanes we had to do plenty of dodging around the few ladies doing their sedate lengths and we were 'jogging on the spot'on a number of occasions to keep muscles warm and working, while the those same people wanted to chat to us about what we were doing.D

Consulting the exercise sheets later, we both decided that with one exercise we were up the creek without the proverbial paddle; we forgot to borrow sets of dumb bells. An illustration called starburst, showed that we should have been doing what comes naturally and we weren't. Ideally, we would have looked like delightful aqua sequence dancers, instead we've been totally unco-ordinated trying to do opposites and with enormous difficulty, needless to say. We'll have a go at sorting out 'the error of our ways' next time.

Breaking news from Scottish Slimmers - could it be a coup?

To raise funds for charity, a lady who had lost about 9 stones over a period of time, with the support of Scottish Slimmers, visited a local pub landlord with a pair of her old XXXXXL size knickers. A bet was raised to see how many men could get into the garment at any one time. Nine of the male customers managed it. (No individual data available - sorry).

A week or so later, the lady was out shopping with her 7 year old grandson when she stopped to chat to someone she knew before she became her new svelte shape. During the conversation which, naturally focussed on this wonderful transformation, her grandson piped up and proudly told the friend that his granny had lost weight, and she had had nine men in her knickers!

For me, the jury is out on the film, Walk The Line. I thought Reece Witherspoon gave a convincing performance, good accents and so on but I really do question whether it really was the solid, meaty stuff of Oscar standards that I have seen in other films. I haven't seen Reeece Witherspoon act in anything else as far as I know, so I can't compare this performance with other work by her .

The genesis of the song Jackson surprised me. It was linked indelibly into my psyche with Nancy Sinatra. I realised by the end of the film, I was not as aware of J.Cash in my youth as I thought I was. Walk the Line and The Ring of Fire were familiar and so I tapped along with those two songs. At the moment, I would say the film was a pleasant interlude of light entertainment. That is always worth having.

Can someone explain to me why I am suddenly getting synopses of other peoples (friends) blogs on my blog page? Do other people receive mine?

Now, I can no longer just click onto my wubble-u address and come on board; I can look but have to comment as a visitor with trackbacks, or go to the sign-in page so I can freely move around. I can see there would be sensible reasons for such a change but, it would be so nice to know about up and coming changes. I won't then be left scratching my head wondering what I might be doing that is different!

In this last ten days, We have had a fair bit of snow and at one stage the main arterial road was impassable though not for long.

This week, I travelled westwards, and for once, the scrub and harshness of North Sutherland was looking pretty with its creamy coloured hill sheep pottering amongst coverings of crystalline white snow. As they loomed up, the thickly snow-coated mountain peaks, were glorious with the sun bursting light upon them. Some of the empty sandy beach coves were so interesting with the shiny, snowy outcrops around them, with the sea looking for all the world like a silky millpond with its dribbling curled edges prettily creeping in to complement the scene.

Poignant thought for the day...

In an attempt to thwart the spread of bird flu, George
W. Bush has bombed the Canary Islands.

We got home by the skins of our teeth. Flying over the Northern Scottish airport, we could see snow on the mountain peaks and a scattering over the fields around about. We collected our car and drove off on wet roads and in sunshine, it all looked just fine.

Today, Sunday 5th March we still have snow, no thaw seems in view. The occasional delivery vehicle seems to get through but I still await my fuel delivery.

A kindly person at Gatwick showed my where my coin should be swallowed up so I could obtain use of the airport internet facility; for £1 I had a whole generous 10 minutes to check my email via the web and reply to anything that warranted contact. I deleted some rubbish and clicked on the remainder of my mail.

Flat keyboards are not my favourite style but I was doing quite well and I decided there was just time for a really quick three words to my offspring. Suddenly, hubby, whose own computer time was up, said in my ear "You have 30 seconds left, you'd better stop now." I busily tapped in the email address, "You haven't got enough time," he said. I started to fumble and make mistakes and told him I could do it if left in peace. The briefest of messages done, I noticed mistakes in the address bar and started to correct them. Flashing lights, the only thing missing were buzzers and bells; then hubby's dulcet tones, yet again, "You're out of time, you've lost your internet page."