it's christmas

I was actually planning to blog about this a few weeks back, but Christmas seems to have arrived already.

I noticed while I was on holiday at the end of September that the big supermarket already had a few Christmas things out, but I kinda dismissed it as it's a huge supermarket and it was only one or two tins f biscuits that looked a bit Christmassy.

However, while shopping in the local Sainsbury's last week and then the big Tesco up the road a couple of days later (nowhere seems to sell Crunchy Bran, which is one of my favourite cereals) there were some proper areas that seemed to be sprouting multiple Christmas things.

Every year it seems to get worse - I mean, seriously, September is ridiculously early isn't it?  That's a quarter of a year before the event.  And both Halloween and Bonfire night still a month away - it's just taking the piss.

The thing is though, people must buy this stuff.  I'm sure supermarkets wouldn't waste space on Chrimbo stuff if nobody bought it; so who the hell buys it this early?

The other thing I wanted to mention on the Christmas front is that it snowed this last weekend.  And I don't mean in a general sense in the UK - it snowed where I live.

Every Saturday morning I do my washing at the laundrette and once I've transferred it over to the Tumble Dryer I usually go for a short walk around the estate (while it's washing I read a book).  Well this time weekend it was bitterly cold and as I was coming up the hill a small flurry of snow started.

We're only talking tiny bits and it wasn't settling or anything, but still snow.  It had stopped by the time I got to the top of the hill and I don't think it snowed again.

It's a bit of a worrying sign, actually - I was hoping we might finally get a mild winter, having suffered really cold ones for the last few years.  I've also not really been prepping for winter; particularly in terms of electricity - there's only a little bit of electricity on the meter and when it gets properly cold heating really sucks away at the power.

To be fair, given I was expecting to change jobs and therefore move, I've been tending to keep the meter quite low all year, but I'd better ramp it up just in case winter is a cold one.  I'm now certainly not going to be moving or doing anything change-wise until next year.