Strikes, snow and tragedy...so our Christmas countdown continues

We are not exactly surrounded by the stuff where I live right now but there’s enough to increase that festive, traditional feeling we all want.

The hills behind me are white enough to pass my test, the ground is icy white and oh that cold air.

Absolutely freezing. I gave up buying suitable boots years ago since winter after winter the old ones I had lay unused in the cupboard under the stairs. So they got binned after one year when snow was promised and didn’t materialise. I could do with them now though maybe not for next week which is supposed to be less wintry. Typical, isn’t it? Once you get cold weather which inspires you to get the decorations and tree up the weather improves.

So it’s back to normal weather during the incoming week, and normal politics perhaps. We had Baroness Arlene Foster, decked out in the full robes of the House of Lords, declaring that she `fears the future of the Union is not a priority for PM Sunak’. Of course it isn’t. Does he even know where Ulster is on the map?

He seems more interested in the Albanian migrants landing on our shores by boat, not to send them back, but to ensure they are accommodated in some form or another, safe from that big, bad sea they had to endure.

Bewilderingly he declared this week: “Enough is enough, we must stop the boats. And we will’’.

Really? Truly? Might it will still snow for Christmas Mr Sunak?

Then there are the strikes of the public sector workers. Our hospital wards are in crisis with scenes of hospital beds with barely any room between them. The sort of scene you would see in a war zone.

Banks talk about the `seeds of recession’ whilst one economist declared the `recession may last longer in NI than in GB but be less harsh’. So maybe those public sector workers do need their high-end salary increases. But fuel prices are dropping and surely that is a good barometer of what is to come?

But all this pales into insignificance when we read of the horrors of young children, dying in a frozen lake in Solihull. How many of us tried the same thing in our childhood and were just lucky it wasn’t any deeper than a puddle. We called it `slip sliding’. An injured ankle or leg was more likely to warrant a right scolding and no supper.

So our Christmas countdown continues. Thanks to the strikes few postcards are coming through the letterbox and I’ve still to make the Christmas pudding. The decoration went up without the rapt attention of my precious pets. Christmas will be lonely without them.