Wednesday 2nd January, 2012          1830

Flipping high of six degrees my backside! It stayed at two during all the daylight hours and considering the places I had to go today, taking the bus wasn’t really an option. Bank, lunch and then in search of cigars. My preferred place still hasn’t got any, the second place only had two packs, so my shopping in Lottemart was confined to animal biscuits. I couldn’t buy anything that wouldn’t fit in the luggage box as the next stop was the commercial centre where they sometimes have some. They didn’t. This is getting ridiculous, no pipe tobacco - don’t even think about rolling your own fags - and now a frantic search every couple of days for cigars! Kevin has located a couple of tins of small ones in his local shop downtown and will get them for me, but nobody is telling me that I am the only one of 1.65 million people who like a cheroot!

One good thing to come out of it though was that when I went to buy meat at the supermarket up there, they had bacon again, needless to say now they have none!

We have snow forecast for Friday and the weekend. As I have to make two round trips to our department on Friday I am rather hoping it won’t be severe enough to prevent biking. After that if I need to go to town I can walk or slither to the bus at leisure because I will be off until the end of February.

As for the lost quilt, presumably the wind blew it off the railings below but when I looked it wasn’t on the grass so someone must have snaffled it to use! A thought did strike me earlier, I haven’t seen the black gang for about a month now and come to think of it, I haven’t seen any dogs on campus at all for a few days now. I am wondering if the exterminators have paid a visit. It doesn’t affect Pepsi because she is always either inside or with me when we are out but if they have all been killed it is a shame. Some of them were very friendly mutts, many even younger than Pepsi.

Thursday 3rd        1830

To quote a comedy programme, I think Pepsi may be the only dog in the “village” - no sign at all of any of them today either.

Aside from ninety minutes a short while ago, I had confined myself to barracks today. A good job too, for the thermometer has stayed resolutely below freezing, although admittedly it was two below until the sun set and is now double that. Somehow I don’t think acclimatisation is the reason that when I went out I found it bone-chillingly cold. Kevin is right, there is something about the cold here which makes it feel so much worse. His theory is the humidity but it is not high. Mine is the fact that nowhere is heated and you sit down in many restaurants and you are blowing steam out of your mouth - you never really get warm inside.

Granted, so far I am managing to keep my own place reasonably comfortable provided I watch how many appliances I have running at once, too many (such as the a/c, 4Kw of heaters plus the oven or the hotplate or microwave) and the main breaker trips, resulting in a flit to the end of the corridor to reset it. It is plain that in my first winter I bought completely the wrong heaters, not least of all because they blew up in the depths of the winter. They sell these highly ineffective things here that look like fans without blades. They have a shiny back shield and a round element that heats, the shield reflecting the heat supposedly outwards. Bloody useless. The two towers I have had since last winter still work (except for the oscillating mechanisms, both of which failed last month) so at worst I can position them near where I sit now and have a warm breeze blowing around me.

I am really not looking forward to doing exams tomorrow in unheated classrooms. At least when I am teaching I can be peripatetic and keep warm, sitting still for an hour and a half is a different matter. A full set of long johns is definitely called for along with two pairs of socks.

Still, looking on the bright side, three hours work tomorrow and that’s me off until the last week in February. Just please don’t snow enough tomorrow to make me have to walk!