Rule, Britannia!

The 'Grove seems to have been the last corner of the country to get snow this winter, but it finally came today! Snow is exciting and exotic, like something from Mars or the tropics. It also meant Kim the Dog got to frolic for a while.

She has the same attitude to snow as she does to piles of autumn leaves and breakers on the shore - it's something to jump and snap at, especially when humans kick through it or throw it about.

I haven't made a snowman for years so today I did. At first Kim the Dog was convinced I was rolling a snowball for her to chase and kept circling about me expectantly, but it kept getting bigger and bigger until it was bigger than her, at which point she freaked out a bit and started barking at it.

But if you think I spent all day messing about in the garden, you're wrong. I also finally defeated Spain in my current game of Empire: Total War, establishing the supremacy of the British Empire in the western Mediterranean and the Americas (where, incidentally, I crushed a minor colonial insurrection around the middle of the eighteenth century).

Here's a video I made the other day to celebrate the British capture of southern Greece from the Venetians.

I also finished an book article this afternoon, so I didn't even feel guilty about playing a computer game! There's a novel feeling.