Startling news today from my next-door neighbour -- while I was away up north they had a fire! It was a classic chip-pan fire: hubby comes home from the pub, puts the chip pan on the stove, falls asleep on the sofa. When F. got up in the morning, everything was black with soot, even upstairs in their bedrooms -- they had soot on their blankets, on their FACES. Talk about lucky to be alive. The kitchen was particularly bad, of course. The heat had become so intense the curtain rail melted. But no big blaze, happily, so they live to tell the tale.

And of course F. lived not only to tell the tale, but to clean up afterwards -- 18 hours solid the first day, after which she looked as though she'd "been down a chimney". But it's all covered by insurance, so they're getting a new kitchen -- cupboards, stove, ceiling, wiring -- plus industrial cleaners in to do the livingroom over.

I heard all this (and more) standing out in the rain. Yes, rain, not snow. Snow is piled high in other parts of Scotland -- huge drifts, roads blocked, cars buried -- but chez moi it's just rain, rain and more rain. I got up in the middle of the night and there was a thin covering of snow but it was gone by the morning.