Ice cold in Brockwell

So the Big Freeze obviously didn't get my letter, and continues to reign over us.

This morning, having spent three days shivering at the computer in my ski socks, I decided to brave Brockwell Park with the Littleboys. The sun was shining, even though the car dashboard told me it was minus 0.5 degrees, so how cold could it be? Perhaps the warning bells should have gone off when I saw that the usually popular playground was completely deserted......

Well, let's just say that we have never been to the playground before and found sheet ice on the slide. Not that I realised it was ice, until Littleboy 2 decided to go down it and shot off the end like a bobsleigh competitor. Irresponsible Mummy. Still, he seemed fine (if a little surprised), and his brother found it all highly amusing.

The seesaw was also icy, but they insisted on me going on it with them, so all three of us ended up with icy bottoms. And I decided that the big, scary climbing frame, which Littleboy 1 always gets stuck at the top of, was definitely out of bounds today.

We had the usual saga of whether or not they wanted gloves on - which normally goes something like this. Littleboy 1 is cold, and so we put on his gloves. Five minutes later, he announces: "My hands are not cold any more, Mummy," and takes them off (usually chucking them on the ground without a care). He then starts complaining that his hands hurt. We put gloves back on. And repeat, on a loop, until we've all had enough....

Then we went for our usual walk to see the ducks and moorhens on their ponds. But the ponds were frozen solid, and the ducks were nowhere to be seen. A family of Brent geese pottered on the ice, so these at least provided some entertainment, but all in all, while I found the silent, frozen ponds with their dustings of leaves and twigs rather beautiful, the Littleboys seemed disappointed at the lack of interesting wildlife.

On the way back to the car, Littleboy 1 shot off down the hill on his scooter, leaving me running behind with the pram like a madwoman, shouting 'slow down' and having terrible visions of him skidding on black ice. Luckily, the path had been gritted - and even more luckily, he managed to slalom around the large group of disabled people on an outing who were coming up the hill.....

Still, I suppose it's all good preparation for learning to ski (we're planning to take him to the Alps this Spring). What's more, he'll have to learn to wear gloves then. Although, as The Doctor remarked the other day, the thought of him on a chairlift is altogether too terrifying. I think I'll leave that to the ski instructors...