Today a little ray of sunshine at last. I had to move to ground floor flat, from my home of 20 years and more importantly my beloved garden on 3 levels that I loved and in particular used to grow snowdrops (am a galanthophile so different ones beginnning in october going through to april) and hellebores and winter flowering jasmine , etc., which was so cheering at this dark and miserable time of year. Not helped by the fact that I live in North Yorkshire and we had the fire on the BIlsdale mast and are still getting really annoying poor tv with different channels disappearing at different times. Listen to radio 3 and 4 quite a lot but of course I enjoy things like Gardeners world and farming shows and other things and it seems to be sods law that if something is gong wrong it is gardeners world and the only way I can see it is to get it onto the lap top, so feel I have gone back to my childhood with very small screen! Had to move during covid restrictions with all that entailed, no help, family could not come and my back is always painful but sometimes worse than others. I used to go swimming twice a week, as the pool near my previous home had a chair to put me in and out of the water and I would do what I could. With the move and the rest of it ,have spent 7 months with no swimming, and muddling along the best I could on my own, and it was the one bit of exercise I could do to try and keep mobile. So ta da!! Today I managed it. It was freezing cold and very frosty and took me about 20 minutes to clear windscreens and carefully check the car over , but as I was in a lot of pain ( gave up and got up about 6am,)going slowly and sitting down in between jobs , I was able to go to a new (to me) swimming pool and was able to at last get in the water. Wonderful! I am rather full of aches and pains now but dont care. It will improve . Torn between being a careful Yorkshire woman and not wanting to waste money if I couldnt go for a while for any reason, and deciding whether to just go one swim at a time or get an annual ticket, which means I can go to as many sessions as I want each week, and saving quite a lot of money too, I even went mad and decided to be positive and bought the annual ticket. That will encourage me to make the effort if it is pouring with rain or a howling gale. Must get my moneys worth! So I have found a new place to go, if I cant manage to walk anywhere can do more swimming to keep me a bit more mobile and have even found a very nice cafe a little further along the road where I can have a decent cup of coffee. It was very cold all day but there was a beautiful sunset and the frost looked lovely on the trees and hedges with cobwebs gleaming. Wow I feel I am starting to get going again and hurray we have a few more minutes of daylight each day. I have read many of your posts and been interested in the different things you all do , and hope it is ok to join in.