It's a bracing three degrees right now (feels like minus .6) but fortunately still and therefore manageable. The wood cut today was of the lighter, smaller variety so the house has been cosy all day (the faster burning wood seems to chuck out more heat), though supplemented by larger bits as required.

I have so far given up on Plague Dogs (Richard Adams) and the Autobiography (all that boring hobnobbing with upper middle class Brits got a bit wearing), and have embarked on Blackbird which I had hoped would be an insightful look at the treatment of Kanakas on the cane fields but seems to be a moderately researched historical novel about a family with more money than taste and another family (half-caste Chinese, runaway Kanaka dusky maiden, nice welsh housewife caretaker) who are at loggerheads from time to time in a low key kind of way. Still, it is about the level of intellectual stimulation that I can handle right now, so will probably be read to completion.

Apart from cleaning the bank tonight there seems little has been done all day, though I did save myself some paperwork by making a few phonecalls instead. I am toying with a trip to Hobart tomorrow but the weather does not seem terribly encouraging for long-distance driving, so I probably won't.