And it just got a whole lot worse. Yesterday, Paula asked Andrew to take her and Baloo (her second greyhound) to the vet, as she has been limping for a while and rest has not improved it. Andrew took them and the vet decided to do some exploratory X Rays. Paula and Andrew went back in the afternoon, and the news was what every greyhound owner dreads - bone cancer. Nobody is quite sure why these dogs are more prone. It is more common in greys and other large, long legged breeds like Great Danes. Some say that there is simply more leg to get cancer in, and others think there may be a link between the cancer and the fast growth rate in long leg bones in some of the hound species. Anyway, we know it is the worst pain, and there is almost never a good way back. The vet offered to put her to sleep straight away, but Paula decided to take her home, and allow the vet to come round today, to put her to sleep at home.

Andrew came home absolutely devestated, and we spent one of the most miserable evenings I can remember. Originally, Paula asked if Andrew would come round and be with her when the vet visited. Naturally Andrew agreed but it was with a very sad heart. Later in the evening, Paula said her daughter would be coming up so no need for Andrew to be there. This morning, we took ours to the park, and we saw Paula, walking Jim and Baloo near the lake. We were able to say goodbye to the beautiful girl, which was a small comfort. Things just carried on getting worse. Boola got his foot stuck in the footbridge near the lake (a sharply worded letter is now on its way to the park management) and then after pausing for a moment, I set off again and felt my calf muscle do a horrible crunching tear - both painful and deeply annoying. By the time I got back to the car, I was thinking "What's next?" although with considerably more swear words.

It 's been a quiet day - we've been doing some shopping and preparations for tomorrow's visit by Andrew's parents. Andy had to go to the vet this afternoon anyway - but fortunately he simply needs some anti-inflammatories to deal with a leg that he walloped when having a particularly eventful zoomie in the bedroom one day.

We spoke with Paula earlier this evening. Apparently, all went very peacefully and the dear girl is now at peace and free from pain, which is thankfully one of the great blessings of dog ownership, that we can take this hard decision for the creatures we love. I will be very pleased to see the back of the end of 2010.

Firstly, a very happy Christmas to all my readers. By Thursday of last week, the roads were just clear enough for us to go and pick up our turkey, and do the last shopping for fresh stuff. Christmas Eve was the traditional routine - a seafood feast with a celebratory viewing of Muppet Christmas Carol (with obligatory and tuneless singing along). However, I wasn't feeling too brilliant and Andrew was astonished when I voluntarily tucked myself into bed at about 11. By Christmas morning, I was in the full grip of a particularly nasty virus. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were just a blur. I was running a high temperature, feeling very light headed and the lurgy had thoughtfully settled on my chest and throat. Yesterday was a slight improvement but still pretty grim. We've still not had our Christmas dinner, as all I can manage is soup, smoothies and ice cream. I've lost the power of speech, so can't talk to anyone, unless sputtering croaking counts. I feel desperately sorry for Andrew, as it must be counting among the dullest Christmas EVER for him as I am terrible company. He is being his usual brilliant self, and is making me strange medicinal potions involving honey, whiskey and Lemsip that leave me feeling even more spaced out (in a good way). Occasionally he varies the medicine by administering doses of Navy Strength Plymouth Gin. One of the most horrible and painful effects of the virus has been the way it has made what's left of my lymph nodes turn into throbbing golf balls - my neck, armpits and other areas have been really sore.

I'm sorry this is not a more festive post - hopefully when I'm feeling a bit better we'll be able to enjoy our Christmas feast and start talking to people again. The main beneficiaries have been the dogs who have been enjoying a good deal of cold turkey.

Snow. Great white drifts of it. Harummph. Britain as a whole doesn't do snow. So, when it fell last week, everything ground to a halt. Fair play to the weather forecasters, by Wednesday they said it would be here overnight on Thursday and into Friday. So, on Wednesday evening, I went out and did a shop to stock up, to ensure we didn't run out of basics. I expected that on Thursday the supermarkets would be mad. I was also feeling quite frustrated, since on the weekend was the local greyhound charity dog show, and middle nephew was coming over for it. Moreover, I had made Boola a fancy dress costume to complement nephew and was looking forward to seeing them in the ring together. Sure enough, the snow fell on Thursday night and into Friday, and we were soon engulfed in it. Andrew managed to get home from Birmingham and miraculouosly was able to meet James on the platform at Bristol to travel back together. They got a taxi out to the house, and a journey that takes normally no more than 20 minutes took about an hour. Eventually, cold tired and hungry the weary travellers returned and we were all able to sit down and eat.

By Saturday it was apparent we would not be going to the dog show. We called Paula. the organiser (another Paula, not our close friend), and she couldn't even get out of her drive. Looking at the conditions, it would have been foolish and even dangerous to have tried to get there. However, two lovely costumes were waiting, so James and Boola got dressed up and we did a photoshoot out on the grassy area near the houses. James loved his elf costume so much he is now planning to wear it for Christmas visits to relatives, and was also very happy with Boola's appearance. On the bright side, Paula is organising another show at the venue in February, so James has already decided he will come back for that. Pics attached of Boola and James in costume and the snow locally. Of course, this will mean making another costume for Boola, but that could be fun.

James and Andrew then struggled through the snow round to our local shops for a paper and some other perishables, then returned home and took the dogs out to play in it for a bit. Then we had a quiet afternoon before having supper and watching "How to Tame Your Dragon" which was quite funny in places, and I was very struck by the resemblance between Toothless, the main dragon character and Andy our greyhound. Sunday morning, another quick outing in the snow for the dogs before an early lunch and back on to the train for Andrew and James. It was lovely to see James and he was able to email some nice pics of his costume to various friends and relations, and I've offered to get him some prints framed. These have been ordered and I received an email today from Photobox to say they've been dispatched, so I might be able to give them to James when we see his family over Christmas.

Seeing anyone else looks unlikely at the moment. Yesterday it snowed steadily all day and it is now thick outside. At the moment, the main worry is that we are due to collect our turkey on Thursday from Penarth and this will be difficult along with shopping for last minute fresh stuff for Christmas. I was very impressed though that the postman got through today, and we received an enormous backlog of cards - he hadn't been for a couple of days and there were masses. So, for the moment, I am hunkered down in the house with the dogs. Luckily, virtually our Christmas shopping had been done, and cards and parcels had all been posted in good time, so we are quite lucky in that respect. The weather has affected the delivery of many parcels and of course these days people also have home deliveries of groceries too. I will post more as this week unfolds.

Well, it's been very busy. After my last post, we spent the weekend indoors, and made the apple and rosemary jelly. It set beautifully and is the most glorious colour - a sort of pinky-gold. We tried some on Sunday evening with our roast pork and it was fabulous, so we're confident about giving it as part of Christmas gifts. This was followed by a week of pre-festivity bustle - peak card making season and I sent a box of hand made cards down to the GRW charity shop. Cards for overseas needed to get away early, and we had a few to go.

Last weekend, we went down to see our friend Rhian in Burry Port with the two hounds. Took a parcel of festive goodies, including some jelly, some biscuits for the dogs and some home made chocolate and cranberry bark. It was lovely to see Rhian and the dogs, and we went over to Pembrey Country Park for a walk, cold but not raining or too windy. Callie and Mic, Rhian's dogs are very settled and happy and it is still so lovely to see them looking so healthy and full of life, when I remember how they used to be. Callie was a bony hat rack when she first came to us for foster care - now she is a glossy, muscular dog, with a twinkle in her eye, bags of confidence and a sweet, trusting nature. Mic still bears physical scars from his past but now his coat is lustrous, his eyes shine and he is another love sponge - just demands cuddles. Seeing the two of them galloping about, sniffing, playing and cavorting is one of those Christmas gifts that is priceless. I attach some pics of all of us.

Since then, I'm beginning to feel like we are over the busiest part of the run up to Christmas. I've posted all our cards, and I only have to make one for Andrew. On Sunday, we got our tree and that is now up and decorated in the living room and looks (and smells) wonderful. We bought a plain wreath and decorated it with ribbon, baubles and orange slices that I'd dried in the oven, so it looks gorgeous on the front door. I love putting up and decorating the tree - it is one of the most deeply charged emotional moments of the year. Many of the baubles are very old and have a story to tell, and have been picked up on various travels. More importantly, the smell and the look of the tree, twinkling away in the house, immediately transports me to childhood Christmases and every one since. Even when I lived by myself in a flat, I would always have a real tree and it's a tradition that matters hugely to me. One of my favourite poems is "A Celebration of Christmas Trees" by TS Eliot and I love the way the poem captures the fact that what matters at Christmas is the repetition rather than novelty - rituals of any kind build their power as they are repeated, gathering layers of meaning and significance as they go. This is why I am always horrified when I read magazines or even see cookery programmes that gaily suggest novelty at Christmas - that seems to me to be entirely missing the point, of how it is celebrated. It is of course very powerful too to create your own traditions - something Andrew and I wanted to do as a couple, rather than simply replicate bits of our individual festive DNA.

Once the house was sorted, I could then move on to my other task this week, making a fancy dress costume for Boola, our greyhound. James, middle nephew is coming for the weekend, and is going to enter a junior handler class with Boola at a local greyhound charity show. Another of the classes is a Fancy Dress one and James said he would be up for it. So I ordered an elf costume for James over the net, and decided to make one for Boola. Essentially it is in two parts - I've made a green coat for him with felt triangles peeping out at the hem in red and green. It has a simple girth closure with a Velcro fastener. Above this, is a green collar, again adorned with many more felt triangles in two different lengths, but also with bells sewn on., and also fastened with Velcro. It's been a bit of a faff to make, but I am hugely pleased with it now I've done it and would now feel a lot more confident having a go at something like this again. The hardest part was trying to interrupt Boola's nap this afternoon to do some fittings - he was very unimpressed at having precious sofa time disrupted and made his views very clear.

Unfortunately, I caught the Welsh news tonight on TV and it seems we are in for some severe weather at the end of the week - fingers crossed that James can still come and the show goes ahead. Because of the weather, I nipped out this evening to stock up at the supermarket, thinking that tomorrow will be chaotic, as people often tend to panic buy and it's a busy time of year anyway. So, if nothing else we've got plenty of food and supplies in regardless of the snow.

Last Friday, we had a wonderful day. Hilary, my aunt who lives in Swansea came up for the day for us to go Christmas shopping in Cardiff. We met her at the train station and headed over to trhe new St Davids 2 development and John Lewis as she hadn't yet had a chance to have a look round it. We had a wonderful day shopping and I was delighted to see that Jo Malone have now opened a Cardiff branch. On the way back to meet Andrew, we found a little stall in the centre of the open space selling German sausages (bratwurst) like you see at German Christmas markets. I was delighted, and we stopped and enjoyed one. Just as we sat down on a bench to eat our sausages, it began to snow. It was a wonderful moment, sitting there in the gently falling snow, under twinkling lights and feeling very festive.

Later that night, we had a booking at Bully's restaurant - to finally and belatedly celebrate our anniversary. Between returning home from town after dropping off Hil at the railway station and getting ready to go out in the early evening, the snow fell heavily and by the time the taxi driver picked us up the world was white. Central Cardiff was deserted and when we got to the restaurant about half of the bookings had been cancelled - such a shame. Anyway, having got there, we had a wonderful evening and the food was as superb as ever, along with a sumptuous wine list. I finished the meal with a particularly delicious cherry parfait, a coffee and one of their selection of Armagnacs - lovely. Eventually meandered home (taxi driver found roads still passable).

By Saturday morning Cardiff was snowed in and most of the rest of the weekend and this week we, like most of the country, have been in the grip of very cold weather. Although we've had no more significant snow (yet - some is forecast for tonight) and most of the roads are passable, pavements have been transformed into sheet ice, since gritting is only applied to roads. Walking the dogs is difficult and they hate the stone hard surfaces and razor like grass under their paws. Night time temperatures have been low enough for us to have the heating on overnight to ensure pipes don't freeze, the garden pond is nearly frozen over and we've been putting out masses of bird food. To my astonishment and delight, we were visited by a snipe earlier in the week, while I was washing up. I watched it, entranced while it pecked at some meal worms I'd put out, before something disturbed it and it flew away. We live very close to the Severn estuary and have many lakes and rheens near us, so the area is good for water fowl, but it was still a huge surprise.

Yesterday was a painfully bittersweet day. Our dear friend Paula has terminal cancer and this year has been awful as we've watched its slow encroachment and her valiant resistance. She invited me over as she was going through her quilting stash and giving it to me. On the one hand, we had a great afternoon, sitting upstairs in her spare bedroom, playing with piles of fabric. On the other, I felt so sad and miserable, as this seemed to mark another milestone on her journey. I did feel immensely grateful and privileged though, and it's really rather nice in a way to think about how her fabrics will be a form of legacy. I'm not ashamed to say though I came home yesterday and just wept - and today has been hard too. In another development, her daughter has said she will give a home to Paula's two beloved dogs (also much loved greyhounds) when Paula is no longer able to care for them. This was something that Paula was worried about, and it will be an immense comfort to her to know this is taken care of. Although we love Jim and Blue, it would not have been feasible for us to have had them, much as I would have liked to, and Andrew and I did discuss this many times. When Andrew is away, it is a struggle to walk three dogs single handed, and walking five simply wouldn't be possible.

This weekend, we're mindful of the weather forecast and are planning to hibernate. In particular, we're going to make some apple and rosemary jelly (some to keep, and some to give for Christmas) - the apples are from Andrew's parents' garden and the rosemary from our garden.

Finally, I'd like to say that if you would like one of my hand made Christmas cards this year, and you're not already on our list, then please drop me an email with your address and I'll be delighted to send you one, or a festive ATC if you prefer/as well.