Meanwhile at a beach near you . . .

A superbly untopical pic of Canet-en-Roussillon where girlfriend Claire lives and works, in fact her little house is just round the corner in rue Jules Verne.

But is it? If this were filmed in new Avatar-tastic Feel-a-Round, you would be able to tell that a wild and viciously cold wind fit to shatter false teeth on a global basis was blowing.

Hence the very small number of insane people out and about of a Sunday morning despite there not even being enough snow to spark an English-style "blind-panic-as-first-solitary-flake-since-1827-lands-on-London-Weather-Centre" tabloid frenzy.

Yes, only an hour south of the Aude valley global meltdown (er, freeze-up? Ed.) catastrophe centre, there was bright sunshine, mainly chilled by the fact that the bloody Weekend Guardian failed to appear for the third weekend on the trot.

What is it with these people? I am close to writing a stiff email of the Doug-used-sarcasm variety to the Grudniardnp circulation manager, full of barbed and sophisticated witticisms like: Dear Sir, have you tried putting your newpapers into shops so that people can buy them?"

Or: "Dear Madam (mustn't be sexist), I have had sod all to read of an erudite and critically-acute nature over Christmas, New Year and the increasingly long and winding misadventures of early grotty January, is this a record?"

As all I really want to do just now is stuff the wood-burner to bursting point, to way beyond the pain threshhold with copious lumps of retired tree, hide from the world and read; I definitely am in the mood for a minor rant, even if only a modest, pre-packed and frozen one.

So why go against the grain? Why not blog away happily about snow and rampant polar bears in secondhand luminous underpants?

My theory is that looking at too much snow paralyses the brain. I kept looking at the increasingly insidious and venomous creeping white stuff steadily encroaching on its own croaches and felt unable to write a single word.

As 2010 rapidly seemed to be becoming year of the grave for the dear old blog, I had to do something and found my solution, at least for a fleeting moment (containing real fleets), beside the sunny sea.