[Chalky] Yay! I was getting seriously concerned about you. I figured you had to be very ill to be staying away from here. :-)

...whereas others would express the view one would have to be rather sick to hang around here in the first place...

(Tuj) After looking at uk.sci.weather I come here for intelligence, sanity and humour. Although mostly amateurs they tend to talk about "severe rainfall events" and put their back-garden weather observations into one of the various meterological codes. Thus we see "SHRAGS", which means a shower of rain and hail. It's going to get a lot colder over the weekend so you'd better watch out for them shrags.

They sound more like giant hairy beasties that crawl through the countryside at night and pretend to be overgrown boulders by day.

Bloomin' heck. I've got my first free weekend at home for about 6 weeks, and I really should cut the grass - mine is the scruffiest on the entire street at the moment. I was going to do it this weekend. But I'm not doing it if it's snowing.
And in other news, I've joined an organic veg box scheme, and have been very impressed with the contents... except the two heads of swiss chard. Any ideas as to what to do with them?

pen] Two heads are better than one, surely?

[CdM] and [Rosie, Iroulé from AVMA] Gastric flu, dehydration, muscle cramps, hospital, rehydration, home, recovery, still weary but OK.