Christmas is over, and every householder worth their salt starts thinking of one of two things. Moving or decorating. It’s an automatic reaction when the decorations come down, the twinkly lights stop twinkling and you suddenly realise the rosy glow the Christmas time spread throughout your dwelling is no longer covering everything. So it is chez nous.

When we bought the house, it had pleasant enough if a tad dark walls in some rooms and a corporate cream colour woodwork throughout. What it didn’t have were additional detailing, viz brown blotches on the architraves and skirting boards. They came later. It would appear that the previous owners had a very distinct budget in mind when they made various alterations and the budget didn’t include either kiln-dried wood or someone who could make the best of cheaper wood. So we now have knots showing through in various places.

Trouble with acrylic-based paints as opposed to the old oil-based is they don’t cover knots, at least not for any length of time. They certainly do if you only want to hide them for as long as it takes to sell a house, but not if you actually want to live in it, you have to hatch a plan B. And sharpish. So anyway I tried undercoating and then glossing over the top which worked for longer than just glossing, but within a short time our little friends were back. So it had to be a rather more industrial solution. Speaking of solutions, I have never found that knotting solutions work all that well, and you certainly have to be careful what you paint on top.

It occured to me that I had used some fairly knotty pine in making some boxing and because it was only in the utility room, had used a coat of aluminium primer with acrylic-based quick-drying undercoat and gloss on top. After two years it still had not shown through, so worth a punt I thought. And it worked, or at least has done so far. OK, so well short of definitive proof, but I have high expectations! But why is it though that you only notice the bit you missed after you have cleared up and cleaned the brushes? There is one little bit of knot still showing on the  side of an architrave, how annoying it that?

So having tested the technique on the inside of the bathroom, not a particularly high public traffic area,  I will have to put my primer where my mouth is, only metaphorically of course, and attack a knotty, knotty architrave in the hallway.  Reading that back, I am bizarrely reminded of ‘Allo, ‘Allo which won’t mean anything to those who don’t watch BBC programs. But try reading it with a fake French accent for yourself…..

Hmm, anyway the trouble is, when you start doing any maintenance decorating or diy, you begin to think whether the time has come for more wholesale change, and in our case, whether the time has come for the corporate cream to give way to brilliant white. Now that’s a whole other kettle of fish or paint kettle or something. For another day, or month.

Thing about living in a small town is that there is an active grapevine which may produce a ‘fact’ owing it’s veracity entirely to repetition. Since before the closures of Simply Food stores were announced, there has been a persistent rumour going around Lymington that our recently opened store was up for the chop. This came from insiders in the local Chamber of Commerce apparently, whom all have opined, should be in the know if anyone is. Tricky coming to any conclusion really as it definitely isn’t on the list of closures announced that can be found in this Guardian Online article. So either it’s not going to close, or it is going to close, but is not part of the Great Closures. If you see what I mean. Anyway, we have been ‘informed’ it will definitely close in February. Or March. Either way we don’t have long to wait now to find out.

Woolies definitely has closed though. It was terribly sad to see the bones being picked clean as the shop fittings and everything else was up for sale. Unlike in many places, a shop like Woolies did fulfil a purpose in Lymington, but whether that purpose would have been sufficiently  lucrative to justify it’s survival is I guess a moot point. What we now have is a large (for Lymington) retail site suffering from the normal Lymington problem of very little rear access for deliveries. Who knows what will become of it, but with shops not offering 70% discounts being in the minority in the High Street at present, who knows who will be next. Several small shops have recently given up the fight and although we’re still some distance from a ghost town, one should not expect the gaps in the High Street to be filled too quickly I imagine.

If we were to follow recent trends, then the Woolies site would either become a very large coffee shop, or be redeveloped into ‘luxury’ housing. With the old chicken factory site redevelopment looking to have been moth-balled until further notice, and the other developments not exactly selling like hotcakes, I am not expecting the latter. The former I would hope is also not an option, but since we don’t yet have the ‘Daddy’ of all coffee shops in Lymington, Starbucks anyone?

As the credit crunch crunches, who knows, we may yet see the Argos store so readily dismissed as the wrong sort of shop, finally find a home in Lymington. Not because of Argos moving  sufficiently upmarket, but due to the now not so wealthy burgers of Lymington now looking to cut costs themselves. It’s an ill wind, as they say.

So Christmas is over, Lymington did itself proud with a very pretty light display and Santa was back in his boat moored in the Lymington River. And during all this, since yomping buddy stayed for Christmas, we had a walk. To be entirely accurate it was a post-Christmas walk in temperatures best described as only slighty sub-artic. What’s the number one rule walking in cold weather? Always assume you need at least one more layer than you think. Everywhere.

We were only taking a relatively even walk around one of the local Inclosures, but boots and thick socks were vital. Probably a smidge less vital than if the mud hadn’t been frozen hard, but none the less a very good call. Deck shoes would definitely not have done.

It’s kinda funny though, you put on your wind-proof, water-proof coat with integral fleece and Thinsulate hat and step out of the car at the same time as a couple of guys with thin leather coats or light windcheaters and no headgear. You start to think that you may have overdone it a tad but the fact they are scurrying back to their car after only ten minutes is strangely reassuring.

Thing is that although the New Forest is the smallest National Park and all that, and has roads criss-crossing it regularly, it is still necessary to be prepared.There have been times recently when we needed a compass to find our way when going off-piste. There’s a lot of boggy terrain often hidden in stands of trees and continually turning to get round it means you quickly lose direction. I know it’s hardly the Artic and three inches of snow would be a cause for great surprise, so describing it as extreme weather conditions is probably slightly erring on the side of exaggeration. But if you get caught out at dusk on the heathland near East Boldre at this time of the year, the mist rolls in very quickly and can reduce visibility to a few metres. Tricky enough if you’re driving through, but even worse if you are on foot in the middle of one of the bogs up there.

So when I suggest that the right equipment is required to enjoy a winter walk, it’s not so you can look good in your coordinated cold weather gear, it’s so you want to repeat what has been a pleasant experience again in the future.