But! Never mind, spring is now almost upon us (bit of wishful thinking there) we've had a few nice days, and today we've all turned out in a merry bunch to do some work down at the Spillweir site.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much it's changed since last year.
Errrr... the first thing that greets me on arrival (apart from Roy's happy face) is a big pile of big bits of wood. Oh dear, we aren't going to spend the day shifting that lot, are we?
Luckily, no: we're here to plant trees, chop hedges, burn bits and bury pipes.
Oh good.
Look! It's Alistair!
The merry gang start to arrive, with much repetition of "Did you have a good Christmas?" followed by whispers of "Don't mention that word in front of Rachel! She had Norovirus all over Christmas!"
Bitter, me? No! Not at all! I just spent the whole of Christmas and New Year in bed, alone, being sick and drinking cooled boiled water. Grrrrrrr.
Anyway, I put all this behind me and get on with meeting and greeting.
Bob turns up with his Big White Van (don't try to outrace him at the traffic lights, ha! ha! Only joking, Bob) with a load of trees in pots, a pile of old wooden boxes to be disposed of, and some plastic trays which I pounce on joyfully, as I use them for moving my plants for sale around. (Quick advert, there.)
We unload the trees, adding them to the several dozen in the trailer behind Roy's van. Looks like it's going to take us half the day to plant this lot. Roy issues his instructions - we are to plant them all along the bank from here to the stile, and we don't get a tea break until it's done.
No need to tell us twice: with the threat of not getting a tea break, we turn to with a will and get planting.
Here's Vic's best side, helping Jim to dig a big 'ole for a particularly large specimen that Roy has been nurturing on his patio for several years.
We're all betting that Barbara (Mrs Roy) is jolly glad to see the back of it.
My little camera isn't too good with changing light levels, but here's an atmospheric attempt to show Alistair and Malcy giggling and mucking about while pretending to hammer in a stake to support a newly-planted tree.
We had all the jokes about "when I nod my head, you hit it", but finally they managed to get it done.
This may appear to be a nice portrait of Roy's van and trailer, but it's supposed to be showing the large tree, which is supported by a stake rather fatter than itself.
And I'm not saying anything at all about being told to tie the trees to the stakes with (deep scorn in voice) baler twine......
Blimey, look at this, a picture of Alistair not pulling a face, for a change.
This must be what he looks like normally.
Well, I say "normally", you know what I mean.
I think he's happy because Roy has finally admitted that we have planted all the trees, and is allowing us to have our tea break.
Ah! Regular viewers (readers?) will remember the famous Giant Silt Trap which we installed last year.
Well, here it is working beautifully. The water enters from the right, which is the field-edge ditch: it sits in the silt trap depositing silt, then when it reaches the height of the pipe inside, which is about a foot off the bottom, the silt-reduced water runs out to the left and thence under the canal - more of that later.
We can already see a degree of silt in the trap, prompting Mike to ask what we do when it's full.
"We tie a rope to you," says Roy, "and lower you into it with a bucket."
Well, he did ask.
Mike pulls a face at this - can't imagine why, what a treat, to be lowered into a silt trap on a rope. Better than being just pushed into it, I would have thought?
Looking upstream in the ditch, Malcy points out some largish footprints.
No, not a dinosaur of any type, although Roy says that his grandchildren, on a recent trip to the Natural History museum, came upon him dozing and called him a Grampysaurus.
("More like a Grumpysaurus" comes an anonymous mutter from the background.)
Oh look, it's Alistair again, posing on top of the spoil heap.
There's no stopping him, you know.
Bob announces that we can start the bonfire if we want to, and yes, of course we want to.
As we don't seem to have brought any pitchforks down with us, I volunteer to go back up to the van to get some.
On the way back to the van, I come across Roy and Vic paddling in deep mud.
Our "temporary" damn has been in place for about a year now, and it is constantly in need of repairing. Well, it's only made of mud, you know.
As we know that we'll be needing it for a few months more, Roy has decided to strengthen it with some plywood, which he hopes will reduce the amount of water finding a way through the dam instead of over the top of the dam.
It's quite hard to bang in posts when you are up to your ankles in muscle-wrenching mud!
The purpose of the dam is two-fold. Partly there to give us a way of temporarily cutting off the water downstream, where we are working, by raising the height with blocks or mud: and mostly it is there to keep a stable level of water along the wharf section, because it looks nice.
Well, it's a bit more than just looking nice: it gives a much better impression of how the canal will look once in water, and shows the natives that we are not just mucking about in the mud for the fun of it.
Even though it is actually quite a lot of fun....
And here you are, this is what I'm talking about: a view from the middle of the Wharf looking westwards towards New Road, the road that runs between Childrey and Challow Station.
Lovely, huh?
It's so nice to see the progress, having been part of the team that painstakingly rebuilt the Wharf.
And from the same vantage point, looking eastward towards the dam, which is just out of sight round the corner. (I can hear Roy and Vic huffing in the distance.)
Eventually the trees on the edge will have to go, but we're in no hurry to chop them down as yet.
It's always sad having to chop down a mature tree, but unfortunately these are willows, and have a nasty habit of falling down of their own accord, especially after a period of high wind.
Back at the site, we've been instructed to chop the hedge down another two feet, as Bob is going to be dredging in a few weeks, and he needs to be able to get the arm safely over the hedgerow without damaging it.
As Jim points out, it should have been cut to four feet off the ground anyway, to get a nice thick hedge for the future.
So we set to with a will, fortified by our tea break and already looking forward to lunch.
What's this?
(Answers please on a postcard....)
Bob wants to use this piece of pipe next, but it seems to have something up it, as they used to say in Dad's Army.
Jim looks down the far end: "I can see it, but I can't reach it!"
Eventually a tatty old piece of green pipe is pushed out of the main pipe.
Meanwhile Malcy gets on with the important task of starting the bonfire.
As you can see, here we have the remains of a previous bonfire, so by cunning use of the charred branches and some light wooden crates, Malcy gets some smoke rising.
In the background, that light green thing is the tatty pipe that was inside the useful pipe....
And this is where the useful pipe is going to go.
On the left is a cut-away section of the field, showing the ends of the field drains installed by the Contractors last year.
It's not too easy to see, but there are gravel "pipes" exiting into the pit, each of which contains one of the field drains.
I'll move round and see if I can get a better picture:
Can you see them?
There are four patches of lighter soil, one is directly above Roy's bottom.
Roy and Mike (and Bob) are digging out the channel for the pipes that will join up these field drains, then run all the water safely under the bottom of the canal bed and out into the ditch opposite.
I know it seems a bit contrary to take this excess water under the canal instead of emptying it into the canal, but there must be a reason, as we're going to a tremendous amount of work and trouble (and expense) to construct this arrangement.
I rather think it's to do with the levels: the field drains have to be below the surface, obviously, which leaves them too low to get into the canal. If the pipes just abutted the canal, then when the fields were dry and the canal was high, the canal water might zoom up the drainage pipes, which would be bad for several reasons.
Malcy has succeeded, and we have a roaring bonfire.
We immediately all sit around it and have lunch.
Mmmm, lovely, on a cold day. And it is quite a cold day!
Once we finish nosebagging, Roy tells some of us to get to work on the willow stump.
This is a bit of a bugbear to us, as this particular tree has resisted all attempts to remove it.
We've had bonfires at the bottom of it twice, the second of which was actually inside the hollow stump, but it still won't die.
Bob even tried pushing it out with the digger, but all he achieved was this strange splitting effect.
And as you might be able to see on the right-hand side of the picture, the main trunk which toppled over two years ago is merrily still growing....
Malcy and I manage to saw off quite a few of the upstanding prongs, with one of us sawing and the other putting tension on the prong.
Alistair comes over to lend a hand.
"You pull it down, I'll saw it." says Malcy, and Alistair, game for a laugh, pulls an interesting face while he swings all his weight on it.
Ah, the signs of a successful day, a good pile of ashed and some charcoal to help start the next one.
Actually, a bit misleading, as ten minutes later a large pile of willow cuttings came flying across from the other bank, and we started all over again.
That's the good thing about a decent bonfire: once you get that pile of ashes, it's always easy to re-start it if more brushwood turns up, needing disposal.
Well, that's my lot for the day, I pack up and head for home and some central heating.