'The other time it snowed was just before I left.

I had been to Lampeter and booked a package holiday for Xmas in Spain, bought a couple of suitcases and my first tidy clothes for three years, had Belinda, the last of the labradors, put down from age and infirmity.

The sheds and fields were all empty, the animals and machinery gone.

Nell had gone back to my Brecon mentors along with the tractor box which they still use. A few hundred bales of hay waited the new owners. It was very still and quiet and the yard full of ghosts. It was time to be away.

The morning Pickfords were scheduled to arrive I woke up to a funny light and a 10' snowdrift across the yard, eave high.

The temperature had dropped and the Rayburn having been left to go out the water had frozen. The storm had taken out the electricity and telephone and the world was very quiet.

An empty fridge is an empty fridge, a Rayburn without fuel gives no warmth and comfort, and an Inglenook fireplace without a burning log is like a hole in the wall with a fierce down draught. Later I discovered it was a freak blizzard, as unexpected as the hurricane in years to come.

It was very cold, even with burning books and bits and pieces, which only seemed to intensify it. After a couple of days the wind blew the snow from the yard as suddenly as it had arrived, and Pickfords, who had booked into the pub so as to make an early start on the scheduled day, arrived.

No one hung about and the house was packed into the van in record time.

No time to clean the house, or say my farewells to the neighbours, who would have enough on their hands anyway. At the bottom of the lane they turned off for Cardiff and I decided to make a beeline for Llandeilo and the London train, simply leaving the car outside the station. Not quite as planned.

I think I smelled like an old sheep for the compartment emptied and stayed empty.

Arrived at Paddington, I went along the platform to the Great Western Hotel where I think they let me in because my suitcases were tidy, and sat in the bath with a plateful of sandwiches and revived.

It was all cut a bit fine, but I just had time to take my daughter to the Ritz for a cream tea before the flight time to Spain.

Gwynnion Llethri had lived up to it's name. And I had made yet another mistake'.