Cometh the Ice Age.

We’ve had some pretty terrible snow.  I know that may sound like an obvious statement, but it only seems to have made it onto the national news today as, God forbid, snow has fallen within the M25.  Due to that fact, about 90% of the news coverage at the moment is about this carnage.  Never mind the fact that we’ve been up to our nuts in the stuff for about a week!!

Anyways….

It seems we are having one of those winters that everyone says they used to have when they were younger.  A bit like all those summers in the seventies with hose pipe bans and frying eggs on car bonnets.  1976 aside I don’t recall anything like that (for the record my Dad told me about 1976 as obviously I am far too young to have any first hand knowledge of that event), and I can only remember school being cancelled a couple of times in my seemingly endless education.

So this week is a landmark event it seems, with my girls still to return to school following their xmas break, as school was closed yesterday, today, and so the school web site says, tomorrow.  I suspect some geeky fourth year has hacked the school web site and is posting closure messages myself.

I endured one day back at work on Monday following my xmas break, and all I will say is that it lived up to expectations.  Trying to get off our car park on Monday evening was eventful, but took much longer than it should as many drivers think that the best way to traverse the icy wastes is to leave the car in first gear, and simply hammer the accelerator until something happens.  Monday night saw around eight inches of snow, and so I couldn’t even get the Mondeo off the (inclined) driveway on Tuesday morning.  I tried much harder than even I thought I would, but after forty minutes I was just wet and annoyed.

It turns out that the (un)lucky souls who were able to get in were sent home at lunch, with the snow still falling, and today has seen a closure again.  Luckily (ahem) I have a job that I am largely able to do at home…apart from all those lovely meetings I usually attend, so there has been no family fun days here, with me and the kids appearing on local news reports sledging or building a snowman in the shape of Bill Oddie.  Nope, I have been welded to the laptop, herding my team into some sort of productivity, knowing full well that I am competing with the Xbox, TV and kids, or was that just me??

The plan is to attempt to open the office tomorrow so I have been out digging to enable some sort of escape route in the morning.  Louise made it to work today (I can’t believe they didn’t just close the hospital!!!) but had a slight prang as she left the car park.  It is tricky to assess the damage in the dark, but it looks like cosmetic scratching which either a quick rub with an oily rag or some TCut will solve.  It shouldn’t take her long.

As I type Rebecca is on the front lawn with a friend building a snowman.  Knowing her attention span I am not too hopeful for having it featured on the local news tomorrow.  Emily (who didn’t surface from her pit until post lunch) is as usual glued to her laptop, whilst texting at the same time (I am so proud), using Facebook to co-ordinate her life as ever.

So, with my extended time at home seemingly done (unless I just can’t get in tomorrow…I promise I will try) reality beckons.

Typially at this tme of year, thoughts turn to holidays and the long debate about where to go (yeh right!).  However, this year is different.  That’s right, we are totally skint, and the chances of affording anything other than a postcard are remote.  Still, there are many weeks of lottery draws to go before summer so my chances are good right??

Till the next time…..