Be careful what you wish for!

I think this is what's called getting one's comeuppance!

As anyone who knows me or has read here much will be very well aware, I adore snow and every winter is spent wishing for a hefty fall of the white stuff. Usually, save for last years glorious offering, it has come to very little but as most of us know this year, again, the snow has fallen in copious quantities...and thereby hangs the issue!

This year, whilst I would still rather have it than not for it's beauty and childlike excitement it has caused me something of a problem...no, that should be 'problems' plural!

It began on Friday when I was in my white van. From nowhere, so fast it was breathtaking and pretty freaky, the weather changed from cold and bright to a blizzard that reduced visibility to almost nil and deposited it's white slippery-ness inches deep on the road in just a few minutes. it was stunning but somewhat problematical. My thirteen mile, twenty minute journey back to base took three hours!

On Friday evening I drove to see 'N'...that half hour drive turned into about and hour and a half of pretty slow going and I began to think perhaps it wasn't my best plan. However, I made it there and I made it back and thought nothing more of it save for being pretty impressed my hometown made the news on two days for the lowest recorded temperature in England two nights running.

Saturday dawned and whilst there was still lying snow the arterial roads were clear, I dropped my mother off in town and headed back to see 'N' for a days Christmas shopping. It was not to be!

The route takes me along a main 'A' road but one which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I had barely got out of town before snow began to fall and within minutes I found myself in another blizzard, one the like of which I have never experienced before. I was heading up a long and steep hill and I had no option but to try and keep on going while all around me where grinding to a slippery halt. I made it to the top but then found myself in complete whiteout conditions, visibility almost zero again, vehicles scattered and stopping all around at angles no vehicle should be at and the snow on the road deepening alarmingly fast.


Again I had no choice but to carry on, I knew if I tried to turn around and go back I would get stuck so I employed everything I have ever learned about driving in snow and ploughed on (no pun intended). The snow was falling so fast my windscreen wipers were grinding to a halt, I could see damn all and I had to negotiate three more hills and ever increasing numbers of stuck and abandoned cars but my alternative was to stop and walk back over eight miles.

I have driven in snow quite often for a Brit, Snake Pass for instance used to be my route to work, I used to go and 'play' on Woodhead Pass out of choice years ago in my car and I frequently drove London to Manchester across the peak district in snow years ago...but this was a whole different ball game. Ten minutes and it looked like a different world, no visibility, no way of telling where the road was and about ten inches of snow. Completely silent whiteness everywhere.

I can honestly say I have rarely been as frightened. As I progressed there was less and less traffic until I was almost alone out there, I struggled to keep my car in anything like a straight line and on the hills trying to make my way around the already stranded vehicles without myself grinding to a halt was a feat of timing and massive concentration.

But I made it! Albeit fifteen miles took over two and a half hours.

.......only to find that the shops had all closed and there was no Christmas shopping to be had.

I had to do the return journey in the evening but I had 'N' with me and whilst it was very slow it was a whole lot less scary.

Add to all of that my boss cancelled work today so I'm a days pay down too and who knows what will happen for the rest of the week? Theoretically I'm working tomorrow but it's just started snowing again.

See....I should sometimes be careful what I wish for!

Hey...but for all that I would still rather have it and the aggravation than not! :)

*Image: Phone camera as the snow began to take over....didn't get another chance for photography!

Brrrrrrr!!

Dammit it's cold!

The last two weeks or so I have been working day in and day out, outside and the novelty of sub-zero temperatures is wearing pretty thin I can tell you. Taking the windchill factor into account, most days I have been 'enjoying' something in the region of minus 13 to 15 degrees...and I don't do cold!

Yes, I get to clamber in and out of the white van umpteen times a day but whether it's better to keep it warm or cold itself is something else that's not a cut and dried issue. if it's cold it's cold and I get no let up but if it's warm then the constant change in temperature gives me a headache. Mostly I keep it mid range and achieve nothing spectacular.

I have kitted myself out at great expense in high performance, high end, all weather gear which helps but it's still too bloody cold for words, I don't have a single draught point and only my eyes (which stream most of the time) and my finger ends are exposed but I'm still too damn cold and I bear rather too much resemblance to the Michelin WoMan!

All that and for what, we have had only two days snow....how unfair!

And yes, those of you who envied me my outdoor job in the hot summer months may now snigger heartily for now I am suffering payback!

How typical....

....the whole four years I lived in Scotland, why did this never happen and today it has?!!

These images were taken in what was my local town today, dammit! ;)



© J. W. of Welcome to my world.

It's just snow!

I adore all this snow malarkey, this is no secret, I spend every winter wishing for it, but all I seem to have heard this last week is people grumbling about it, so much so that even I begin to wish it would thaw just to stop the negativity.

Perhaps it isn't the snow itself that presents the problem, rather our seemingly complete reliance on that great invention, the car! The moment the roads are difficult to negotiate the whole infrastructure grinds to a halt, we are all so used to travelling distances to work etc. that it becomes impossible to live life 'normally' and many seem either never to have learned even the basics of controlling a vehicle in snow.... or apparently have lost the use of their legs as an alternative.

Minor panic seems to have set in, those who do venture to the supermarkets are buying up stocks of the staples like Armageddon is about to hit us and all around I hear precious little other than whingeing about how 'awful it all is'. Hells bells, it's a bit of snow, not nuclear fall out we are dealing with.

I do however appreciate it doesn't necessarily make life easy from time to time. Having found myself responsible now for my mother, the snow does present something of a new challenge. She can't walk any distance in this , well she thinks she can but all we need right now is a broken arm or hip to add to her misery, so walking has been banned by myself and her quack and the car is the only option for her from where we live.

This is however not an insurmountable problem, as many seem to think it might be. Yes, we need food to be bought etc. just like everyone else but I can walk and I have and do, each day, the two or so miles into town to get anything we need badly, and I have arms, I can and have dug my car out and negotiated the steep hill too and from the house on a few occasions, with the mother in tow to relieve the cabin fever she is beginning to suffer.

It's not all ideal I will readily admit but please, it's beautiful, it won't be here long, it's not an international disaster it's just a bit of snow, and it has it's positives. For those who really can't get out and are seriously inconvenienced by it due to illness or infirmity, there is always that old thing community spirit....which incidentally I have found quite heartwarming.

I have met people this last week who have lived for thirty or more years in the same street as we do and who until now, I never knew existed. We have organised gangs to clear the street, we have called on neighbours and shopped for them, I have had a coffee with someone I hauled off the pavement when he slipped over and I have watched families sledging in the park enjoying one another's company for a day or two, instead of having to spend their time negotiating the rat race.

It's not all bad guys, what is bad is that it brings into sharp focus just how insular we have all become in our day to day lives and how skewed we have our priorities...and I include myself in that!

Redundant!

This sight just amused me on my walk yesterday! ;)

Karma in snow!

So, I spend all winter wishing and hoping for snow and finally I get it. Then I snigger at those who have to go to work, watching them to slip and slide on their way in the early hours, while I sit warm and cosy drinking coffee.

Today I got my comeuppance. I needed a doctors appointment, the only available one was at eight o'clock this morning. Off I trudged in almost a foot of snow, in the dark and at minus six degrees because the car is firmly stuck where I last parked it!

Karma?

It did however give me an opportunity to take a few more pictures....





*More HERE

Wishes do come true!

(Clickable)

I am waiting....

.....with breath baited for what the meteorological guys promise me is going to be a pretty significant snowfall here over the next few days.

Thus far there have only been a few flakes but the 'official' time of commencement isn't until approx. 18:00hrs so I remain ever hopeful!

Quite why I enjoy all this so much I am never entirely sure, there are certainly a few negatives, trying to fight my way through frozen locks to get into my car and home, at 2am this morning in minus 6 degrees, being one of them.

Even I will admit to looking forward to the summer for a moment at that point...but it soon passed!

Winter wonderland

After the second snowfall....


(Click to enlarge)

On pride and falls and getting marooned!

Bugger! So last night full of confidence and against my overly worrying mothers advice I went out in the car, I know how to drive in the snow, I have some experience (that's another tale)and thus far in my life I have never got stuck! Thus far!

Off I went and when all around me were abandoning vehicles and causing minor bodywork damage I made it to my destination, albeit only a mile away and albeit having taken me a half hour.

Things were looking good. I parked in a place suitable for making good my escape later in the evening and enjoyed my evening. At 2am I decided it was time to go back home and set off on my one mile trip. All was well....until 500 meters from home where my pride took a considerable jolt.

Suffice to say, much digging of snow from around my wheels, much clutch burning and swearing, an hour later I had moved approximately five foot, just enough not to have to abandon the car right in the middle of the road, I arrived home at three bloody thirty! One mile, one and a half hours! Ooppsss. *Blush*

The remaining short distance home was on foot and this morning I am off with a shovel to try again....failing that I may have to completely swallow my pride and get my brother and his Land Rover over here.

Tomorrow my mother and I are supposed to be travelling to the Midlands to spend what will already be a pretty strange Christmas with my sister and her family....not making it is not an option!

Iced!

(Click to enlarge)

Short dog in snow!

Remember 'short dog', he who I borrowed from my brother way back in the summer sometime...well he's rather partial to snow too, specifically catching snowballs!

The snowmum!

Intrepid as ever, at eighty, in six inches of snow, 7.30 in the morning, minus 5 degrees, slippers on feet and without even a jacket, the snowmum feeding 'her' birds on time!

There is just no telling some people!;o)


(Apologies, poor image but I was so surprised I didn't have time to organise my camera properly!)

Snow....

...I have snow! Big snow, beautiful snow, wonderful snow! Unfortunately I also have a failed central heating system...snow pictures once I have sorted the heating issue! Dammit, where's my dad when I need him!


*UPDATE
Have fixed the heating and at last taken some snow pictures. I don't have quite the scenery here close at hand as I did in Scotland or Cambridge but hey ho, it's still snow!







(Click to enlarge...and the rest are HERE.)

The 'Dogloo'!

Meet Molly!

Molly is a friend's dog, who in the recent snowfall and after much hard work, became the proud owner of her very own 'Dogloo'.......


.......however, the principles were a little lost on her from time to time!

Call me nuts....

....but I couldn't resist going for a walk on my own in the snowy darkness last night!

The snow began falling again in the mid afternoon and by evening everything was transformed back to the beautiful pristine whiteness of earlier in the week. As I ate dinner I pondered that the forecast suggested it would begin to thaw again almost immediately, and by morning there would remain again only a slushy mess. Something had to be done!

So do something I did, I scrambled into my boots and jacket and headed out of the warmth of the flat and into the dark and still heavily falling snow and went for a walk! It was fabulous, while the few people around were scuttling about grumbling and trying to get indoors as fast as possible I was wandering around finding virgin snow to make footprints in and loving every moment!

I walked into town and watched the snowfall under the street lamps, I walked along the quay with a swan slipping and sliding just ahead of me, I sat watching the flakes disappear into the river and I turned my face to the sky and felt the snow landing gently and silently on my skin. It was amazing, peaceful and beautiful and the perfect antidote to a horrible week.

Eventually the cold began seeping through and reluctantly I began pottering slowly back through the silence, headed for home again all the while trying to commit to memory the feeling of pure white tranquility against the darkness and choosing an untrodden path to hear the 'scrunching' sound of new fallen snow under my feet.

I arrived home, pink cheeked, covered in snow and wet. I made a cup of hot chocolate and sat by the window watching the snow continue to fall. Perfect.

Flooded!

Remember the snow pictures of a few days back? Well these images are all taken in the same places as those were. What a difference a few days make!

In actual fact it's not quite as serious as it might appear, we have a pretty funky flood control system going on in this little part of the world and when the water levels get too high all the fields are purposely flooded to save the nearby towns suffering. It is controlled to within an inch or two by a complex system of sluice gates and other paraphernalia that I have absolutely no understanding of! It works though, the water gets to within inches of us a few times a year and is then backed off. Pretty amazing stuff.

....and though I don't like to blow my own trumpet too much, I can't help but show off just a little that some of these pictures made it onto the local BBC website yesterday! Hey, it might not be Getty Images but beggars can't be choosers and all that! :o)






(Clickable)

It's not only me who likes snow....

...though I'm never as effusive in my appreciation or as energetic about it as THIS little guy/guy-ess!

A stoat loving the snow and caught on video last week in a back garden somewhere in Wiltshire.

Love it!

SNOW....I got SNOW!!!!

Happy, happy, happy!

So my Tesco delivery has been cancelled, do I care? Nope! I have chocolate, coffee and snow, what more could I want! :o)

(Images clickable)

Snowless and sulking!

Really, I am beginning to suffer a serious case of snow paranoia!

Whilst most of southern England ground to a halt under up to a foot of snow yesterday, here, nowt, well almost nowt! Ten miles away in any direction they were up to their knees in the stuff but my little patch of the UK? Well, see for yourself, This was as good as it got, most unimpressive!


We have more forecast for Friday, theoretically even more than should have been yesterday but from now I am ignoring all things snow.... and sulking! ;o)