05 Mar 07
Well, for once, the weather forecasters got it right. There's something unique about the way the light makes its way into the bedroom on the morning after a heavy snowfall, and you just know the scene that awaits before you even draw the curtains...
After so long in London, I'd become rather blase about snow, deeming it merely white, cold, pretty on twigs and mildly inconvenient, the slush underfoot providing an interesting diversion from the usual cocktail of chewing gum, 'pavement pizza' and phlegm.
So it was something of a shock to find that, over and above the lack of replica Uzi submachine gun which differentiates the Mudfordshire snowman from its south London counterpart, there's rather more to a stout rural snowfall than I'd imagined.
Indeed, just six inches of overnight snow proved enough to cover the local roads thoroughly and isolate me from my office for the whole morning.
Truth is, so excited was I at the prospect of a morning's truant tobogganing on the hill behind the village, that I clean forgot the R-Class is equipped with four-wheel drive, making the ease with which the big Mercedes eventually crunched its way through to the main road all the more embarrassing. ABS-sponsored traction control systems chattering like a box of amphetamine-laden spider monkeys, it simply churned its way up the slope to the main road that had previously defeated all-comers save the farmer's Land Rover, leaving me fuming at the unnecessary loss of a morning's work while wondering where, at such short notice, I could lay my hands on a proper wooden toboggan with metal runners to replace a woeful plastic specimen that would be hard pushed to pick up speed on 45 degrees of sheet ice.
