Run for your lives people - IT'S SNOWING!

Last Saturday night, we got some snow, here in England. It wasn’t much and by the time we managed to get out on Sunday it had already faded quite substantially. It was enough to bring the country to a slow down though.

The Supermarkets were packed with people on Saturday, stocking up on essential 2 for 1 offers like starved Holocaust survivors on Supermarket Sweep. The shelves looked like a plague of locusts had been through them. “It’s going to snow” everyone was shouting, “The forecasters are never wrong” foretold another. In expectation of three months isolation from fresh tins of peas, England went into a shopping frenzy.

Then it snowed, and with almost a quarter of an inch piling up on the garden, everything came to a standstill.

This is England – it’s what we do.

On the plus side the fact that the roads had barely three millimetres of snow stacked up on their edges, meant that there was no Rugby on Sunday and nor could we do anything of any real substance, so instead we played.

Result. Kind of.

We headed out to finally try out the sledges that I bought last year and have been taking up space in the garage ever since. The grass was easily visible through our country stopping ice-age, but there was enough.

The boys loved it and laughed like – well – like kids as they sped down the hill in our local park. Well I say sped – see for yourself…

The fun was short lived, of course. As soon as it was time to go home the boys realised they were cold and wet and proceeded to moan, whinge, and strop for the walk back. Then gripe and fight over who went into the shower first. Later Daniel decided to throw a massive tantrum when he was “unfairly” sent out the room when I caught him trying to shove his brother’s head into his dinner plate. This took about an hour of my life, that I’ll no doubt never get back, to resolve.

By which time it was Sunday night and there was nothing left but an ironing pile the size of Mount Everest to conquer. Sadly, because I’m clever enough to know about the power of ironing, that meant I was going to have to put my crampons on and get climbing. Meanwhile, Jo sat and smugly smiled at me, safe in the knowledge that the bathroom was already clean. 

I keep telling my wife that we need a nineteen year old Swedish au pair girl to live with us and do all these jobs. “Think about it”, I point out, “think of all the chores she could be doing for you, all those things you don’t enjoy doing”. Unfortunately Jo knows exactly which chores I’m talking about and has vetoed the idea.