Snow is one of those things that everyone loves as long as they don't actually have to deal with it. Imagine going outside and trying to sort out the roads today. Or any electricity lines which are down. Because Britain's temperature is naturally muggy and grim, a lot like many of its people, we are always excited by the annual February snow.
A few years ago I managed to skid my car off the road and into a ditch after hitting a patch of ice in Gedney. I took a corner and literally started spinning. Turning the wheel exacerbated the problem, and only five seconds after realising there was a problem at all, I was sat at 45 degrees with the door of my new Peugeot 306 resembling broken meringue. I was unhurt and climbed out before a kindly farmer helped me. I sat in the back of his range rover, surrounded by recently slain pheasants, wondering what the hell had just happened.
And the crowning irony - the final turd in the waterpipe? There was no work that day. My journey had been pointless.
Since then I've become a lot better at driving in the snow, more careful and observant. Part of that is a function of what happened to me, part is the inevitable outcome of seeing so many cars wrapped around trees and lampposts through my job over the years.
One of the most incredible things I've ever seen was when I boarded a bus in Lapland to take me to Santa Claus Village. Rovaniemi is about 8 miles from the village but there were several buses throughout the day to take people to meet the great man, and thankfully there was a stop just outside my hotel. So I climbed in and handed over my fare to the driver, who extended a hand with precisely zero fingers. Now bear in mind the journey I was about to take. Eight miles of snow track, icy roads with drops into alpine abyss on either side, sheer walls of blizzard, in several tonnes of rectangular metal. And I was being taken on this magical mystery tour by a guy whose grip of the steering wheel would be comparable to that of Steven Gerrard tackling astrophysics.
But he was very good, and only left the road 12 times during the journey.
At least the Finns know it's snowy pretty much all the time. I heard the other day that the state of Montana, which borders Canada, has a highest recorded temperature of 121c and a low of around -50c. Imagine putting the wrong clothes on for that bastard.
Just watched Calender news and there are some hilarious photos of rabbits playing with snow, and a snowman with a pepper for a nose to which the presenters poked fun in that false, cloying way that only local newsreaders can. It's enough to make an educated and hilarious political commentator like myself turn off his computer. Adios snowsters.
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