The S Word

November the 14th isn’t too bad I suppose. It has happened earlier than this. Today was officially the first time the S Word was mentioned this winter: “There will be snow over the Derbyshire Peaks tomorrow morning.” Well, thank you very much Mr Weatherman. Snow definitely doesn’t feature in the list of things I like about winter.

There are many advantages to living on a steep hill: great views, feeling of invincibility during the recent floods, etc. Unfortunately the downside is that it only takes a small amount of snow or ice to make my street start to resemble a small stretch of tundra. This can be very pretty, but it makes getting to work far more exciting than it should be.

Of course I can use public transport – the tram is brilliant even in heavy snow – but it adds almost an hour to my 25 minute journey to work, so not surprisingly I prefer to use the car. The result is a lot of paranoid watching of weather reports during “snow season” and occasional (but often needless) trips to deposit the car a few hundred yards down the road – bizarrely a local micro-climate plus a steeper gradient often result in my street being impassable when other streets nearby are fine!

The particularly ridiculous part of this is that we don’t even get much snow anymore – but that doesn’t seem to stop me indulging in my own personal snow-watch every year. The S Word has been spoken. Let the snow paranoia commence.