Our Never Ending (Treacherous) Winter

It's the end of March and most of the UK is deep in snow. winter in Britain is (or always feels) very long and the cold dreary grey months never seem to end. A week ago it was looking promising with Spring flowers starting to bloom and there was even a couple of days where I left the house without a coat. But now winter is well and truly back.

The snow hasn't hit Brighton of course because we're in the south east which gets the mildest weather  but I have to admit I feel somewhat disappointed as I really, really love snow. It's not so fun trudging around in it (although I have some of those rubber grippy things that sip over your shoes with studs on the bottom - this freelancer 'aint breaking anything) but I work from home so to be toasty in my flat working on my laptop with the snow falling softly outside is just dreamy. 

Whilst I was in France (shit, I need to write that trip up!) it snowed like a bastard here.  Apparently it came down hard and fast and caused travel chaos like never before - and then it was gone. Yup, it came and went within 24 hours just in time for my return. On one hand this was great as it meant my trip went smoothly with no cancelled flights or trains, but on the other hand I was gutted. I've only seen a little bit of snow here this year and I feel a bit short-changed to be honest.

I went to the shop to get the paper earlier and the Jordanian lad behind the counter said he'd been in the UK 4 years and had never seen summer. He jokingly said that even on one of our 'summer' days it was cold. I've been to Jordan so I can accept his opinion on that - it's as hot as the fricking sun there so I feel his pain. I felt it my duty to apologise on behalf of the entire nation so we're covered there, but I really felt for the poor guy. We're used to months of endless disappointment (in every sense; politically and weather-wise) but he expected more.

On the news last night they showed cars buried in snowdrifts 16ft high. Now we usually call a national emergency when there's 4 inches of snow so that really gave the news 'reporters' something to orgasm over. Nobody seems to know how to drive in ice and snow here, so obviously idiots slip and slide everywhere and crash into other cars and ditches, but these poor people had lost their cars to the snow completely. 

I also have a real bugbear with the word 'treacherous' being used on the news at every opportunity. "Treacherous conditions", "it's treacherous out there", grrrrrrrr....it really gets on my nerves. They use it in every single weather story at least 2 or 3 times and It's usually said without a hint of irony within 20 seconds.

It's 0 degrees here today with a wind chill factor of -5, but to be honest we Brits love it and as soon as it gets hot (over 20 degrees) we'll complain about that as well!