Snow days

Well the first week back to work was an easy one thanks to the weather. I was in work on Monday and had to bail out about 11am on Tuesday as it was snowing hard and hilly Malvern is not easy to negotiate in bad weather. We packed up, gathered the Leigh Sinton posse together (we took Julie home too), and headed off. The snow was already about 3" deep at this point and we were an Audi toboggan at some points on the way home. The roads were very slippy and there were a couple of times we had no grip at all and slid elegantly into the kerb. It took us 1 1/2 hours to go the 5 miles home, constantly assessing the roads and possible route to avoid any of the very steep hills.

We got between 4-6" of snow on Tuesday - nothing to compare to the 24" they got in Alexandria, VA a few weeks ago - but enough to bring us all to a grinding halt! There was no traffic moving past our house on Wednesday. We decided to follow the lead of the rest of the UK and work from home. Thank goodness for the capability to do that!!

I continued to work from home all week. I figured that I could be more productive sitting at home working than sitting in the car sliding all over the place for an hour each way. Stephen braved it though. He said the roads were terrible. We'd had extremely low temperatures in this area overnight (minus 17C in Pershore, which is about 1F) and grit is apparently only effective down to minus 7C, so the roads were treacherous and littered with abandoned cars. I think he has now qualified for the British 4-man bobsled team so I'd better begin packing him for the Winter Olympics!

We headed into Malvern this morning. We were getting low on food supplies and Stephen hijacked my hair appointment (his need was greater than mine!). So I braved Waitrose whilst he went for a trim. The grocery store was fun...especially the bread section where things were beginning to get a little tense. There were little old ladies with sharpened elbows stockpiling bread and prepared to take down anyone who got too close to the shelves!!

There was one moment which had me snickering....there was an announcement "Can the owner of a blue Skoda please report to the customer service desk" and I had two thoughts "you have to be kidding...no-ones going to admit to owning a Skoda if they shop in here" and "they're probably going to ask them to remove it from their car park as its lowering the tone"!!

Can I just say, pushing a trolley laden with shopping through the snow is really difficult! The car park hadn't been cleared (I think its a liability thing) and it was okay until I got to the less frequently used end of the car park...trying to push it through 3" of compacted snow when it was laden was no mean feat!

I was surprised how many Seniors were out today. They all had their sensible walking boots on and had walking poles with them. Where do you get such things? Perhaps they're handed out along with your bus pass when you hit 60.