Only possible topic for today is the snow!

I can't imagine that there are many UK bloggers today who won't mention the snow - I'm certainly not going to buck that trend as it very much dominated our day. We'd seen the weather forecast on Sunday night so the snow was not unexpected, but nonetheless a treat to wake up to this morning. It was slightly annoying however to have to get up at the usual time for work, get showered and wake everyone else up, and then find we couldn't go anywhere. Trains and tubes from our neck of the woods were all cancelled, even if we could have got to the station. And that wasn't guaranteed - we live on the top of a large hill, and our neighbour, who did brave it, managed to get down the hill, gave up while trying to go round the roundabout at the bottom, and then had to abandon her car half way up the hill on the way home. And the school was closed of course - they sent out a text message at about 7.30am which was a really good idea.

So, after a breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes (yum!), we bundled up, and headed out to do all the traditional snowy things.

We made a snowman (he turned out a bit like a Dalek, but was quite fun) while some amongst us got rather over excited about the possibilities offered by snowball-throwing (hitting a pregnant woman with a snowball is not that hard - I'm a big target at the moment - but hitting me on the head was a bit harsh I thought!).

Isabel played with the neighbours' children, sliding around on sleds and making snow angels.

We didn't go out again in the afternoon because it was so cosy once we'd come back in for tomato soup and crusty bread (it was a real comfort food kind of a day!) - I did some work, but did venture out to rescue the gear we'd left outside, and spotted where some birds had played a game of chase under a tree.

The only thing that's annoyed me about the snow is the fuss that's made when the country has to effectively shut down for the day. This is the worst snow for 18 years, so it clearly is a rare occurrence. What's the point in making a major investment in being able to deal with snowfall like this when it happens so rarely? I guarantee that Brits would complain either way - if we had invested, there would be complaints that we'd wasted the money if there was no snow. And since we haven't invested and have to shut down for the day when there is snow, there are complaints that we should have invested. I reckon that, since the first Monday in February is meant to be the biggest sickie day of the year anyway (due to depression when people realise that Christmas is long gone and the summer is still miles away), we should just be glad that it coincided with the snow day. Seems like quite fortuitous timing, if you ask me!