Snow Days

I have very mixed feelings about snow. It’s gorgeous, beautiful, soft, quiet. It scares me.

Driving in it scares me. A lot. The police on the news warnings tell us not to drive in it and they tell us that for a very good reason. So when I got up to go to work early last Tuesday morning to find not just a snow-covered village, but heavily falling snowing, obviously I didn’t go to work. Or Wednesday, or Thursday. The problem with this – other than upsetting my boss – is that I also didn’t go shopping. And I had missed the order deadline for my Riverford veg box the night before. Result: no fresh food in the house. Well, with the exception of one courgette and half a cabbage.

Fortunately, the village I live in is significant enough to have a greengrocer come butcher, a Spar, a corner shop, and even a pharmacy. So Bron and I put on all our outdoor togs and ventured out to these local facilities on foot. Unfortunately, these village shops aren’t into stocking goods that don’t come in plastic. Actually, they don’t seem terribly interested in stocking vegetables either. We managed to rustle up a few onions, potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, but nothing green. And we had to settle for plastic-covered cheese and plastic-covered bread.

Could we have survived without cheese and bread for a couple of days? Probably, but the cold had at this point settled into my brain for the long-haul and was telling me I must buy these things while I could. So I did. Sorry and all.

We live at the top of a hill and so, since the cold snap started, even before the snow came, I’ve been leaving my car in the village so that I don’t have to worry about driving up and down an icey hill. Am I paranoid? Possibly. But these fears are not unfounded – one little slip in these conditions and you’re done for. My previous car got written off in the snow of February 2009, and three of my colleagues having crashed their cars so far this winter trying to get to work.

Result? When I finally left the village on Friday and went to Sainsbury’s I bought – oh no! – coke bottles wrapped in plastic! Yes Bron is still addicted to coca cola, but if he wants to drink it I usually make him buy his own so I can keep it off my plastic tab. This time it was one step worse – a pack of four bottles bundled together in plastic with a handy plastic handle. Perfect for lugging them up the hill to the house.