Snow

Everyone is banging on about this, so let me put my wellie in. Snow is objectionable. It maims, if not kills, hundreds of people every time it shows up, and disrupts the innocent lives of millions more. How many people in Britain are anxious about running out of food because snow is preventing them getting to a shop? How many are cold, smelly or both because snow has cut off their power supplies? How many spent 18 hours trapped in their cars on the A3 last night? How many, like me, are at severe risk of exhausting their gin supplies? There's no conceivable defence for the stuff.

I know what you're thinking - Ahh, but it's pretty. My friend Caro says 'isn't it exciting!' Oh no it isn't. Look at it. It's just a load of whiteness, if you're lucky. Soon it'll turn into either a cowpat-brown mess of shoe-destroying sludge (which will also erode the underside of your car once you manage to drive over it) or a shiny black slick of ice carefully positioned to break the hip of any OAP stupid enough to venture outside their door for bread, or gin. Not pretty, not exciting.

All the news bulletins bang on about 8,236 schools being closed (nothing about factories, shops, surgeries or A&E departments - why do schools suddenly become the only institutions that matter as soon as it snows?) and what great news this is for the kids. Excuse me? If the kids think it's so great not having to be educated for a few days, then let them get out and drive the gritters and snowploughs, please.

I see from my usual audit that about sixty per cent of the Christmas cards I received this season depict snow, or one or other of its idealised consequences. This despite the fact that it never snows in Bethlehem, does it? They're going to be burnt for fuel, probably. Bah, humbug.

Meanwhile, if anyone within reach of Reading happens to have a spare snowplough...