Snow Fun... Actually it was...

I know I moaned yesterday about the kids not being back at school, but there was an upside to the snow. For a start, I've never seen so muchof the stuff in my entire life. It was coming up over my knees. Proper cool decent snow. That was neat, for us and the kids.

It also felt a bit like an unofficial holiday, which was a bonus considering our actual holiday was pretty crap. And it was really great having hardly any traffic on our road, which is normally horrendously busy. Everyone was walking into town. Most commuters round here couldn't even begin to get up to London because the station was shut, so the park was full of dads having snowball fights with their kids. It did feel like being in some kind of jolly Dickensian Christmas scene, even if it wasn't Christmas...

So here are some pics from our unofficial holiday, which has temporarily lifted us all from our mid winter gloom.

Here's a solitary car edging its way up the road. The snow was so deep most people spent the day walking in the road. You don't get to do that very often without being mown down on our street, I can tell you...

Nos3&4 and I on our way mil's -which took rather longer then the normal two minute walk. Monday is bin day but as you can see, even if the bin men had come no doubt it would have been more then their job was worth to get rid of all that snow on top of the wheelie bin.

Spouse did manage to get into work - although this is as far as he got with the car...

Having got there and had thirty cancellations from snowbound patients, he took the executive decision to call it a day and came home to do this instead...

He tells me it's because he might be too old next time we get this much snow. Hmm...

It took him and no 2 all day. Did I mention my husband is obssessive? It's the Teutonic gene I think. I am far more likely to say wtf and give up, but like Magnus Magnusson, once he's started he just has to finish. At least he got to sit in it for two minutes before it melted the next day... (And the children have learnt from him any rate that you have to stick at things to get them done)


I in the meantime went over to the park with the others. It looked like this...



The obvious thing to do was to have a snowball fight. Which we did. At one point a strange man (as I imagined) started throwing snowballs at me from out of nowhere. What the hell is he doing? was my first thought, before realising it was the husband of a school mum chum. He was so wrapped up I didn't recognise him...

Most surreal sight of the day was watching a chap practising his serve in the tennis courts beyond the play area. Sadly I haven't got photographic evidence as I couldn't quite figure a way of surreptitiously taking his photo without him noticing..

Tuesday was a really bright and sunny day. Spouse has a longer drive on a Tuesday, and besides we still couldn't get the car out as the snow had iced up over night. So he took another day off, and we enjoyed the alpine scene in our garden which did look pretty...

..Before tackling the driveway head on. Hmm. Having just been told NOT under any circumstances to attempt lifting mil by my physio, I wonder how he'd have felt to learn I spent Monday rolling big boulders (well I did help Spouse a little) and Tuesday digging up snow. By mid afternoon we'd freed the car, so we decided to head up to the downs for a spot of sledging. Naively, I thought the roads might be better by then. Wrong....

This week has been a week of firsts. First time snow's ever come over my boots. First time snow's ever drifted to my front door. First time our car's ever been snowed in. And... first time we got stuck in the snow on a hill. This is mainly because plonkers don't park properly on the downs and create a bottle neck for the traffic. All the cars going up the hill inevitably stop, and once you've done that you're in deep deep shit. We managed to eventually crawl up the hill after three lots of kind passersby going down hill got out of their cars to help me push ours up the hill.

We then drove to a rough car park where you can view London on a clear day (and apparently at night its a hotspot for doggers... not that I'd know of course). Spouse did wonder about the wisdom of this, and he was right. When we got back to the car, we had indeed become stuck again. So it was up to me to push us out (hmm, another black mark from the physio I fear). This I managed to do eventually, with the help of another kind passerby (my, the snow does bring out the best in people), but not before a comedy moment involving me falling flat on my face. Spouse said one minute he could see me in the rear view mirror. The next, he ... couldn't.

Still without driving up there (it's just that bit too far for the littlies to walk without lots and lots of moaning), we couldn't have seen this fantastic sunset...

And the kids couldn't have done this...

Or enjoyed another snowball fight...



And falling flat on my face was certainly worth witnessing this...

As a friend of mine remarked the other day, she likes snow when its bad enough for normal life to stop. Our daily lives are so frantic and busy, we rarely have time to stop and stare and take in the view. I'm glad that this week, we had a few such moments. Even if our unexpected holiday went on a little bit too long...