I thought I had missed all the snow but in the last few days, I have seen more snow in London than I have ever seen in my life. I want to just enjoy it but it isn’t easy. It is three days to Christmas and I have only just got the heating working, half my family is stuck in Cyprus and I have barely started the Christmas shopping. If they don’t get here tonight, I may just end up spending all my quality time over Christmas with the nice man from British Gas! He has been very helpful sorting the heating problem, even if it has taken five visits so far…
Apparently we moan a lot in Britain about the weather and our inability to cope with extremes of it. But to be fair, the last time the UK saw such extreme weather was probably the year I was born, and that was a long time ago. So, actually the lack of preparation is not that shocking. What has been most irritating for people is the travel chaos at the airports and the lack of information. Almost everyone I know has been affected. But with 800,000 displaced passengers affected by Heathrow cancellations alone, there is a lot to moan about.
I have made my own contingency plans for the snow. After a little trip out to a feminist bookshop with a friend and a few glasses of wine in a pub in Holborn yesterday afternoon, I bought myself a very thoughtful and relatively inexpensive Christmas present from my husband; just in case his plane doesn’t make it tonight! And the postman has just turned up with my other Christmas present all the way from Cyprus. I opened it, a grow-my-own miniature Wembley Stadium pitch. If I can get it looking green in the next three days, we won’t even need a tree. Thank you, L.
And while we have spent a few evenings in doors avoiding the snow and the chaos, there has been a wealth of great TV to catch up on. I have been introduced to a new programme called Snog, Marry, Avoid, curtesy of my daughter. It focuses on young women wearing too much make-up and too few items of clothing and asks men, well you can imagine, (the title says it all). Not a feminist highlight but rather entertaining, all the same.
My personal favourite over the last few days, has to have been the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards. I sat through two hours of sporting highlights, (from every irrelevant sport on the planet; according to my son only football counts), just to watch David Beckham receive a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to football, on and off the pitch. It was pure joy. He was so moved, so humble, so popular and so fit. He has almost reinvented himself as the nation’s metaphorical Queen mum. Now if he was on Snog, Marry, Avoid, I am sure half the population would go for the first option at least. I might even go for the second if my hubby doesn’t get here soon…..
