Winter: Stop Throwing Tantrums

I believe I have proof that Winter is reading my blog.

In my last post, I mentioned that our region hadn’t been hit particularly badly by the snow storms at the weekend. Since then, our region has become the victim of a relentless snowfall that has persisted on falling and turning everything whiter than it should be.

On Tuesday, using the car to get to work was quickly identified as a sketchy idea thanks to a couple of inches of freshly laid snow on our road. We walked to a bus stop on the nearest main road, being passed by a number of intrepid (read: foolish) drivers, ping-ponging their way down the hill, using the kerbs on the opposite sides of the road as their only method of steering and/or stopping. We successfully caught a bus into the city centre, but once there my journey to work ground to a halt. I missed the bus to the business park I work at by a matter of seconds – we (by which I mean Fiance) were level with the back window as it pulled away from the stop. At this stage, I would like to stop and award a big thanks to Fiance for being a gent by running much more efficiently than me and getting a lot closer to hailing it than I managed (although I am blaming that entirely on my wellies and their inability to improve one’s running technique). 

In the end, it took me two hours to get into work, thanks to missing and delayed buses, road closures and Winter’s general maliciousness towards me. Fortunately, I outwitted Winter on the journey home, and accepted the offer of a taxi-based lift with someone from work who doesn’t live far away from me. The taxi even made it up the hill we’d seen cars ping-ponging down earlier, so I only had to trudge up the hill that forms our road – take that Winter.

I actually haven’t left the house since – my boss having agreed to let me work from home for the last couple of days. It was whilst staring into space and pondering one particularly complex Excel formula that I noticed the beginnings of an avalanche forming outside our lounge window.

It took me a while to work out why there was a mound of snow, taller than me, sitting directly outside our window – closer inspection revealed it was the result of our wheelie bins holding up our hedge that is rapidly collapsing under the weight of all the snow that has fallen on it.

I took a few pictures of the avalanche forming.

I may, or may not, have embellished them.

For the record, I still hate Winter.

Winter: You Suck

As a species, I believe we are split into two firm categories – those who love summer, and those who love winter. I fall squarely into the former group, mainly out of a hatred for the nasties that winter brings. This is for a number of experience-based reasons.

For starters, getting soaked is something that should only happen by choice:

It is not a pleasant experience to be made dripping wet when you don’t expect it, and winter is an expert at exposing you to such horrors.

While rain can be an unpredictable beast at the best of times, in winter it manages to excel itself. While you assume an inconspicuous layer of white cloud in the sky means a rain free day awaits you, winter is planning how best to ensure your unplanned dampness. Without warning, the sky will darken into a writhing mass of the darkest grey cloud, awaiting the perfect moment to fling its wet arsenal at your unprepared body. 

For the last three days, winter’s perfect moment has been planned for the 15 second dash I have to make between the office and the car park. Maintaining a 100% record for each of my days at work this week, the sky had completed its transformation from friendly to threatening with half an hour of my day left to go, leaving ample time for the rain to start falling in a deluge that quite frankly, was unnecessary given that I had to go out in it.

Typically, I had wrongly assumed that I wouldn’t need any form of water-resistance device when I left the house that morning, but even if I had, there is no item of protection that would have been able to stand the aqua-laden onslaught I had to face to get back to my car. You see, the short journey from office to vehicle involves travelling between two buildings which, I have recently learnt, means the slightest breeze is transformed into a howling gale as it travels down the resulting tunnel. Science says that when you add water to such a scenario, you will get horizontal rain (actually, I don’t know if science does officially say that, but it has happened consistently this week so I’m running with it).

Horizontal rain is the worst kind of rain. Not only is it wet, it means that there is a lot of wind around in order to perpetuate its horizontalness. And I hate wind too.

Sitting next to each other in the alphabetically ordered list of weather, wind and winter have formed a strong friendship and go hand in hand everywhere they go. I always seem to forget about how much I hate wind until the final part of the year approaches and it raises its whirling head once again.

There is no protection you can take from it – it lives to ensure you look flapped and ruffled whenever you cross paths. It will blow plastic bags into your face, and leaves into your hair and there is nothing you can do about it.

Unless you stay inside of course, but that is a rather impractical attitude to take for an entire season (especially for me, given that we live at the top of a particularly blustery hill). But even if you did elect a complete avoidance tactic by hibernating in your lounge for several months, you would have to endure its constant whining as it performs laps of your house at top speed, knocking all your stuff over as it goes. There is no relief from the gusts of a potent wind, and that sucks.

Snow sucks too (I’m on a roll now). I used to love snow when I was a kid – hell, even when I was a student, waking up to the sight of a lightly dusted winter wonderland would never fail to put a smile on my face. I think mainly, this was because it never really snowed properly until last winter. For about a month, our road was covered in a slippery carpet of partly-melted-then-refrozen-again snow. Remember I said we lived at the top of a hill? Yeah, that came into play.

 

 

Last winter’s snow did indeed leave me having to plod up a hill barefooted because my heels did not succeed where the car tyres failed. I got home tired, miserable and worst (but most obvious) of all, I had cold feet. I’ll let you in on a little secret – it is impossible for me to be warm if my feet are cold, and walking directly on snow is not a recommended method for keeping the tootsies toasty.

While I will not deny that these are all things I seriously dislike about winter, they are mere inconveniences sent to challenge me every year rather than forming the real reason for my hatred of all things winter. The reason for dislike turning into hatred is simple.

Winter weather does horrible things to my hair.

Winter, you make my hair look bad. We were never destined to be friends.

Before I finish up here, I will begrudgingly admit to being a fan of the occasional positive point that winter brings. I have come up with a grand total of one so far. When it is cold outside, the water from the cold tap is refreshingly cold.

There you go, I said it. There is something good about winter.

But before you get carried away thinking that this could be the humble beginnings of a change in seasonal allegiance, I can reassure you that I can't help but see a negative to this single, lonesome positive. Because the colder water means it takes longer to boil when you’re gasping for a cup of hot, soul-warming tea. And I do hate being made to wait for a steaming hot cuppa.

Winter, you suck because you make my hair bad and you delay my tea drinking.

I rest my case.