Two-eight Two-eight Two-Snow

Before I begin, let me quickly point out that the title of this blog post is a reference to my age as of Wednesday, combined with the snowy weather conditions, combined with the once-famous advert with the telephone number that sounded like an owl.

Now my shameful pun explanation is out of the way, I would like to firstly say that I've had a brilliant week. I remember when the white stuff descended in February last year and transport here in south east London was well and truly borked, with no buses, no trains, no DLR, and the snow was really too thick to walk through. This time I think both the snow hasn't been quite as severe (albeit it's more persistent), or TFL have pulled their socks up somewhat, or a little of both, as despite various transport cock-ups I have managed to get into town and home again every day. Yes, it's taken me a little longer than normal, but the DLR really has come to the rescue.

I'm very glad it did, because the last thing I wanted was to be stranded on my own on my birthday and for my planned celebrations to be a 'white off'. So I made it to the office after a rather epic effort, had a lovely birthday lunch with colleagues (three out of five of us have our birthdays within a week of each other; obviously Capricorns make good newspaper PR people) then went to a local bar for 'Birth-hay drinks'. I was absolutely chuffed to bits with the turnout as I thought the weather would have put more people off. My friends who live in Abu Dhabi were in London this week, so they made it along, as did lots of other good friends. A huge thank you to all who came (but absolutely 'snow flurries' if you couldn't make it).

I then had a couple of days off work, during which I was out and about quite a lot, catching up with the aforementioned Abu Dhabi pals before they flew back, and tonight I went to watch The Snow Queen ballet at The Coliseum. A fantastic production and some of the dancing actually made me gasp. I have a new-found appreciation for ballet after stumbling (apt for me) across a fabulous BBC4 drama about Margot Fonteyn last week.

In all honesty I know I've been lucky this week as during the latter half when the weather really deteriorated I haven't had to battle through rush hour crowds to get into town and back again. But I must say that - when I have needed to travel - I've been mightily impressed with how smooth my journeys have been. Yeah, it's taken a little longer and my wellies (above) have probably worn down a few millimetres with all the extra walking, but it proves that if you don't want to be sat at home on your own when the sky shakes out its dandruff, you really don't have to be.

And finally, here are some [girly] 'when it snows, anything goes' observations from the last week:

• You can walk in the middle of the road
• You can wear wellies in The Coliseum (well, I did and no one told me off)
  
• You can wear a hat without even considering what your hair will look like when you take it off because NOT wearing one simply isn't an option
• You can leave the heating on at night (cos, you know, you might freeze otherwise...)
• You can wear uber-cosy clothes to work
• You can build a snowman ANYWHERE. I saw one yesterday on the roof of a car...which was being driven along the road. Classic. Shame it wasn't on top of a van as it could have been a SNOWVAN.