It's Snow Joke

Woke up this morning to the same world of whiteness I expect most other people in this country woke up to. This, added to my physical headache, emotional headache, extending stomach pains and general lack of loving towards the world at present makes me not a pleasant chap to be close to this morning.

After surveying the snow-blanketed street outside the window I jumped straight back into bed and treated myself to several more minutes of cosiness. I weighed up the options of staying the entire day in bed, which initially I quite liked the sound of. Did I feel ill enough? Not really - my stomach ills of yesterday were still there but not quite as horrible as yesterday; I finally managed a sandwich around half seven last night, but nothing else, and I certainly didn't feel like facing breakfast. My physical headache is one of those where you feel your skull is empty, having been gnawed away by maggots, and those same maggots and now attempting to burrow their way out of your head. Add these together and you just have not quite enough to call in a sickie. Plus I didn't want to give Mr Handyman any ammunition to find a reason to hold something against me on my first day of his leadership. So I stuck another five minutes in bed before climbing out and attending to my daily appointment with the bathroom.

Came downstairs to find the radio on and not on my usual selection of 6music but on the local numpties, with Gabe and Lukas looking eagerly at it - which was a bit of a waste of time as it's a radio. I asked what they were doing and why they were still in t-shirts and underwear to which I received the answers (a) they were waiting for the listing of school closures and (b) there was no point in them getting dressed for school if no school was to be attended. I put myself some toast on and the role-call of closed school began and after around five minutes Gabe and Lukas were dancing giddily around the kitchen as their school (and Andrew's college, which was no surprise as they are on the same campus) was announced as closed. Lucky beggars. No list of workplaces that were closed was forthcoming. To calm the pair down I gave them a verbal list of all the little chores that were required, such as taking the rubbish out, sorting the recycling, washing the non-dishwasher pots - but they just looked at me as though I was speaking in tongues, before dancing up back to their still body-warmed beds. I am sure as I write this they are playing their part in a massive village snow war, and the house is in the same state as I left it this morning. Who am kidding? It's probably significantly worse.

So whilst my brood caught up with some unexpected extra-curricular napping, I went to my crappy car and switched the crappy heater on and the crappy windscreen wipers and covered the windscreen with crappy de-icer that - initially - did totally not a frozen dickie-bird in removing the ice. I left the car running for ten minutes whilst I waited in the warmth of the house, then I gingerly inched it out of the village. The car, not the house.

I have three choices of getting to work (in a car):

(a) minor road, minor road with large hill, town centre road with large hill.
(b) very minor road, minor road with large hill, town centre road with large hill.
(c) minor road with gentle constant uphill, major road.

I usually do (a) as the very minor road is one car in width so if you meet another car coming in the opposite direction you have to do all that tiresome 'shall we dance' shuffling onto verges and into hedges. But I'd already heard on the radio that buses were struggling up the hills, so I chose (c). This was the wisest choice anyone had made since the United States voted John McCain in as president.

Getting to the major road was a breeze, as no other car was using the minor road. This was, I discovered, because every other car in the area was using the main road in. A nice chappy allowed me entry onto the road but then it was an inordinately painful crawl over two miles until I could take a slight back-entry into town and into work. I can do this journey - if I'm feeling particularly Lewis Hamiltonish - in about six minutes. This morning it took me over an hour.

Trudged through the snow in the car park and into my office. I was surprised by the amount of people in there - including a guy who lives in the same village as me who told me he'd chosen (a) from the options above and had made it in twenty minutes without much of a problem other than keeping it below twenty. This did nothing to raise my sullen spirits, neither did the newly installed Peter Handyman's 'nice of you to join us' comment as I passed his desk (thankfully, a few desks' distant from my own). I wasn't in the mood for another argument, after I'd spent the previous evening embroiled in one with Andrew, so I just ignored him.

By ten everyone was in so Peter called us together for a quick huddle and announced 'welcome to my new team'. His reward was utter silence. That was the first (and so far only) joyful event of my day, the majority of which have been spent looking out of windows as the world outside becomes whiter and whiter.

I'm not ready to re-iterate the argument I had with Andrew, just yet, so you'll have to use your imagination. Can you believe he hit me? At one stage he turned to go, but as I followed him he span and punched me just under my left cheekbone. What it is with young homosexuals thinking my face is a punchbag? I managed to grab his twig-like arm and honestly, I felt like snapping the f**king thing in two.

And now I've got to worry about getting home through all this white crap, then re-instigating the argument as I'm not happy with the answers I've gotten so far. Can't believe just two days ago I was in danger of feeling slightly content.