Sorry to be Blunt but...

30 November 1999

It is effing freezing – I am sorry to be so direct, but this weather has been a complete nightmare. It is like the UK has turned into Greenland overnight and we are all so ill prepared that it is causing something like a coronary every time a snowflake hits the ground.

One of the joys of working so close to home this week has been the fact that the snow hasn't really affected me. I did the sensible thing and left the van at home. Yes, I walked – an alien concept to most, I realise, but the safest option when you have a three ton van and a hill to negotiate. But try telling that to the delivery driver I had to help out on my way home yesterday.

I was merrily making my way down the hill, when a horn blasted behind me. I look around to see a van from a well known warehouse store slipping and sliding down the hill – backwards...I can only imagine how he managed to get up there in the first place, but I guess momentum helps. So I run down the hill to stop the traffic at the bottom so he can swing out and carry on his haphazard journey.

This really got me thinking about the craziness of the British winter and how we seem to come to a grinding halt whenever anything unusual happens. Whether it is heat or cold, the UK seems to be the worst prepared of all countries around the world. Yes, we get extremes lately, but what is wrong with carrying chains, leaving the car at home or heaven forbid, learning how to drive properly?

Having said all that the weather is causing me problems at work. I am currently ripping out a bathroom. It is for an nice old retired couple. But they are at home all day. This is usually OK, but I am having carry the bath and sink and bags of rubbish down the stairs all day and open the door each time. The poor bloke and his wife are sat on the sofa with a rug over them trying to be nice about it. The last thing I want to be responsible for is the untimely death of a nice old couple due to exposure to the cold. But this is the least of their problems, as I will need to turn the heating off tomorrow to sort out the radiators....

Still it is good to be back at work. The credit card has taken a bit of a beating over the last couple of weeks and it is time to get earning again. I am lucky enough to have enough work to keep me going until the middle of March so I can afford to relax a bit.

Claire is already talking about our Summer holiday and looking at brochures. Can't I just have some peace for a while? But she has her heart set on Euro Disney of all places. I am trying to convince her that the commercialism of it will do her head in. She normally hates all that sort of rubbish, but she reckons that every child has to experience it once. I think she might be trying to recapture her lost youth. Women mystify me....