Being a chionophobic is no joke. It causes me no end of troubles on the one day of the year it snows in these here parts. Last night I lay in a freshly made bed with white flannel sheets doing away with that terrible moment of icy horror that is getting into a Winter cocoon, with the curtains open peek-a-boo style so I could watch big fat beautiful flakes of snow fall on our lane and render it a gloomy, beautiful, terrifying hazard. And then this morning I woke up and the lane looked like this: Not thick gloops of vintage Hollywood, snowy icing, but a treacherous layer of sodden snow. I want to cry. I want to ring my Mum and tell her she needs to bring Finn and I parcels of warm food and ring the school and tell them I couldn't even begin to think about dragging my child out in this kind of weather and ring the weatherman and tell him I blame him for the state of the nation and the possibility that I will slip on an icy patch and die a quick and needless death. But of course I don't do any of these things, because even chionaphobic Mummies have to get their babba's dressed and equipped with lunch boxes and book bags and water bottles and money for balloon day (?) happening a week next Friday. And so we set off, Finley laden with all kinds of nonsense and a hat he objects to, while I gripped his stripy gloved hand and passing bushes on the way to the school which is thankfully, to be seen in the picture above, level with that woman in the distance... ie, considering that that is my chamelia in the very forefront of the picture, no distance at all... So we got there and Finley skidded across the playground while I looked on in horror and then delivered him to the classroom and shoved his wet gloves into his pockets and then skidded back down the lane and around the corner, past the church and the old school house below, (which is the source of much consternation in these parts because the Vicar wanted to knock it down and build a two storey morden glass affair, and we signed petitions and refused to let him, and the whole matter was the cause of many a parishioner to be thoroughly blanked by the good people of the church and indeed an over ambitious man of the cloth, but I digress...) ..and so down a skiddy little alleyway I waddled to the post office, where I exchange pleasantries with the locals and buy a pint of milk to be shoved into the criminally large pockets of my long black cosy blanket coat, and edge my way home, back to the twinkly warmth of the kitchen where I once again throw ingredients into the new breadmaker, (this time remembering the yeast), and stir a long tall cup of hot marshmallow sprinkled hot chocolate, then carry it, my shaky self and my beloved laptop up to my bedroom, where I resolve to spend the rest of this snowy, white day.