Snowdrifts in Oakley, Hampshire, yesterday afternoon.

Well, the ‘Beast from the East’ arrived and I have to say, I was quite impressed with its impact, with several inches of snow falling, even here in Hampshire, as the fierce easterly fizzed across us. It didn’t get above -3c here yesterday.

I always like a blast of cold air (although perhaps not in March) as it brings a bit of drama to winter rather than short dank days where drizzle is more likely than snow or ice. What I also like is the contradictory nature it brings out in people.

When I was walking into Sainsbury’s the other day, I overheard an old chap going about how it used to snow all the time and we didn’t have all this hysteria back in his day. Twenty minutes later, I saw him with a trolley full of bread and what looked suspiciously like a copy of The Daily Express.

So we had a tough old boy who claimed had experienced worse winters than the soft folk of today, planning for some sort of Armageddon.

There are two key points here. Firstly, if you look at the statistics, winters weren’t any colder in his day and secondly, the shops are not going to close and the snow will have largely melted by Sunday. So, unless he was making sandwiches for the Bowls Club AGM, he didn’t need 18 loaves of bread.

No doubt he also thought that this was proof global warming was a myth made up by whingeing Remoaners.

The other people who have got on my tits this week are those who have been texting or calling into media organisations and saying “IT’S COLD. IT’S WINTER. GET OVER IT!” 

I would like to find those people and put them in a car that had been stuck on the M8 in Scotland for 18 hours. Scotland which has its fair share of snow, had a red alert for the first time in its history yesterday, so it must have been pretty bad. It’s been a tough couple days for some folk and I’m not so sure what is so clever about saying “IT’S WINTER, IT’S COLD, GET OVER IT’.

It’s certainly not original and the last time I checked, it doesn’t make you look tough saying it.

Of course, there are also accusations flying around that us Brits are pathetic when it comes to snow and we are not able to cope. This means County Councils are getting it in the neck for not being prepared for something that happens in Southern England about 9 or 10 times in any given century.

Of course we can’t cope; we’re not used to it. Karasjok, in Norway, can average a winter temperature of -50c. Let’s send them some weather from a tropical rain forest and see how they get on shall we?

Of course we are useless at coping; it normally rains here in winter. When we do get a bit of frost, the council throw salt around like confetti just in case some daft twat slams his brakes on, skids into a roundabout and sues them for a million quid via ‘Frost Claims R Us’ who carry the catchy strapline ‘Where there’s a cunt there’s a claim’.

What do we want them to do? Put council tax up and spend £20 million quid on Norwegian snow ploughs that will get used once a decade?

Can you imagine it in 2028.

‘Ere Dave, would you believe it…first snow in years and the bastard won’t start”.

“I’m not surprised Mick, we haven’t started the fucker up since 2018.”

These councils are skint as it is. I don’t want more swimming pools and libraries shutting down just so we can budget for machinery that will get used about as much as a ninety-year old’s Skoda Citigo.

Whether they are electricity or gas engineers, gritting lorries or call out mechanics, they are all doing their best and everyone else is doing their best not to be useless but the fact is we are all useless, except, I must add, the Met Office, who predicted this weather over a fortnight ago.

And Nathan Rao of The Express. He has predicted this every winter for the last decade. Of course, even a stopped clock is right occasionally but that won’t wash with Nathan, he thinks it was all predicted by him.

Have a good weekend. It’s spring. It’s cold. Get over it!