Bleah

Don't be fooled by the pretties; it's pretty shitty here at the moment.
So anyhoo … yesterday's site meeting was eighty miles away and I set off just as the first flurries of snow floated down. The weather forecast was for a light dusting. By the time I was two miles out of Norwich the blizzard hit and the snow just came down in one big flumph. Vans and lorries started sliding off the road and the we came to a standstill.

There was a lorry jack-knifed up the hill ahead of me and it was obvious from the way the snow was coming down that I wasn't going to make the meeting so I hung a one-eighty and headed back to the city.
I got a hundred yards before I saw two lorries and a bus slewed all over the road ahead. No matter how well you drive on ice and snow, you're always at the mercy of people who don't. The radio reported sixty-three accidents in the local area; nobody was going anywhere for a while.
So there I sat. In the blizzard.

Luckily I'm a long-term London commuter and used to waiting around for hours. I sipped my coffee and switched off, while outside, people were running around and getting all worked up. One guy in a BMW decided to drive along the footpath and overtake everything. He slipped and skidded and over-revved his dumb, rear-wheel drive car in too low a gear, mounted the pavement and slid for a bit before ramming a lamp post. It was too pathetic to be funny.
A couple of hours later the snow stopped as suddenly as it had started and the sun came out, which is when I got out my camera.
Earlier I'd walked to a nearby coffee bar and called the office to tell them to call the site and say I wasn't going to make it … only for the office to tell me that after I left (around the time I got stuck in the blizzard) the site had called to cancel the meeting.
So there I sat with my camera and my coffee for another hour or so before things gradually started to crawl again.

By the time I got back to the city it was dark and the radio reported every road in Norwich gridlocked. The snow hit so hard and fast it overwhelmed the gritters and the emergency services, and every fool in every office decided it would be a good idea to head home early. Result: nobody was going home for a long, long time.
The sensible thing to do was to park up and walk back through the gridlocked traffic to the office, which gave me some more photo opportunities.

It looked like it would take hours for the traffic to clear, so I did a bit of catch-up work and then me and one of the partners headed to a spiffy Malay restaurant for a seafood frenzy.

The traffic had cleared by the time we came out, so I walked to the car and drove - slowly - home, on two inches of black ice as the fog and more snow came down.
This morning, it's minus thirteen, foggy and white out there, and due to get a whole lot worse by the weekend. I was going to take the train in to Norwich but the radio tells me they've all been cancelled so it looks like I'll be sitting in traffic much of the day.
Hey ho.
I wonder how many times on this blog I've said "roll on spring."