Southsea Snow - How Was It For You?

Did the snow finally arriving in Southsea fill you with joy or dread?  Did you skid on your arse and curse at every footstep?  Or did you leap like a child on Christmas morning, relishing every flake and joining in the huge snowball fight on The Common?

Gains Road, Southsea - no one bothered to drive for two days

We really do have it easy here.  We are protected by the Isle of Wight and all that salty sea air helps to keep the temperatures low.

The baby playing in the road

So, for the snow to lay in Portsmouth, there has to be a serious amount of it falling out of the sky.  Of course, because we don't tend to get that much frost compared to the rest of the country we are usually ill prepared and more than an inch of snow sees us grinding to a screeching halt.  Namby pamby us? The teen and the tween had a nice long weekend courtesy of Jack Frost, so we snuggled up watching DVDs and tucking into the chocolates that we'd bought for Christmas week.  While our hardy friends up North just bunged their kids on a sledge and dragged their kids to school.  They're made of much hardier stuff.  I say "they," because even though I'm a Northerner, I have now spent more of my life living down South than I did up North.  I left my parent's home in North Yorkshire aged seventeen and moved down here in January 1993, that's nearly eighteen years ago!

As much as I love it when we can take time off and munch our way through our rations, the snow makes it very difficult for hubby and I to work.  It can be a total killer for the self employed or people who don't get holiday pay.  We had to cancel our tree work.  Mainly because staff couldn't get to us.  My mad husband was up at 6am to drive to the golf course and walk the stink dog regardless.  The snow has a direct effect on my sales and deliveries too, as the postal service gets ruined by snow.  Last year, the snow was at the beginning of January the same time as the tween's eleventh birthday.  None of his  cards and presents turned up and we had to cancel his birthday party, the first one we'd planned for five years.  It never did take place in the end! He was very patient though, good little lad.  Fortunately he was still very much entertained by all the lovely things he'd got at Christmas.

The husband's geriatric classic car faired well this week

Friday was the coldest I have ever known it to be since I moved to Southsea nearly eight years ago.  I opened the baby's bedroom curtains and there was actually ice on the inside of his window. That's the first time I've seen that in about thirty years!  But on Friday night I came home from my Christmas do at 1am to be greeted by an almighty downpour of rain which had washed and melted all the snow clean away and that was the end of it!

So, how was it for you?