Bloody Weather

It was my weekly visit to Head Office, a 128 mile round trip from Guildford, and as I got ready for work, I was very pleased at my timekeeping. Regular readers will be aware of my struggle at getting to work on time – even the best planning can go wrong with the slightest error in my daily routine, or simply forgetting to charge my shaver the previous night. But happily all was going well this morning.
And then Mother Nature decided to throw in a googly.
The crunch under my feet signalled the start of my troubles. Snow simply refused to budge from its new home on my windscreen, and it completely confused my automatic windscreen sensors so much that the wipers seemed to have a vehicular fit every couple of minutes. Oh well, I thought as I slid my way through the blizzard along the main road towards the first major town on my journey, I’m half an hour early – it’ll be fine.
Thirty minutes later, I was 100 feet further along the road. Every car was straining to keep themselves on track. The queue for the M4, the motorway I needed, started 12 miles away from the junction, and I had handily started queueing just as a double decker bus careered into an innocent VW Golf. Then the local radio station summed up the situation: 21 schools had closed, the whole of Surrey was gridlocked, and every road I would be using waas declared an ice rink.
After 3 hours, I’d got 25 miles from Guildford. I passed the time by working out my average speed. 8.3 miles an hour. If things didn’t improve, I would arrive at Head Office at around 11pm. Terrific. Trying to raise anyone at Head Office was rather difficult – not only could many of them not get in, but many were still nursing the effects of the previous night’s Christmas party. It was when I saw people ahead pushing their cars up the hill that I took the immensely easy executive decision to head the hell home again. I phoned Nick; he was most amused by it all. As I write, he’s still battling home, having abandoned all hope of getting to his office.
I thought, as I imagine you do, that that would be the worst of it. It was while I was beginning to overcome severe drivers cramp and the frankly useless tyre grip that the thunder and lightning set in. Flashes arched across the sky, while snow fell, cars skidded across the road, and thunder rumbled through the clouds.
No sign of the locusts yet though.