"Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful"

For the second time this week best laid plans have fallen foul of the weather. The intention to take in a game of football once again thwarted by Mother Nature.

Even if expectations had been confounded and the match we'd scheduled to take in had gone ahead, it would still be Mossley80-less as running the risk of the rapidly deteriorating conditions on the road wasn't particularly appealing. And to be honest, I'd had enough of journeying through the current this weather this morning without repeating it 12 hours later.

A phone call as I was leaving home from someone sat on the last chopper out of Saigon (or the 6:30am bus to Ashton as it was previously known) told me that word had come over the driver's radio that it was to be the only bus in and out of Mossley for the foreseeable future. So off to the railway station it was to take my chances with Northern Rail.

Making my rather slow way to the station I was caught in two minds. One half was muttering grimly about the condition and trying to keep me upright as I slid about the footpaths. The other half though was full of the childish glee of walking through the snow and sliding about.

After tackling Mill Street like it was the north face of K2 (the lack of crampons negated by rubbing my feet in a grit pile at the bottom of the hill) I made it to Manchester Road and boy, was it eerie.

Normally at that time of 6:45-ish the road is quite busy but there wasn't a single piece of traffic on it. Not that it was unsurprising as cars couldn't make it up the roads onto it, and judging by the ashen faced expression on the driver of the one car who came down Stamford Road, it was treacherous coming down onto it as well.

The only good thing about the morning, apart from my momentary regression back to a single digit age group, was that the train was only four minutes late and I got a seat. It's little comfort though when you've got a thirty minute walk through black slush to get to work once you disembark.

Why am I telling you all this? Frankly I've no idea but it's a good way of getting a bad day off my chest, especially as some of my fellow employees who live in the area wangled the day off claiming they were snowed in.

Before I finish though I'd like to applaud the consideration shown to pedestrians by the drivers trying to make their way up Wagon Road this morning. Unable to get any grip on the snow they continually slid backwards and to avoid hitting the car behind, they graciously swerved onto the footpaths where people were having enough standing upright as it was without having to take evasive manoeuvres to avoid a couple of tons of metal hurtling towards them.

Fair play to them. I mean, what's a couple of years in prison for vehicular manslaughter and ruining the lives of countless families when the alternative is losing your no claims bonus.

Oops! I got mixed up there. I didn't mean to praise you, I meant to call you the self-centred tossers you undoubtedly are. Glad I got that straight.

So onto tomorrow then and the joys black ice will bring in the land of hills.