Well, that was a total disappointment, wasn’t it? 20cm of snow, they said – haven’t they learned not to bother predicting these sort of things by now? The only snow I got today was a light dusting of sleet while I was driving down the M4. The big pile in the picture above is what is left over from the last batch, sat outside my brother’s house. It’s the cleanest pile of snow left, with the rest of the piles I’ve seen being a very dirty grey, or in the case of the Tesco carpark, totally black! I resisted the temptation to jump in it, mainly due to my unsuitable shoes….

I was tempted to use *this* photo for today’s entry – but having watched the Springwatch “Snow Watch” special earlier, I decided that this guy feeding the birds on Turnham Green was a nicer summary of the day. A day when we suddenly got an extra does of snow, just when we thought it was all melting. The snow itself didn’t last long – even as I sit here this evening, I can hear it all drip-drip-dripping outside our window. It was lovely while it lasted though.

I suspect this’ll be the last snow-based photo of the year – at least until next winter. The snow in Reading is still around (though thawing fast) and the snow in Chiswick (where this photo was taken) was all but gone this morning. Only a light dusting of icing sugar remained, though it was enough for whatever animal this was to leave some nice tracks.

Unlike me, Sara isn’t lucky enough to be able to work from home when her office is open (since she’s a teacher!) so when Maiden Erlegh decided that all teachers were needed in school to teach poor old Year 11, she had to risk the roads and drive over to Earley. Since the car parks at the school were closed, she parked at my brother’s house and walked in – which caused a bit of a problem when she came to going home, as you can see. I had to get the bus over to Earley in my lunch hour to help dig the car out of the snow. What an adventure!

As the big freeze continues to grip the country, we didn’t venture too far out of the house today – for fear of slipping over on the ice rink that is our road. So this photo was taken from our garden, looking up at the icicles on our neighbour’s roof.

Interesting fact I learnt today – you know when you see a roof where the snow has all slipped off, much quicker than the other houses around it? That’s most likely due to bad insulation – heat escaping through the roof will melt the snow more quickly, causing the slippage!

As predicted by the red sky yesterday morning, last night saw snow covering much of the country, with Reading being especially well doused. Despite having to stay at work late, I managed to make my way down the M4 reasonably easily and by the time we awoke this morning there was a good 6 inches of snow covering our area.

Later in the afternoon we all went for a walk to the park down our road, which is where this photo of Sara and Robert was taken. There was some pretty impressive snowman-building going on, including one which was at least 7ft tall.