Its that time of year when I feel ashamed to be British. Maybe ashamed is too strong a word; embarrassed is probably nearer the mark. The reason is, of course, that we have a little bit of seasonal weather and the country is thrown into chaos.

I was out earlier and it was indeed a bit nippy, but the media somehow manage to take that ‘a bit nippy’ and turn it into ‘the big freeze’ with stories of snowfalls up to 12cm deep, and they make it sound like something out of The Day After Tomorrow.

Wow. Twelve whole centimetres. Maybe it sounds like a lot to people who do not understand metric measurements or something, but its less than five inches. Jayne spoke to her mother in East Sussex and she said they were snowed in… with two inches of snow. Not even enough for a decent snowball fight.

The railways responded to this totally unexpected incidence of cold weather in winter by having major delays and cancellations. Trains to Hastings were cancelled and anyone going there had to take a train to Brighton then get the coastal line, with bus replacements.

I just have this mental picture of people in Canada, Scandinavia and other places looking at the BBC web site and damaging themselves with laughter at our national inability to cope with anything.

As a nation we are split down the middle by our response to these stories of not-very-extreme weather with half of the population being awestruck and taking photos on their mobile to send to Sky News while the other half retreat into sarcasm, which is where you will find me until the Big Thaw.