Lots of snow tonight.  Not looking forward to the journey to work tomorrow.  Most of it will be OK, but the first few hundred metres involve a hill that has never been gritted in the ten years I have lived here.

I will be very upset if the same thing happens at work that happened in February: on the first snowy day some of us made it in, but many did not.   A few more made it in the next day.  The next week we were told by the company that anybody who did not make it in on the first day did not have to use a day or their holiday entitlement.

In other words, those who stayed at home in the warm got a free day off that those of us who struggled in did not get.  Or to look at it another way, those of us who made a conscious decision to live near their work (or work near their home) were penalised while those who decide to live miles away in the middle of the countryside were rewarded.

With Fridays being a half day at our place, I expect a lot of absentees.  The fact that a lot more staff now have laptops with remote access on them will contribute too, as a lot of them will decide to work from home.  I’m a bit tempted as a couple of hours of my day are allocated to a telephone conference that I could just as easily dial into from bed.   If I had thought to bring the number home with me.

I expect all my department to make it in though – we are all going out together after work for a departmental xmas dinner in Horsham.  Fingers crossed that everything will be tropical again by then.