Maybe the railways had a point with their now-notorious complaints about ‘the wrong kind of snow’ after all.  We had a little bit of the white stuff here overnight and although there was nowhere near as much as last week it seems to have had more of an impact.This morning as i was getting ready to go to work there had been about 2 or 3cm of snow, though it was still falling.  Last week we had 2 or 3cm in the first hour of snowfall on Tuesday night alone but the next day Tollgate Hill was sort of working. It had not been gritted (naturally) and there were no buses (of course) but some brave/foolhardy drivers who had set out were managing to get up the hill both ways.  This morning I walked up the hill towards the shops and there was a queue of cars where the drivers had given up.  I saw one van make it, but only with five blokes pushing it.

I came home and saw somebody in a Land Rover (or similar) at the bottom of Hollingbourne Crescent give up.  His vehicle was diagonally parked, nose in to the kerb and he got out and pushed the back end in sideways, which is impressive in its own way.

Chrystal had to go to her school to pick up some work and when she got back she told me that Tollgate Hill is officially closed now – there is a proper ‘road closed’ sign at one end and a van parked at the other end with flashing lights and everything. I haven’t gone out to see for myself; I am, after all, working here, trying to compare and reconcile four different documents with each other.

None of this happened last week when we had less than half the depth of snow so maybe it is the ‘wrong kind’ after all.

Looks like my rubbish won’t get collected for the second week running.  It is piling up a bit because we are now throwing out stuff that would have been recycled normally – but that hasn’t been collected for 7 weeks now.  The borough council are doing their best – they have provided a local place where you can take your rubbish between 8am and 2pm which is handy if you don’t have a normal job and live close enough to the site to carry the bin bags there.  Unfortunately the only person I can think of who fitns that description is my local councillor. It is no use to me at all.