Actually, I Can’t

I know my sweater is trying to be all nice and positive here, but a better slogan for it this week would’ve been ‘Actually, I CAN’T.’ Yup’s it’s been that kind of week, folks, and it’s all been due to my new nemesis, The Beast from the East.

(Er, if you’re already sick to death of seeing British people whine about the weather on social media, you’re probably going to want to skip this post, because a good alternative title for it would be ‘British Person Whining About the Weather.’ Apologies in advance.)

(Obviously ANOTHER good slogan for my sweater would be, “WHAT KIND OF IDIOT WOULD WEAR THIS IN THE SNOW?” Let the record show, though, that I didn’t actually go out like this, I just stepped outside the door for a couple of seconds to get a photo. Because, well, everyone else on Instagram was posting photos in the snow, and honestly, if everyone else on Insta jumped off a cliff, I’d be all, “BRB, folks, got a cliff to jump off right now…”)

(Oh, and no, you don’t freeze in the space of a few seconds. You just look stupid.)

So, anyway, The Beast from the East! It arrived in our part of the world on Tuesday evening, when my parents were babysitting Max while Terry and I went to the cinema, (I have no idea why I felt the need to point out that someone was looking after the baby, btw. I mean, you all know we wouldn’t just have gone swanning off to the movies and left him home alone, right?) When we went into the cinema, the world looked pretty normal, really. When we came out, though? It looked a bit like this:

Yeah.

“Wow,” I said, as we emerged into a complete white-out. “How long WAS that movie?!”

(It was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, by the way. Given that I spent a large part of my childhood pretending to be Princess Leia, and planning to one day marry Han Solo, I was honestly pretty pissed off by That Thing That Happened in the Last Movie, so all I’ll say here is that, as far as Max is concerned, there will only be 3 Star Wars Movies. (4, 5 and 6, natch) One day he will learn the bitter truth, and hate me for the deception, but by then I’ll probably be senile or something, so I’ll just be all, “Star What’s-That-You-Say-Now? Speak up, young whippersnapper!” so it’s all cool.)

We managed to make it home safely – JUST – but then got stuck right outside our house, and Terry had to dig the car out so we could get it into the driveway: FUN!

It snowed all night. And, well, all of the next day, basically. And then we made spears from the icicles hanging from our house and drove them through the hearts of all of the people who claimed to be “SO JEALOUS!” of the snow:

(Yeah, that’s a Go Pro on his head. No, I have no idea.)

OK, we didn’t. We did think about it, though, because, honestly, when you live in a tiny village at the top of a hill, in a country that’s perpetually amazed by the changing of the seasons (Seriously, everyone in the UK was just like, “SNOW? In WINTER? WHAT EVEN IS THIS?!”), this kind of snow is just NO FUN at all. By Friday, our entire village was cut off:

(My mum sent me this photo from just outside our village. I honestly have no idea what I’m even looking at here, although I do know that isn’t a wall under that snow – it’s JUST piled up snow…)

Everywhere was closed – schools, shops, businesses. The public transport stopped running. The nearest supermarket is about a mile away, but those who braved the walk reported back to say that it was sold out of almost everything anyway, and they had no idea when they’d be able to get deliveries through, so if you’re looking at my Instagram Stories over the next few days there’s likely to be a final, panicked transmission at some point saying, “The milk is running low: we can’t hold out much longer!” and then it’ll just cut to static, and that’ll be that.

Until that happens, we’ve basically been under house arrest all week. On Wednesday morning, Max was supposed to get his first set of vaccinations, but we couldn’t even get out of the street, so I had to call and reschedule. On Friday, Terry and a group of neighbours (We live in one of those old-fashioned streets that no one thinks exists any more, where there’s always kids playing in the street, and everyone stops to talk to each other…) went out and cleared the snow from the street… which was awesome, except the village itself was still cut off, with the road in and out totally closed. SCREW YOU, BEAST.

(Before the snow came, when we could still leave the house, and I got to dress Max like a little old man…)

Needless to say, it wasn’t much of a week. When I worked in a “normal” job I’d have totally relished the chance to just stay home and do nothing for a few days, but as I said in last week’s post, getting out of the house for even a couple of hours at a time has been the only thing keeping me sane lately, so the cabin fever has been real, folks, and I’ve basically spent the whole week going, “WTF? I made the appropriate sacrifices to the Snow God, WHY AM I BEING PUNISHED?!” *shakes fist as the sky*

I’ve also spent most of the week staring at these two boxes, which will be tediously familiar to those of you who follow me on Instagram, and have been keeping up with my Stories:

They arrived on Monday, addressed to Terry. To this day, they remain unopened. He will not tell me what’s inside them, and the packaging bears no clue, so alert the media, folks, we got ourselves a ‘Mystery Box(es)’ situation here. Honestly, I’m hoping you lot can all join me in exerting pressure on him to open the damn things, but I also suspect that he’s just built it up so much that now he can’t EVER open them, because the inevitable disappointment will just be too much to bear. I mean, he refuses to give me any clues, but he HAS confirmed that it’s not that green River Island trench coat I’ve been eyeing, so I don’t even know why I care, really, other than that they’ve been sitting in my office all week, and OMG, WHAT’S IN THE BOXES?!

(Actually, I don’t think they’re anything for me AT ALL, but it IS my birthday next week, so, you never know, do you?)

(Yes you do: shoe boxes are not that size, obviously, and it can’t possibly be the miniature pony I keep asking for, so…)

I’m hoping he’ll open them soon, and the mystery will draw to it’s anti-climactic conclusion, but, in the meantime, feel free to place your bets on what’s in them – your guess is as good as mine at this point!

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