Winter blues?

Snow again today! It looks lovely and the landscape is now a winter wonderland, even though Christmas was six weeks ago. It's the coldest winter we've had here, but is it as cold as the 'monsters' of the late 80s or 90s. I recall in February 1986 in Ascot, Berkshire when the thermometer dipped to -16C

What a relief that I was off of work convalescing after having had my Achilles tendons lengthened the previous November. The trains would have been a nightmare. I well remember 2 December 1981 when the winter arrived early and it took me 6 hours to get to Waterloo from Ascot. The train had stopped at Queenstown Road station and we were ordered to leave the train and walk the few hundred metres along the icy railtrack to Clapham Junction. I was just 18 at the time and so it was all a bit of an adventure - you can't keep an old soldier down you know and prevent him from trudging to work!

Twenty-eight years later and I shudder to think how anyone with reduced mobility or in a wheelchair would have coped on that freezing day.

When I arrived at my place of work, the South Bank branch of Lloyds Bank in the Shell Centre, the supervisor smiled at me and said, 'Well done for trying. You'd better have a drink to warm up and then go home.' So it was the shortest working day - just 30 minutes - of my life.

The train journey home was also a slow commute. For some reason the train stopped at Twickenham and some well-oiled Varsity match supporters in fine voice livened up an otherwise dull carriage.

'What am I missing out on?' I reflected on my daily commute to a dull banking job, which was fast becoming routine. If I wasn't careful, I'd soon be joining the ranks of the Lloyds Bank pensioners!

Perhaps this was the spur to retake my A-levels and obtain better grades as within six years, I too was an undergraduate. Though I had no time for parties and the relentless slog associated with getting a 2.1 in Computer Studies, and later an MA in journalism by distance-learning, was far harder than the pressures of any 9 to 5 job, the experiences of stretching oneself through education made it all worthwhile.

So are you fed up with the snow? If you have food and a warm home to go to, don't be. Enjoy it while it lasts; anyway, it may just be the catalyst for a change of direction in your life.