Exactly a week ago today, I woke up and looked out of the bedroom window upon the beautiful white stuff; it looked so soft and flaky. Not a foot print out there at all. The only problem was I actually had to get to work. Life is SO unfair! A colleague phoned me to say he wasn’t going in as he couldn’t get his car off the drive.

I wasn’t due into work until 09:30 but Keven was due in for 08:00 so we had breakfast and headed out the door by 07:05, armed with my camera; we decided to walk as we weren’t sure whether the bus would be running and trying to get the car out was pointless. I left Keven in town, he headed off to work and I carried on through town, finally making into work for 09:00. What a walk. I did get see some lovely views and some pics of Oxford in white and the campus.

My boss had arrived about 5 mins before me and was on the phone trying to find out if they were planning on keeping the campus open or not. By 09:30 we found out the campus was closed, so I walked about the campus to see who if anyone had actually made it up the hill and took some photos of the site at the same time. By lunch time we closed up everything and I headed back down into town to meet up with Keven and walk home, up another hill.

The day after we got on the bus into town then I walked through town up the hill to work, lots of snow to shovel, lots of ground to grit. It’s a good job we work well together with the grounds staff; we got the campus covered by lunchtime. The Friday Keven didn’t have to go to work so we had a go at getting the car out and he drove me to work and luckily managed to get up the hill in the car. To which I was grateful, as by now after all the walking, shovelling and gritting my back is killing me and I think I have sciatica. Fab!

Keven drove me to work over the weekend to as the weather reports weren’t great so I didn’t want to take the risk of having the car snowed in at work. I did some gritting on Saturday and emptied any bins and other duties on Sunday.

Monday morning came and thankfully I could use the car again, just a bit of gritting as no more snow yet. Tuesday morning we had had a slight covering of snow so had to shift it and grit. Not a problem as there wasn’t too much and the grounds staff came along and carried on for me, so I could carry on unlocking the campus. Wednesday morning (this morning) is a different story. It snowed over night and was still snowing this morning, we managed to get to work in the car, but as the morning went on and the snow wasn’t showing signs of stopping and a friendly contractor helped get my car back down the hill as others had abandoned their vehicles on the hill and I was worried about sliding into them.

I spent the morning shovelling lots of snow and gritting, thankfully the maintenance guy and the grounds staff were on duty. It’s no fun doing the residential rubbish run without a vehicle to carry it on.  I had to drag bags of rubbish, that is the only thing good about the snow at the moment; it makes it easier to drag rubbish bags as they just slide along.

So apart from the awkward things that comes with the snow, on a more positive note, you don’t have get some beautiful views, especially up on the hill.

I will be glad when it’s thawed and no floods follow