First day of Spring?

I carefully drove into work this morning in little ET but it was a horrible journey and I'll admit I was scared a lot of the time. The road between Walgrave and Holcot was particularly bad as the wind had whipped the snow up over the fields and had made deep drifts along the hedgerows. The road itself was covered with a layer of snow and when I gingerly braked, the wheels skidded a bit. I was just glad there was no-one else near me!

I made it into work but watched with dismay as the snow continued to fall. I was worried about Keith taking Sophie into uni and also concerned about Mike as he hadn't come home from town, as he had told me he would. Sheila gave me an error checking job to do but we were busy on the phones with people cancelling classes and asking if we were still open with the atrocious weather.

By 10.30am the weather looked worse and I was really worried about driving home in the snow. Sophie had sent me a text to say she was at uni but I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate fully on the job so I asked if I could leave early and use some holiday I had accrued. Sara was happy to let me go and I went out into the car park to let Sophie know I was heading home.

The main roads were all quite clear but the A43 was bad in places because of the snow drifts. It's the wind that is really causing the problems at the moment as it's whipping across the open fields and making the snow bank up along the side of the roads. I drove home along the A43 and avoided the road between Holcot and Walgrave. Once off that highway the roads were worse and covered in snow.

I arrived home minutes before Keith who had been shopping, so that was a relief. We put it all away and then I left an angry voicemail message for Mike, who called me minutes later to say he was in town and could we pick him up?

We hastily had something to eat and then made our way into town, with Keith driving my car. I took some photos of the road between Walgrave and Holcot:

Sophie wanted to be picked up at 2pm so we had half an hour to kill. We decided to have a drink in the Sunnyside pub and the men had pints while I had a disgusting orange and lemonade. Mike had enjoyed his night on the town but looked a little worse for wear! He was very bleary eyed!

We collected Sophie and I drove home via Brixworth. The road from there to Scaldwell was also bad with drifts along the side of the road. The sky has remained grey all day today and it's been bitterly cold again with the temperature at about -3c.

I drove to school hoping upon hope that a lot of the children had already been picked up as the headmaster had sent an email out at lunchtime saying that parents, worried about the state of the roads, could collect their offspring early. We had eight children so we went into the cosier and warmer library where they did some colouring and drawing and then played on the ipads. There was absolutely no chance of going out as the wind was blowing across the playground like a blizzard and causing drifts to build up. I still couldn't believe we had children with us, as if I had been a parent I would have come before now and taken mine home!

We still had one little girl in at about 5.30pm and she had been the only one for forty five minutes. She was starting to get worried about her mum picking her up and we were very relieved to see her walk into the playground. We think she must have been at home so why on earth was her five year old daughter still at school with us?

I drove home along the snowy roads and it was such a relief to get home and get warm. During the evening I received a text from Lisa saying that the school was closed tomorrow. Yay!