Rueing the Russian Invader.

There was a point this afternoon when I thought that the temperature was climbing a little. The snow on the car was loose, the falling snow felt wet, and the bitter wind had dropped to little more than a strong breeze. But at dusk the invader reasserted his credentials.

For that’s what I now know him to be, this stormy Siberian with his entourage of snow, ice and wind. At dusk the temperature was falling rapidly, the wind was strengthening to a goodly gale, and the garden was filled with a hundred white dervishes whirling frantically this way and that in a devilish dance. I knew this to be no British wintry weather, but something alien come to assault our little land and send the helpless natives running for cover. So run for cover I did, back to the house where I engaged some sundry heating devices which I can ill afford but are my only defence against the rampaging bear spawned of Mother Russia.

Their effect is limited; most of the house still feels like a meat freezer and I expect my bedroom window will again be decorated with a frosting of ice when I go to bed tonight. Such is the way of things when the scepter’d isle is trodden beneath the heel of the Cossack’s boot.

I hope my visitor from Krasnodar will not be offended by this post. I bestow upon you no ill will, it’s just that we British like nothing more than to sip tea in our cosy living rooms and quaff beer in our crumbling pubs while talking endlessly of our idiosyncratic but endearingly British weather. We want no trouble here.

(Incidentally, that last sentence was a regular catchphrase in the iconic TV comedy series The League of Gentlemen. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a try. The mysterious Papa Lazarou is pretty creepy by anybody's standards.)