The Weather Outside is Frightful

Everyone keeps telling me that the weather in Scotland is 'not usually this bad this early'. The MMMC told me that, and backed it up with a plea for me 'not to relocate' (chance would be a fine thing - I can't move much further than my front door at the moment). Yes, there is an absolute f*ckload of snow here.

I've never really dealt with a lot of snow before; I've never been skiing, for example, which is the only time you'd particularly need seasonally appropriate footwear for longer than two days. 'Dealing with snow' in London means skidding your way to the bus stop/tube station and then getting on whatever transport eventually appears. Then spending hours on it, wedged up against irate strangers, as you take six hours to traverse a distance that would normally take you twenty minutes. You arrive home wanting to kill nearly everyone, traumatised by the idea that you might have to do it all again tomorrow, and wondering why you have to go into work at all. The snow doesn't generally hang around for long, it just turns to ice on the pavements and filth on the roads.

The white stuff in Edinburgh, however, is totally different. I've bought actual walking boots in order to cope. (A friend of mine has been teasing me since I moved here about the fact that at some stage I'm going to find myself clad from head to toe in Goretex. My waterproof chrysalis starts here). The pavements are totally covered, and there's more arriving daily. Walking through it is actually fine, as it's really powdery at the moment, so it's OK. But I'm dreading that stage where most of it melts, and then it's just thick ice.

When I came up here for my second interview, my prospective boss asked me if I had any questions. 'Yes', I answered, 'I do. When it snows, do they grit the pavements properly?' She howled with laughter and said it was the most bizarre thing she'd ever been asked. 'But I want to know', I said, 'because they don't in London, and I've got a real horror of falling over and breaking a hip'. She laughed some more and then said, 'Yes, of course they do.'

Reader, she lied. They bloody don't. And today, they cancelled every bus in the city at about 2.00pm. All of them! Going nowhere! What the hell do you do if you can't walk home? I'm going to be spending a shitload on taxis for the next four months, I can tell you.