Four wheels on my wagon

Schools are very good at giving children an education of sorts, but they're not very good at either teaching or learning common sense. Everyone here knew we were going to have heavy snow today but the schools were open for business this morning. An hour later they were shutting because of the snow.

Had they closed before it snowed it would have kept thousands of cars off the road. Had they stayed open through the snowfalls, the roads would have eased by home time. But closing just after the snow had started falling meant that the roads became snarled with parents fetching their kids.

Our old Jeep here is not worth much on paper but on days like today I wouldn't swap it for anything. I'd taken Gill to work this morning and was coming back down the hill after walking the dog when I saw my neighbour couldn't get his car up the rise because of the snow. So we took the Jeep over to Guildford, then Chertsey, to pick up his kids from school.

Then this afternoon I went out again on a "non-essential" foray in to the woods at Frimley after calling briefly at Brookwood Military Cemetery. What a joy it is to walk through the trees when the snow is falling. Everything changes. The snow accumulates on branches and in tree bark, adding definition, transforming a familiar scene from that of a painting in to a woodcut print.

Even the quality of the air changes so that voices are magnified. Pippa, our Jack Russell, was scattering the powdered snow as she leapt among the drifts. It was good to be alive and to be somewhere other than behind a desk or in a traffic jam. I thought about all the negative newspaper reports I've been reading, spreading fear among people - fear of having too little pension, of losing your job, of being in debt, of not having enough to eat - there was panic buying in Wales yesterday. A walk in the woods in the snow costs nothing and it clears the mind. Yes, today was a good day. I hope yours was too.

This is the bit (I've seen others do it) where if you haven't thought of looking at it large I might try and nudge you in to doing so. That's if I think it's better large, and I do. Of course you might not want to do that (I often don't). It's a free country.