Snow. My. God.

We had a little sprinkling of the white stuff here today. Being a confessed Christmasophile, I naturally love it when frozen fluffy matter drops from the sky, but delightful though this seasonal snowfest was, it had rather awkwardly decided to happen on a weekend where we had to do stuff and be places.


First off, we were meant to be going to London (they don't usually let bumpkins like us there, so we have to sneak in up the Thames wearing fake moustaches). Unfortunately the snow had blocked the river as well as all the roads, so there was no chance of us attending the party (which was possibly lucky, as we've sort of forgotten how to behave at parties, being generally encrusted from head to toe in baby regurgitate and only able to talk about the consistency of Lumpy's latest poo. We get a lot of invitations, as you can imagine).

But, even more pressingly, we had to rescue a turkey. Well, not rescue it, exactly, but grab it, shove an apple up its arse, and stuff it in an oven, before ruthlessly eating it to death with a group of our closest friends. And that turkey was currently a 45 minute drive away on certain-death inducing snow roads from hell. But Mr Badger, like the brave turkey-collecting superhero that he is, laughed in the face of this suicidal mission, strapped on his thermals, and threw himself into the blizzard. Actually, it wasn't really snowing that much when he left, but by golly it started coming down pretty soon after, and it wasn't pretty. Well, actually, it was very pretty, but that's not the point. It was darned dangerous. And he managed to hunt that turkey down, grab it, shove it in the car boot, and get both himself and the aforementioned foul safely back home, in order to be roasted to within an inch of its life.


So then I had to do my bit. I gave Lumpy what may well have been his final feed, before donning ski jacket, wellies, and woolly hat, and casting myself upon the snowy wastes. Destination: Cowley Centre.



Oh yes. Cowley Centre. Where I was going to attempt to buy all of the other early Christmas dinner essentials, like sausages wrapped in bacon, an organic sprout tree (they have to be on a tree. That's the rule), enough mince pies to sink a battleship, and emergency packs of frozen roast potatoes, just in case ours went pear-shaped (all sorts of freakish things happen in our kitchen, including potatoes transforming into fruit. The turkey'll probably end up looking like a wombat. Just you wait and see).

Knowing what a chav palace Cowley Centre is, I feared that this mission could be just as suicidal as, and pitifully less successful than, Mr Badger's turkey hunt. No doubt we would all end up eating turkey twizzlers, deep-fried sprouts, and Dairylea cheese slices. And our friends would never talk to us again, or want to come round to dinner, and we'd be social pariahs for the rest of our lives and never get to leave the house again, meaning Lumpy would grow webbed feet and be only able to talk in squeaks and grunts through lack of social contact.


The scene outdoors was desolate, with only a few other brave souls sinking up to their knees in snowdrifts and falling off the kerb into the path of sliding buses in their desperate attempts to reach Iceland and the wonder of fifteen different varieties of moulded frozen pig products in a plastic sack for just £1.99. But I was heartened to see that the driver of this glorious specimen of chavmobile had made it out and safely to its essential destination. The pub.


Check out the spoiler on that baby. Rwwwoooooaaaaar.

Somehow I got to Cowley-a-rama, and, even more miraculously, managed to find everything on my Christmas dinner essentials list (as well as some really-not-essentials, such as raspberries and blueberries. My concept of seasonality seems to go out of the window at the first whiff of death-by-snowdrift). Thank the lord for Co-op and its middle-class leanings. Witness the haul in all its glory and utter unnecessaryness:


I rapidly realized I was going to actually have to carry all of the crap that I'd bought back through the ever-increasing blizzard. The Badger residence, in all its snowy glory, has never looked so welcoming.


And I was delighted to see that we now had a ski slope rather than a set of stairs. Now, that'll impress the visitors.


I was, of course, welcomed with open arms and much rejoicing by the rather more sensible members of the household, who had opted not to venture out of the house.

Wot?

Oh hi, boob lady. You get that milks I ordered? Now moves your frozen selfs away from me. Iz colds.

PS: Apologies to any readers living in countries where you get proper snow. We are quite aware of our British patheticness at getting so very excited over a couple of inches. Humour me on this one. Or humor me, if you prefer.