We have just effectively been snowed in for 3 days here!

When I went to bed early hours Tuesday morning, it was snowing lightly.  By morning we had 2-3″ of snow.  I got my car up off the drive - while I still could - and Paul tried to take me to the station.  He couldn’t get up Windsor Drive as the wheels were slipping like crazy, so I got out and walked the rest of the way.  I caught a train almost immediately, which arrived in London late (needless to say).  It snowed heavily and consistently all day, and we were allowed to leave work after 3pm to enable us to get home.  Again, I was extremely lucky, getting a very late-running train almost straight away.  Getting off the train at Chelsfield was fun - we had to get out into literally 6″ of snow on the platform, and getting up over the bridge on the uncleared steps was fun, but we took our time and managed it.  Trudging home in a good 6″ of snow was NOT fun, and it took me over 30 minutes.  Even with my umbrella up (which I had to keep tapping off as snow kept building up on top making it heavy) I arrived home soaked to my knees and with my hair dripping wet.  I left work at 3.15pm, and got home at nearly 5pm!

It didn’t stop snowing at all.  On Wednesday morning Paul left home at about 5am to try and get an early train in.  He got to Chelsfield only to find there were no trains at all.  He was very lucky and got a lift (albeit precariously) to Orpington Station, where they managed to get a train.  Now, I can’t walk to Orpington Station from here - it’s nearly 3 miles with a steep hill our end and the station is on quite a steep hill as well.  So, I couldn’t get to work.  Paul rang me in the afternoon to say that he was not allowed to leave early as he and a few others had got to work late!!!  Late!  They were lucky they got there at all!!  Anyway, he eventually got a train - but they were all terminating at Orpington as they couldn’t get any further down the line.  He walked to his parents and stayed overnight with them.

On Thursday morning his footsteps up the drive had been snowed in.  It was still snowing heavily, and my car was now under nearly 9″ of snow.  On checking the TV news and the websites, I discovered that there weren’t even any trains from Orpington! There was a de-icing train stuck in one of the platforms, too!  The BBC had a crew there, and the overhead shot from their helicopter was shown at various times during the day on news bulletins - even yesterday!!  Paul rang me to say he couldn’t get home at all, and was going to have to kip down at work.  I made the suggestion that he offered to do overtime while he was there anyway - he might be able to go and get a few hours kip and get paid for it!  He rang me back to say that he was going to work straight through.

At 3am Paul arrived home!  Someone high up was annoyed that he’d got stuck and couldn’t get home, and asked a colleague as a favour to bring him home.

Friday morning we finally woke up to a bright (but not sunny) day with NO SNOW!  The trains were still up the creek, and even though there were a few running from Orpington, there was still the problem of me not being able to get there.

When Paul had got up, he helped me dig my car out after lunch - it took about 45 minutes, but I got the engine running and everything.  We dug out enough space round the car so I could get it out, and I drove to the end of our road, the next one, and onto the fairly main road at the end, which was now clear.  I turned the car round straight away and drove back in again.  As I could drive, and as a deep freeze was expected overnight, we decided to pop down the hill to Waitrose to get a few bits in in csae we couldn’t get out on Saturday.  I changed my coat and gloves - both of which were drenched - and we went to Waitrose.  Now, their car park was interesting - cars parked all over the place - but we got in and got out again without any problems.  It started to rain during the evening, and rained most of the night.

Saturday we woke up to bright sunshine, and quite a thaw.  All the trees are now clear, but obviously where the ground was so cold there’s still lots of snow around.  We went out, collected Paul’s mum from his sister’s up the road and took her home.  I couldn’t drive up the hill to her house, though, as it was really slushy and the wheels just spun, so Paul had to walk her home from there.  We then went into town and Tescos - which looked like a tornado had been through!  I was assured that a delivery had come in the previous evening, but we got there mid-afternoon by which time everyone had been in and bought them out.  I don’t think it was stock-piling so much as restocking bare cupboards!  We’ve all been stuck in without access to transport since Tuesday, after all.

Today it’s really bright and sunny again, and we’ve got even more of a thaw going on.

I’m just hoping that there are some trains from Chelsfield tomorrow.  Paul says he was told that the snow was literally up to platform height in some areas just south of us, so it’s not surprising there haven’t been any trains.  If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll drive to Orpington Station and park there - we’re allowed to use our season tickets in their car park if there aren’t any trains from Chelsfield.

I’m going to put some snow pictures in my gallery shortly.

I went to Tescos on Tuesday to buy Toy Story 3.  I added the Avatar 3-disk collectors’ special to my trolley, but then saw how cheap Blu-Ray players have become.  Last time I looked they were around the £200 mark, which I was not going to contemplate.  However, Tescos had a couple under £100, one at £100, and the one I ended up buying - Sony - was £119 down from £149.  I went for the Sony because it’s Wifi, but mostly because our TV is a Sony, and I thought the technology would be better matched.

I didn’t swap the DVDs for Blu-Ray disks, though, because the player will upscale the DVDs to 1080p HD to match the TV we have, but you can only play a BR disk on a BR player.  Plus, they’re at least £5 more expensive at the moment, so it was a bit of a no-brainer there.

I watched the Avatar extended yesterday, and my goodness!  The quality was simply amazing!

We are soooo lucky - Crown Currency ceased trading 2 days before my delivery of dollars was due, not that I knew about it at the time.  My dollars arrived on 30th September.  On 1st October their collapse hit the news, and on 3rd October they went into administration.  I must have been one of the last people to get their currency before the bank accounts were frozen.

So say I’m relieved would be the understatement of the year.  We’re not talking a huge amount here - only £400-worth - but I am a member of a travel forum, and one person on there has lost over £600 because his money was due for delivery in November.  He has resigned himself to not receiving any of it back and stoicly says that at least he’s got time before their holiday to save up again.

But I nearly rang up with another order early in September, and I’m so glad I couldn’t get the minimum of £300 together or I’d definitely have lost that!

PC World finally rang up this morning and said Emma’s hard disk has been replaced, the operating system reloaded, and it’s now ready for collection.

… which is a bit of a shame, because another couple of days and we could have got a brand new one out of them!!

Still, Emma’s pleased.  She’s been setting it back up again since Paul took her up there at 6.30pm to pick it up.  I told him to make them aware that if it goes wrong again, they’re replacing it!

Well, Sixth Form College, at any rate.  Emma went and enrolled yesterday to start later this month.  She has a couple of induction days at the end of next week to ease her in.

Emma is starting off with the one year foundation IT course, as it was decided all round that that was the better option.  If she does really well she can either move up to the two-year, or stay on for two further years and do the more intense course after she completes the first one.

Now all we have to do is get her to re-train her body clock back to sleeping nights and not days, otherwise she’ll be late for college and expelled before she’s completed her first couple of weeks!

Yes, Emma got her GCSE results last week.  She’s got 8 x Bs, 4 x Cs, 1 x D and 2 x Pass.  Just a few months ago, at parents’ evening, we were getting glum forecasts of ’she’s set for a C - if she’s lucky and works hard’, so teachers!  Ya boo sucks to you, you miserable sods!!  She only needed 3 x Cs to get into her computing course; she got 4 x Bs for IT alone, so she’s well set up there. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was top of her class for IT.

After 16.5 hours of discussion (ie since Monday afternoon), we finally came to a majority decision and finished jury service this afternoon, so it’s back to work for me tomorrow. I just want to sleep all day - I’m so tired - but have to go in.

I can’t say I’m happy about the outcome - especially when quite a few of us had to compromise our positions as we clearly were never going to get to a majority decision. Basically, only after we’d given our verdict did the prosecution stand up and give the judge a whole long list of previous offences and stuff!! We were gutted!!! I feel like we’ve been ‘done up like a kipper’, but you’re not allowed to have all the facts in advance because it could ‘cloud our judgement’. Well, in this case it would have been the right thing to do.  I feel so sorry for the victim’s family, but I need to put it out of my mind now and draw a line.

We’ve been invited to attend tomorrow afternoon for the discussion on how long to give him, and then the Judge will pronounce sentence on Monday (which we’ve also been invited to attend). Can’t do that, but we can ring up on Tuesday morning, say we served on the jury, and be given the result over the phone. So I’ll be doing that.

… and several other members of my jury feel the same way.  We travel in slightly after rush hour, travel home slightly before, some of us don’t bother leaving the Court building at lunch time (we spend the down time in the Jury Assembly Area, which is a lounge/cafe just for us).  So, when I travel I’m travelling with tourists and families instead of workers, and it all feels really odd.

It’s a very surreal experience altogether.  We have another week of this before going back to work next Monday.

The amusing bit is that my name was the very first name of the very first jury that was called out on Monday morning, and we found ourselves on a trial going into possibly the middle of next week.  Someone I was chatting to in our breaks etc has still not been called onto a jury - she (and lots of other people) have spent the week sitting around reading and talking, and basically being bored out of their heads!

Naturally, being on a trial the nature of which I can’t discuss until after it’s all over, I haven’t had any downtime and therefore haven’t been going into work; we finish too late in the day for one thing.  And to be honest, it’s the only thing I think about at the moment and the fewer people I mix with, the less temptation I have to want to discuss it!

I got a missed call from PC World on Wednesday saying that they couldn’t correct the Windows problem because there were a lot of faulty sectors on the hard drive!  It took me ages to get through to the call centre to respond, and then she couldn’t get anyone in the shop to pick up so she had to leave a message.

They rang again on Thursday afternoon - missing me again - confirming that the hard drive is fried and “assuming the laptop is no longer under warranty that’ll be £229.”  I don’t bleedin’ think so!!!

Again, it took a while to get through to the shop, but this time someone answered, and I had a go about assuming the age of the laptop.  I said it’s only 5 months old - he claimed they didn’t have that info on the job sheet!  Yeah, right!  Anyway, they’re going to replace the hard drive, but as Emma didn’t bother making a start-up disk (which is recommended), we have nothing to reload Windows from.  So, I’ve got to contact Packard Bell and buy a start-up disk from them, and that’s going to be £50.  I said how annoyed I was because I’ve already paid £29.99.  He said I’ll get that refunded as they obviously weren’t able to access the drive to ‘clean it’, and I’ve told Emma she’s paying the rest!

So, it’ll be another couple of weeks before she gets her laptop back.

And that’s the last time I buy a Packard Bell!!  They didn’t have a very good reputation years ago, but I naively assumed they’d sorted that problem out now.  Clearly not!  Ho hum …

Okay, it’s jury service, but I suppose it amounts to the same thing!  I report to The Old Bailey tomorrow morning at 9am for 2 weeks’ jury service.  I have no idea what the next couple of weeks holds for me - I only know what I can and can’t do while I’m there.

At the same time, if I’m not needed and we can leave the Court, I have to report to work; I suppose that’s fair enough.

I am looking forward to it, but have to admit to being rather apprehensive at the same time.  My main concern is how well my back will hold up when being subjected to the hard jury bench for 2 weeks.  I doubt I’ll be able to stand up and have a wiggle when my bum goes to sleep!!  ROFL