Gridlock

We went to Thaxted yesterday to celebrate Sascha’s birthday with Brother Edward, Nathan’s sister, Sam and her little dog, Gini, who went down particularly well with the parents. I’ve long since felt it might be good for them to have a dog, and yesterday made me almost convinced of this fact. My dad in particular looked like a twenty year-old playing with her!

We had one of my Mum’s “cold collations” which went down very well whilst watching Strictly. For the record, I am still supporting Debbie McGee, who I think is just fabulous.

I took hand made chocolates from Tuscany with me and the European-style advent candles that Tammy had introduced me to in Florence.

It got colder and colder as the evening drew on. We were sitting in front of a fabulous open fire, so didn’t feel it until we left the house when our car’s thermometer informed us that it was actually minus 3 degrees, which rose to about minus 1 by the time we’d reached Highgate.

I woke up this morning to discover snow everywhere. Everywhere. I have seldom seen so much snow in London. Of course my initial reaction was one of great excitement. I love it when it snows...

...And snow is always very exciting when you don’t have anywhere to be. You can go for a walk in the woods and sit looking out of the window at cars skidding out of control on the road underneath, feeling snug and smug!

Sadly, I had a quizzing job to do today in Winchmore Hill, a suburb in outer London. It didn’t occur to me that Haringey Council would have neglected to grit the roads. I left the house in something of a blizzard and instantly realised that there was more of an issue than I’d originally thought.

The car was covered top to toe in three inches of snow to the extent that I couldn’t see any metal, just a big white blob. As I tried to find the door handle, a little girl on the other side of the road asked her grandfather what I was doing. “He’s trying to find his car,” said the Grandad!

I managed to clear the windscreen, and made the nutty decision to open the windows to clear the snow from them, which instantly backfired as heaps of the stuff piled onto the back seat.

Within a minute of leaving home, I’d ground to a halt in the middle of Muswell Hill road, surrounded by cars in varying degrees of trouble. Wheel-spinning, sliding, skidding. A row of busses had been abandoned. People were out of their vehicles, scratching their heads, telling other drivers not to bother going any further. One came up to me and told me I’d never make it up to Muswell Hill.

I instantly panicked and called Nathan, who came down, took to the wheel and suggested we snake our way via backroads to Finchley and down to the North Circular, which was utterly gridlocked. I was astounded to discover that they hadn’t even bothered to grit that road.

We chugged along, bumper to bumper, and turned off just before Palmer’s Green, which was when things started getting really hairy. Cars were spinning out of control all over the place and stopping suddenly in the middle of the road. And then, half way up a hill somewhere near Southgate, it was our car’s turn to break down. We got stuck on a patch of ice with the wheels spinning. I got out and tried to push, but there was no moving the car.

People are very good. Within five minutes we were surrounded by passers by, all trying to help. At one point, three people were using umbrellas from our boot to try to chip away at the ice under the car wheels, whilst someone else was trying to put black bin liners under the wheels in an attempt to give us some traction. But it was hopeless...

In the end, I had to phone the person who’d booked me to run the quiz, to ask if she or someone she knew had a 4 by 4 that could pick us up. Fortunately her husband did, and, ten minutes later, he came to our rescue and took us to Winchmore Hill.

The quiz and party went well. Nathan was able to step in as my assistant, which I was most grateful about, but we spent quite a lot of it panicking about how we were going to get home. All the tubes, buses and overground trains were down. One of the guests arrived at the party and said the Uber she’d taken there had crashed!

As it happened, the whether warmed up a little bit through the early evening, and, by the time we were done, a very grumpy Uber driver was able to take us back to our car. The journey home was a little hairy, but nothing like as terrifying as the journey over

We got back at about 7pm, much relieved to finally be home, telling ourselves to always remind ourselves in future not to try to drive anywhere in a snow storm like that!!