I’m getting a tad pissed off with this weather.

I had to go out today.  I spent longer in the front driveway than I did on the road.

First of all, I had to scrape the ice off the windscreen.  That is a tedious job, because no matter how fast I scrape it, the fucking thing freezes over again.  And then I have to tackle the fucking ice on the inside.

Having got the windscreen reasonably clear of ice, I then have to sit for ages in the car with the engine running and the heater going full blast.  As soon as the remainder of the ice on the windscreen begins to thaw, I turn on the windscreen wipers, which smear the melt water into a thin film of water which promptly freezes again.  Fuck!

Then there are the side windows.  I can’t open them because they are electric, and the motor can’t cope with the thick layer of ice that has frozen around the side windows and gummed up the works.

Eventually, I get the glass in the various windows clear enough to peer through and the next phase starts.

The next phase is the attempt to get the gates open.  This requires a lot of pushing and shoving and a great deal of scraping as the snow has frozen solid on the ground and the gates won’t pass over it.

Eventually I get the gates open and it’s time for phase three – getting the fucking car out of the fucking gate.

Getting a car out of a gate shouldn’t be too much of a problem?  Think again!  You see, there is a bit of a slope from the driveway up onto the lane.  It isn’t much of a slope but it’s enough.  I try to nose the car out the gate and it gets as far as the slope and stops.  By this stage I am in a multi-temperature state – my blood is boiling but my fingers are frozen.  There is only one way to get out of the gate, and that is to take a run at the slope.  This is very effective, but some day soon, I am going to come flying out that gate, just as somene else is driving up the lane.  That should be interesting?

It has reached the stage where driving anywhere is like flying to London – it takes a hell of a lot longer to get the vehicle going than it takes to make the actual journey.

I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it.