Let it snow... but not until we've got our snow tyres

It seemed this morning as if we had woken up in a ski resort. Looking out the window I could see wooden chalets and big fir trees laden with crisp, white snow and beautiful flakes still falling softly to the ground. Fetch me my skis, I'm off to the piste! Except, well, I'm forbidden from skiing at the moment and we don't live in a ski resort: true, you could probably ski down our hillside to the main road, whizzing through a few people's gardens on the way, but there's no chairlift to bring you back up again and there's no stop-off for vin chaud. 

To be honest, we were caught out. And we've been kicking ourselves today for not being more prepared. We had a sprinkling of snow at the weekend, which was pretty but disappeared almost as soon as it arrived, but the forecast for the week promised snow, snow and more snow. So on Monday morning we quickly made enquiries about getting snow tyres fitted on our C-Max. Unfortunately, it has R17 wheels, and secondhand snow tyres in this size are hard to come by, as well as being more expensive than your average R15s, so we were forced to visit a dealer. Our local garage quoted us 750 EUR for the four tyres and installation. We had little choice but to accept, but we would have to wait until at least Wednesday to get them.

Annoyingly, the BBC Weather forecast was spot on, as it so often is, about the snow. On Monday afternoon I headed off for my knitting group in some light sleet, knowing that the BBC had warned there would be snow at 3pm and that I would need to keep an eye on the weather situation. Sure enough, 3pm arrived and so did the snow. I made a hasty exit from the knitting group and hoped to get home before the snow settled, but even on the short 2-mile journey back along the main road, it was already causing the car to slip when I braked. With my mum's voice in the back of my mind ("Driving in the snow at 7 months pregnant! What were you thinking?!") I inched carefully back to our village, but had to ditch the car halfway up the village as the car simply couldn't handle the steep hill. As luck would (not) have it, Andy is doing control room shifts at CERN this week (meaning he gets to press the big red button that starts the LHC - more or less), so he needed picking up from CERN at 11pm, some 9 miles away... Fortunately, the snow turned to rain over the course of the evening, and since the car was already at the bottom of the village where the roads are more regularly travelled, I was able to get out to collect him safely.

But this morning was a different story. I had an appointment at the hospital at 8.30am, and I knew the snow was due to fall heavily overnight. Even with the car left at the bottom of the village near the main road, it was clear when we looked out the window at 7am that the snow was too deep for me to risk driving (mum's voice again sounding in my ear). With no public transport to make use of, and much to Andy's disgruntlement, we had to call a taxi. It got me to my appointment ok, but the cost for the 13-mile journey was as much as my recent train ticket from Edinburgh to London: approximately £70. Ouch.

Meanwhile, Andy headed off to CERN with a sleeping bag, prepared for the fact that I wouldn't be able to collect him after his shift at 11pm, and that he'd be spending a night on the sofa in the control room. When I finally made it home (a long walk and a bus journey later) at 1pm there was a message on the answerphone from the garage: our snow tyres were ready for fitting. And not a moment too soon. As I look outside now at the deepening snow, feeling festive with the Christmas lights twinkling in the background, I remember that the BBC forecast promises snow for the rest of the week, and I know that the 750 EUR will be worth it.

The garden turns white