It's okay, snow, I love you

I know the rest of the country is wetting its knickers about the Big Freeze and Travel Chaos, but I just wanted to reassure you, snow, that someone appreciates you. Granted, this is heavily weighted by my central heating, electricity, water and internet connection, without which I probably wouldn't be quite so happy to work from home. Granted, there's also a dollop of smugness in there that I do work from home, but even if I didn't I'd be skiving because, let's face it, what kind of job is worth risking your no-claims bonus for? What's waiting at the office that makes delayed trains, freezing platforms, cancelled buses and frozen feet worth it?

But then, snow, you know I'm a world-class skiver. Used to get very annoyed with you when I worked at the airport; not because you shut the place down but because you didn't, and that meant while everyone in Luton and Gatwick got to sit at home with their feet up, us Stansted lot had to listen to passengers complaining about the snow on the motorway.

You never closed my school down, either, so while other kids got to go for walks in winter wonderland, throwing snowballs and looking for Aslan, I had to sit and pretend to stay awake in Maths. I mean, what's more useful: trigonometry, or learning how to stay upright and warm in the snow? It's an education, that's what it is. And there's something else you can do for the country that no one else can: you can make it clean and pretty everywhere, if only for the first five minutes of the day.

No, I had to go to Sweden to properly appreciate you. Skis, ice hotels, frozen waterfalls, and absolutely nobody complaining about gritters or delayed trains. Far as I can tell, the trains ran fine and nobody sullied the ground with grit. Yet nobody crashed their cars or fell over, either. We English are a bunch of hysterics.

You snows it.