Calamity Kate

Posted by Katy Regan at 19:44 on 24 Dec 2009

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Hands up who hates snow? I do. Hate it, hate it, hate it. What is actually good about snow? Can anybody tell me?:

 It looks pretty (for two minutes till it goes sludgy)  You can build snowmen (which melt) And go sledging (and break your arm).

That is IT. IT!  This little story here is a million and one other reasons why snow is crap and why it is going in my Room 101 along with Christmas at this moment in time, frankly, although I'm sure my mood will improve with at least a bottle of wine and an entire slab of pate to myself later. Big sigh....(can I just say this story does get SLIGHTLY merrier as it goes on...)

It's been a Calamity Kate Christmas so far and we haven't even got started. Snow has everything to do with this. Let me make that clear from the outset.

I think I'll just list stuff, it's easier.

1) The snow meant around a third of those invited to my Christmas party last weekend cancelled. I had a bit of a ‘it's my party and I'll cry if I want to' moment in the bathroom but then I saw how many true troopers (including my sister - God love her! - and her boyfriend who came all the way from south London) turned up and I pulled myself together. More booze for us anyway, and it was like something out of a Richard Curtis film in Berkhamsted with the twinkly little terraces and the thick snow falling as people turned up armed with wine. Matt Black was THE party trooper escorting me to ASDA at 7pm to get all the party  food. (times are hard)  Still, the snow did scupper plans to a point, so my case still stands that snow sucks.

2) With a huge hangover  on Monday (yes that is two days after my party) I went on ill-advised trip to Ikea (as I've told you before, going to Ikea with a hangover is mandatory for me). Everything was going v well until I left at 4pm and the snow blizzard of the century took hold. Cue EIGHT HOURS LATER and Fergus and I were just rolling into Berkhamsted after our ordeal that saw my car do a 360 degree turn on the ice. I thought this is it. A side-street in Dunstable is where I am going to meet my maker. Not the most glamorous exit I can think of.   Needless to say I was not very calm in a crisis. Fergus, on the other hand was brilliant. He was like, "It's ok, mummy, we're still alive!" Just. I thought Just! Then when we were grid-locked on icy roads going nowhere out of Dunstable fast, I told him we'd have to book into a hotel  and he said: (far more alarmed about this than the 360 degree turn on ice)  "How can we? We haven't got our pyjamas and our toothbrushes!" Oh how I laughed through the tears!

3) Tuesday was a wipe out, eight hours on the north circular with a hangover and too many Ginsters scotch eggs having done me in. Then, yesterday, as I was collecting presents from mine to take and wrap at Egg's (where we are spending Christmas) disaster three struck: I got the car stuck down a hill and couldn't reverse back up! Then, disaster four struck: I locked myself out of the house. (this was before disaster five struck today when I accidentally took all Egg's presents for his family out of our car boot as he sped off to see his mum so no presents for HIS family this year. He hates me!)

People, I have to admit that I  then experienced what I believe doctors would call a SRMB (snow related mental breakdown)  There was some punching of the steering wheel for example, lots of swearing, some hyperventilating as I realised the estate agents was now closed and I wouldn't be able to get into my house over Christmas. A lot of kicking of ice then a close Disaster Six  as I nearly went arse over tit and broke my neck. Then, I sat down on the icy road and I cried.

Just hours earlier, I'd called my friend who had just been to see her son in the church nativity play and was then watching Polar Express with him whilst eating mince-pies. That was what Christmas should be like, I thought. THAT is what I should be doing with Fergus, poor kid, not subjecting him to an eight hour ordeal in minus conditions with a mentally unstable mother. I'd got myself so stressed over the festive period that I'd forged my son's signature on some Christmas cards the day before. Yes, that's right. I forged my five year old's signature. I took the pen in my left hand and I forged his signature.

This is where my Christmas message comes in because as I sat there freezing my butt of and snivelling like a tramp, I realised that out of these disasters, and let's face it, in the grand scheme of things they're not that bad (although don't try and tell me that when I am in the grip of a Calamity Kate moment because I will bite your head off) there were two small miracles. Someone saw my pain and they relented! The Christmas Star was shining down on me because get this: In my panic when I had stopped (I say stopped, we were generally ‘stopped' for seven out of the eight hours we were stuck on the North Circular) at the petrol station to gather supplies in the form of magazines for F and Ginsters Scotch eggs for me, I left my mobile phone on the car roof (didn't realise this though).  Ten minutes later when I looked for it to call Egg who was worried about us I thought I'd lost it. We drove for two hours. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I had also lost my phone as well as my mind. Not so! When we stopped, two hours later it was still on the roof! It was covered with two inches of snow and IT STILL WORKED! Now if that isn't a little Christmas miracle I don't know what is. Also, after sitting in the middle of the street where my car was stranded I decided to get my act together and call on my neighbour to see if they could help. Bearing in mind the last time my neighbours saw me I was dancing like a mentalist at my party. Now I was in tears (Don't humour me. I know they think I am clinically insane). Anyway, not only did my neighbour help me get my car out, but they had spare keys to my house! Christmas miracle number two. And that is why I am sitting here, in my own house, in my dressing gown at 3pm on Christmas Eve feeling much calmer and much luckier and thinking perhaps that life is not all that bad after all. And that the snow from my window looks QUITE pretty.

Merry Christmas everyone. xx

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