St Andrew's Day...

...ah, bitter chill it was. Hang on: that's not right. Honorable mention for whoever matches the right saint to the quote. Don't suppose one can blame one's patron saint anyway for the fact that it has been snowing all night and all day.

I headed out early for provisions, and soon appreciated having power to all four wheels. The car plodded gently uphill while others were slithering all over the place. I quickly abandoned Plan A, though: traffic on the road into town moved only when someone did a 3-point turn, as I soon did. This left me with the choice of shopping at higher altitude in the next county or trudging into the village daily in wellies until it thaws. On choosing the former, I found that the queue I'd left stretched right through the village and beyond.

I got to an uncharacteristically quiet Fortnum's easily enough, and stocked up for a siege. Only to find, when I went to load up a barrow-load of shopping, that the car didn't unlock in response to the remote control. So, with no visible keyhole on the outside of the car, I'd to ring for help. VW Assistance couldn't estimate how long it would take to get someone to me, but did reveal in the process that they worked through the RAC. I'd by then shoved my trolley back into the shop, and was starting to breakfast on milk and mini-stollen (from said trolley) when I spotted an RAC van in the filling station opposite. I squelched out across the road and grabbed him just in time, whereupon my phone rang to say that the RAC man assigned to my case was an hour and a half away in Chatham, in four inches of snow. Anyway, the excellent Shane soon got the show back on the road. My remote control was emitting no signal, but he knew (and I now know) the secret of finding the old-fashioned keyhole, so could open the car and start it the traditional way. Except for the shrieking of the alarm, which seems to have frightened the remote control back into action. It's an ill wind: Shane's next job was to have been closer to Chatham, hence an easier job for the man assigned to my breakdown, and the next job assigned to Shane was nearby, and closer to home.