The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

It doesn’t seem long ago that Dickensian-style Christmas cards gave the appearance of a long-lost world. Twee English villages cloaked in a white blanket, cheery souls laughing and greeting each other with mugs of steaming-hot punch. What a pity we don’t have good old traditional winters these days. Well, welcome to the return of Christmas as it used to be and it should be no great surprise to anyone that having had a blast of nostalgia for a few days, Britain is already utterly fed up with snow and ice.

This is a country that, despite a near obsession with weather, doesn’t cope very well with extremes. Heatwaves are routinely complained about, the first sprinkling of snow invariably results in chaos on the roads, railways and at airports. It was ever thus, and always will be.

In Birmingham, city councillors who ought to know better are complaining about gritting efforts conducted in near record-low temperatures when salt cannot disperse snow and ice. The fact that politicians are angry because they can’t drive easily from one part of the city to another speaks volumes about society today – impatient people think they can get whatever they want, when they want it.

Rather than moaning, our elected representatives ought to respect the gritting crews for their efforts in very difficult circumstances.

Sometimes it snows and there is disruption. That’s life in Britain.