Published: Thursday, 14th January, 2010 9:00am

When you're on skid row, keep shovelling

by Maurice O'Brien

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SOME thoughts, neither romantic nor appreciative, and a few Dos and Don'ts from this past wintry week:

* Don't carry a shovel in your car boot, you'll only be tempted to use it and tear a muscle in your back. I know, I WAS that man.

* Do buy a house next door to a newsagent. Six breakfasts without the paper delivered is more than any news addict should be asked to bear.

* Don't let them install your satellite dish on the roof. When it's choked with snow you're left with Ceefax and second-rate BBC2 darts. Aargh!

* Do learn to translate centimetres into inches. Snow doesn't seem half as deep in Imperial measure. Equally confusing, when I was a lad freezing point was 32 degrees.

* Don't expect to find any bread in your favourite supermarket at 5.30pm on a Friday.

* Trapped by wheel spin on an icy slope at traffic lights, don't expect the driver immediately behind to twig and give you room to manoeuvre. Do expect obscene hand gestures, until two mystery heroes appear out of the darkness to give you a shove.

* Don't provoke 4x4 monsters by having the temerity to drive gingerly in front of them on a frozen road. And do tell me where all those gleaming, spotless 4x4s which reappeared outside school gates on Tuesday morning were kept for the duration.

* When the countryside's snowed in, the shelves of village shops are empty and rural roads ungritted, do expect your beleaguered Prime Minister to come to your rescue with an offer of…unlimited broadband.

* Don't expect to see snow ploughs in Tilehurst. What would they do with their scoops full of speed humps?

* Why do so many journalists, particularly of the broadcast variety, still not know the difference between a postponement and a cancellation?

* When all else fails, do look to the politicians for cheer - the reverent Robinsons in Belfast and the hapless Hoonies and their goonlike Westminster plotting. Unusually for The Hoony, who made a habit during the Iraq invasion of being out of the room when the big decisions were taken, he actually admits he was there this time. D'oh!

* And do remind me again. Global warming. Are we trying to stop it or should we be finding ways of stoking it up?