Singing Teaching in Paradise: Let it Snow, let it snow, let it snow.......but please, not tomorrow

Well this is a turn up for the book ! I set off from the deep South yesterday and the drive was easy, warm, pleasant etc. then I left the Travelodge this morning in Lancaster and drove all the way up the M6 and M74, had my usual stop at Dobbies to have tea and cakes then merrily jumped back in the car to complete the usually beautiful journey to Paradise !

There were flurries of snow, but nothing too bad in Glencoe, Fort William had a little more when I broke for a short stop, and I blithely set off for the final leg. Turning off at Invergarry I thought mmmmmm........the snowflakes are larger and getting heavy, but much as it has been on previous journeys, and the snow ploughs will have been out I murmured to myself. It really was not as bad as I have seen before.

Well, I got half way up Glen Garry and realised there were lights ahead, blinking blue, orange and red, Ah I thought, this is not looking good. There had been an accident and the police were there, jacketed and booted with an inch of snow settled on the top of their caps, assessing the situation. We sat in a growing line of cars and vans, precariously braking on a not insubstantial incline, waiting to be given instructions.

The lights blinked, the yellow hazard jackets moved around a good deal, and all the while the snow was getting heavier and heavier, settling in deeper and deeper drifts, and I was beginning to feel a little nervous. The kind but clearly freezing policeman came and spoke to us in turn along the line saying the facts as he knew it. An accident, not serious but straddled across the road was now deeply stuck in the snow as were many of the cars on either side and in both directions. The time passed and after 30 mins or so police had a conference up at the blinking lights and then promptly came down the line of, by now, quite heavily snowed in cars and told us we needed to turn around and go back.

Ok we said, and with some trepidation I said to the policeman I didn't think I could turn my tiny car as the snow was up it the exhaust pipe by this time. He promptly gave me instructions, got three burly men to help him, and they almost lifted my car up, me in the drivers seat and put me gently down on the tracks going down the hill ! He looked at me, wagged his finger and said with tones of much gravitas, 'Very very slowly madam. ' I meekly agreed, wondering how I would ever make it back down to Invergarry, and set off.

I made it, it took an hour at a crawling 15mph, but I am now safe and sound in the lounge of the Invergarry Hotel. Expensive indeed, but not as expensive as life and limb, or even a new car.

Thankful to be here and hoping against hope the snow ploughs will have cleared the road by tomorrow !

Everything crossed !