Well, gosh, who’d have thought it?  Ice is slippery – a no brainer you would think but the last 24 hours have seen cars in ditches all over the place, closed highways from spin-outs and general grumpiness all around.  Yesterday’s freezing rain has set hard over everything.  This morning I took the recycling bin to the roadside for collection before setting out to work and barely made it back up the drive to the car … and there is almost no slope on the drive.  Such fun.  Last winter, in the true “white hell out there” tradition of a country that does not get extreme weather, whatever it chooses to think, the UK press decided it had to instruct readers (I think this was the Guardian) in how to walk on ice and came up with the penguin waddle.  Plenty of opportunity to practice today.