READY FOR WINTER DRIVING?

Today I drove up to Kinloch Rannoch. Round trip of a hundred miles. Rural Perthshire is a sprawling great county, in case you didn't know. By the time I'd loaded my car with supplies (snow shovel, flask of coffee, torch, blanket, extra clothes, winter boots, small stove, premium bonds), I was twenty minutes behind schedule. The journey featured the following elements: scone and jam, tractor, snow, wrong turn, total loss of visibility, ditch and irate co-traveller. I can't possibly relate the whole unfortunate narrative here. You would probably lose all interest in the trivia of anonymous lives and, I dare say, the will to live. There are lessons I learned today, however, which may be worth passing on. Here they are:

1. Never carry on driving down a winding country road with your windscreen caked in mud.
2. Don't keep pressing the windscreen washer lever when you know fine well the bottle is empty.
3. If you lose control of your vehicle on ice (and on a tight bend), don't brake like hell, you total numpty.
4. Packing premiun bonds for a hazardous winter drive is worse than pointless. It's COMPLETELY INSANE.