SNOWED IN: MY OWN KENTISH GULAG

If you’ve spent any time in the past week watching the news, you’ll know it’s been snowing recently. You probably Tweeted about how disappointing it was when we didn’t get #snowday, and that’s because if you’re the kind of person who’s ever been a child, or watched a movie, you probably have really happy memories of snow and think that snow has the naïve, wide-eyed charm of a phone advert (minus the small print about £££s), and, in general, is a good thing. Well I’m 24, I live in Maidstone, and I have actually been SNOWED IN for four days now. I can tell you that not only is snow itself rubbish, but being snowed in is completely shit. I’d always imagined that being snowed in meant that the snow was piled so high against your front door that you physically couldn’t open the door, and that it only ever happens to people in wooden huts four million miles north of Moscow. The reality is far more depressing and far less dramatic. For a start, front doors open inwards, so you can always get out. No one who is snowed in is ever totally housebound. Also, I live on a suburban cul-de-sac, not in a wooden shack, and it is less earnest and noble when covered in snow. The only notable imagery surrounding my experience of being “snowed in” is an increase in the number of garish cagooles slipping across the canvas. On day one, things were pretty exciting. Cars couldn’t get out of our road because the hill was too steep (it’s not even that steep). This guy spent a full hour trying. He kept digging snow out from underneath his car to gain extra inches, but eventually gave up and decided to have the day off. At that point he realised he couldn’t reverse down the hill so had to spend more time digging snow from under his car before he could even give up. Everyone could see him, but no one helped him; they were too busy high-fiving at his misery. It felt like it could have been a fiercely metaphorical event, had I not been too busy high-fiving my mum to decipher it.

The important thing to realise is that being snowed in doesn’t mean that you can’t leave your house, just that everything in the world has fallen to shit – there haven’t been trains to London for four days now, and with the motorways constantly closing due to crashes, every available road is stupidly congested. So unless you’re walking somewhere, there’s not much point in leaving your house. In that spirit, days two and three were pretty dull. The highlight was when I colour co-ordinated my wardrobe, from light to dark.

I’ve been hoarding a really crappy chocolate flapjack for a while now, and decided today was the ideal time to break it open. I thought I’d been having fun not leaving the house for three days, but an alcoholic would call the moment I looked down on its empty wrapper a "moment of clarity", as I realised just how shit it is being snowed in.

Today is the fourth day, and, as is the reality of being snowed in, nothing’s working. There are still no trains to London and all the roads are still blocked with people in 4x4s too panicked to move in case they careen into a lamppost. With the onset of cabin fever becoming a case of when, and not if, I decided to go for a walk to see what life is like outside of my house. This is how deep the snow is. I’m wearing Jordan IVs, which aren’t small shoes, and as you can see they’re completely swamped.

The worst thing about walking in the snow is that everyone you see wants to say hello to you and talk about local roads that are closed. These people were expecting me to pet their dog as we talked about the weather.

The local Spar had turned into a hive of wartime bulldog spirit. Strangers were meeting outside just to talk about how much havoc the snow was wreaking in the run-up to Chrsitmas. But, you know, "you just cope, don’t you?"

The local youths haven’t lost their sense of humour, you'll be glad to hear.

The biggest shock is that everyone seemed so frightened by the snow that kids weren’t even outdoors playing. The village green was untouched, with no snowmen in sight. The snow hasn’t been touched in the whole four days.

My dad just went out to drive to Tesco, but the queues were so big he couldn’t even get into the car park. He said it was like the "last days on Earth" outside, with people panic-buying anything left on the shelves. So yeah, snow completely fucking sucks, and if it isn’t snowing near you, you really shouldn’t feel disappointed.

CHRIS O'REAL