> Okay, so the UK and Europe were hit by the biggest storm in ten years yesterday. I was out and about in one of the moments when it wasn't blowing, and I've been thinking: you guys have got to have been in some really nasty weather, right?

> Points also awarded for being trapped somewhere by weather.

Well, Zarni, I had an easy time of it yesterday as the storms seemed to have missed Scotland (apart from the neverending rain, but we get that all the time).

I think the worst weather I've been out in was the time I ended up replacing wind-damaged tiles on the roof of my parent's house at the age of eighteen (or was it nineteen? I can never separate those two years in my memory now - how odd). It was an incredibly cold morning, and what looked like a layer of frost on the roof turned out to be a fairly hefty layer of ice. Not only did I have to secure a ladder to the roof, I also had to climb up it and straddle the ridge close to the gable end. By the time I finished the work (fingers showing those little white patches of minor frostbite because I'd taken off my gloves to manhandle frozen tiles - so painful when they heated up again) I had to prise the seat of my trousers away from the top of the roof.

And the roof still leaked, too.

Bo"brrrr."urne