For those of us who live in the south of Britain, these past few days have been very different from our usual weather of grey skies: it has been snowing. On average, it only snows (and settles) 15.6 days a year in England, a much lower statistic than Scotland, which on average gets 26.2 days. This does not even take into account how much snow falls, but one thing’s for sure, it never snows in London.

Until now. Out of the 10 top posts on my Instagram feed, 6 of them were posts concerning the recent weather- a sure sign that when the rare moment comes when it does snow, it is the centre of everyone’s attention.

On the morning of the 28th of February, school children waited fervently for news regarding whether it was a snow day- some schools being granted it and others being not so lucky- which begs the question- does this rare abundance of snow stop us doing work and fulfilling our responsibilities? In one students’ chemistry lesson on the 27th of the month, the lesson was literally disrupted as students went to watch the snow falling. One person even said (regarding the snow): ‘The whole of England has come to a standstill.’ This attitude strongly suggests that, yes, people are being distracted by the rare event.

As we finish the month of February and move swiftly into the month of March, we should be starting to see flowers blooming in the early spring and animals come out of hibernation- but so far it does not look like this will be the case. But hopefully, as this monotonous time of the year continues, we will welcome this distraction in order to get us through the last of these harsh winter days.