We were a bit hesitant about travelling to London to visit the Coomes in their Leyton retreat. Not that we didn’t want to – indeed we had been trying to get there, past a record number of postponements on both sides, for over a year. But in Norwich there was a good covering of snow – enough to entice the police into closing the hilly and therefore slippery Rose Lane into the city. However, I had it on good authority that the snow disappeared south of Norwich and there was none in London: even better, there was no further snow forecast for Norfolk until after we were due to return. So we went, just after 10am on Saturday.

The roads were not easy as far as Attleborough, which kept our speed well down, but after that the snow disappeared and the roads were clear. Despite detailed directions from David we managed to go wrong after leaving the M11 and had to ring up to find out where we were – but it turned out that we were very close, so no real problem. On the way back the roads were clear until we reached Norwich (after a comfort stop early on the A11), and we got up our hill quite easily, though there was snow and ice on it.

Had a great weekend, which included a first-class Indian meal in South Woodford at the expense of our hosts and a cold but really good walk in Epping Forest on the Sunday morning. In between lots of interesting talk and a constant stream of tempting food and drink. As usual I succumbed to temptation and had too much of both, resulting in an acid reflux problem during the night. Still, there is no pleasure without pain. Or is there? Discuss.

This morning we have more snow, but as I write the sky is blue and we are about to go outside and rearrange the cars, putting the MX5 in the garage to keep it warm. I should mention that for some reason our Humax decided not to record one or two things over the weekend, which made us doubly thankful that we were able to watch Norwich thrash Ipswich 4-1 on television at the Coomes’.