By Darren McSweeney

Last updated at 15:42, Monday, 28 January 2013

So what do you think of the new look Evening Mail newspaper? Like it?

Darren McSweeney

Or is everyone going to adopt an insular “we don’t like change round ‘ere” stance and cry for it to be changed back to how it was?

Personally, I’m a fan of the new look, even if I didn’t manage to get a new airbrushed picture to complement this “new, fresh, young” look!

So is this column undergoing a radical change too? Fear not, I’ll be keeping to the high standards you’ve come to expect.

Is that a stifled cough I hear? I will hold my hands up though and give credit to the eagle-eyed editor for saving me from a public humiliation last week with a swift intervention before the column went to press.

Still, I provided the weekend laughs for anyone in the Mail old enough to know that “Bodie” in The Professionals wasn’t born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

Thankfully there are a few spring chickens in these offices and it went completely over their heads, saving me from “death by public Twitter ridicule”.

So, confession time over, back to this week – although I am of course working on an assumption that it hasn’t actually snowed today anywhere in Cumbria. Otherwise these words could be unread forever! Not that I’m in any way questioning the valiant efforts of the Evening Mail delivery team, from van drivers to paper boys and girls.

It’s just that more than a couple of snowflakes and the whole transport infrastructure, in fact the whole country in general, seems to grind to a complete halt. This has happened a couple of times over the last two weeks – we even had a BBC News “Snow Special” – I’ll be disappointed if they don’t do a “Rain Special” come August.

Maybe it’s different snow to the old days? Social media snow maybe – no need to look out of your window anymore. Just check Facebook for hundreds of your friends saying: “It’s snowing!” Different snow in different parts of town even, I swear I read “turning to rain, melting” on a few peoples’ timelines, yet there were “huge flakes, really heavy now, settling fast” on the other side of town! (“Holbeck snow” – they get it specially ordered up there you know.) It’s snow joke. Sorry, couldn’t resist that, although the column is on a slippery slope now, I’ll try and avoid an avalanche of puns, if you get my drift.

The kids get up, see the snowflakes, and then instantly check the website to see if the school has shut! Website? Shut? What? In our day we were packed off in wellies and anoraks through knee deep snow and it was never closed when we got there.

The whole country’s gone soft! Soft as the driven snow! See you next week – weather permitting.

First published at 15:41, Monday, 28 January 2013
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk