One of my patients today told me that the current spell of weather we're experiencing is "the coldest it's been for a hundred years". She didn't say which hundred years, but I presume she can't mean the last lot. Although she was old enough to have seen most of them.

At the time, I was sitting in a warm consulting room on the fourth floor of Crawley Hospital, so I laughed in the face of her global cooling conspiracy theories. But it's now 9:30pm and it's been snowing for the past three hours. I know that, because Lisa's Mum has phoned us twice this evening - once to tell us it's snowing, and then an hour later to say it's settling. She'll be phoning back shortly to say it's drifting. It's a handy service, because it saves me going to the window.

But despite the sub-zero temperatures, the good news is that my frozen heart has now melted. Lisa returned home this afternoon, shortly after texting me at work to say that she wouldn't be back until tomorrow. She thought it would be a lovely surprise. And it was a surprise. When I got home, I thought we had burglars.

But fortunately Lisa's not the only one who enjoys jokes. I snuck out to the front door an hour ago, scooped up a big snowball, and crept back inside with it. Tragically, however, Lisa refused my request to stand in the bath so that I could throw it at her, and I was reluctant to soak the living room carpet, so we ended up in a Mexican standoff and I was forced to chuck it down the sink. As practical jokes go, it wasn't what you'd call successful. But it's nice to have her back. To be honest, I'm lost without her. And I'll need someone to help me shovel snow in the morning.