I think Obi-Wan Kenobi's going out mugging...

That's the 'too ill to shave' look I've been sporting for the past fortnight. Unfortunately the longer my beard gets, the more I appear to have fifty shades of grey sprouting out of my chin. I look like a menacing Santa.

My aim is to transform that face by tomorrow morning into one that looks suitable for work, and is less likely to scare the patients. It's two weeks since my symptoms began, and they're basically back to where they started fourteen days ago. Which is to say that I have a mild sore throat today, but nothing much else. And I'm going slightly stir crazy indoors. So I think tomorrow might be the day to call time on this illness and get back on the workhorse.

Unfortunately it currently looks like this outside...

... which is a shame, as I'd rather walk to work than toboggan. On Friday morning it was more like this...

... which is also worrying, as it means that plenty of people are still moving their cars in this weather. In that first snowy photo above, there's actually a car stuck in the middle of the road at the bottom of the hill. He was there for a good ten minutes, struggling to get a grip, before two passers-by gave him a shove in the right direction. At which point he headed down the hill, unable to stop.

Anyhoo, as should be obvious by now, we have a rule on this estate that cars painted in primary colours must be parked at the end of the road, while black cars go at the front. I'm not sure where white vehicles go, as you can't see them in the snow.

But the good news is that I have now been out. I decided yesterday that if I'm going to return to work on Monday, I should probably test how well I'll cope with the shock of fresh air and exercise. So I forced myself to go for a walk. On pavements of ice. In the dark.

Fortunately I own a pair of these things on the left, so I strapped them to my feet at 8 o'clock last night, and headed down to Lidl for an evening constitutional. It taught me a valuable lesson. Namely that a pair of Overshoe Snow & Ice Grips allows you to walk confidently down a steep footpath of sheet ice that looks like the Cresta Run, but is liable to kill you on the shiny concrete stairs of a block of council flats. Next time I'll be attaching them on the ground floor.