By reporter David Simister
YOU know when your commute to work begins to resemble the opening scenes from Fargo that it's turning out to be a chilly week.
Pensioners slipping on pavements, children risking life and limb to skate across Snowdonian lakes, smashes on the A55 - we've seen it all in the past few days. Even one of our own reporters came a cropper when he had an unfortunate bike/ ice/ pavement meeting on his way into our office earlier this week.
It hasn't been a brilliant time for getting about in North Wales. Inside this week's edition there's the tragic story of Rebecca White, who was killed in a car crash travelling from her home town of Kinmel Bay, and the story of John Garside, who is having trouble getting his concessionary bus pass accepted in Towyn.
Meanwhile, North Wales Police reported no fewer than 79 car accidents in the region in a single icy morning, while hospitals are seeing dozens of patients admitted after falls on slippy pavements.
Whether Conwy County Council has gritted the roads enough isn't for us to decide but what I do know is that for the first time in years the two mile commute into the Weekly News office has required obsessively new levels of studying the weather forecast.
Walking, at 40 minutes, simply takes too long, and there's a scary woman at my nearest bus stop who's convinced I'm part of an extremist paramilitary group, and keeps shouting names at me, so I think catching the number 13 isn't an option.
That leaves driving, which in a 25-year-old car would probably kill several rainforests simply from the emissions of a two mile journey, and my pushbike, which my colleague has already demonstrated, is a surefire way to an icy death.
In the end I took my chances and opted for Raleigh's finest but the milder weather can't come soon enough.
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