And, finally, the weather

A young Highland cow caught in heavy snow in Scotland. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

So they have arrived at last. All the long-awaited snow, rain, cold, wind and other bits are finally here; weather events that used to simply be called winter but are now news - though not news on the scale of the deadly ice storms in the US.

Here in London the weather is currently, to use a term generally favoured by all but the most eminent meteorologists, shitty. We should perhaps be grateful for the return to seasonality. But are you?

Has winter messed up your day or are there still ripe figs swinging on your Middlesbrough patio? And what of the weather for readers beyond our wet shores; is summer in the southern hemisphere all you had hoped?