For the record, can I just say how fed up to the back teeth I am with the miserable, whinging, gloomy, down-in-the-mouth, unhappy, despondent, downcast, dejected, long-faced, mournful, cheerless, doleful, glum, heavy-hearted, sombre and pitiful kill-joys who sprang up all over Oxford after the snow fell (there, I think that’s all-inclusive).

Why? Because imagine what the start of this year would have been like without the snow?

It’d have been dark and wet and miserable beyond belief, with no relief at all from the peril of blown-out credit cards, the drudgery of returning to work, and that desolate despair that always seems to hold everyone in a vice-like grip until... hell, the beginning of March.

And it’s been pretty much like that for the past 10 years or so.

But this year, a miracle happened – the weather conspired to bring us a new year bounty of fresh, thick, fluffy snow and suddenly everything was white.

So night became day; roads became still; and the only sound was the ‘crump, crump, crump’ of footfall.

And I... loved every second of it. But it seems like I was in the minority.

Just hours after the first fall, almost two weeks ago, I popped into a shop and declared (perhaps too brightly): “Isn’t this fantastic?”

Yet instead of the chorus of approval I’d been expecting, the twentysomething shop assistant just grimaced and mumbled (imagine Homer Simpson bitching after Marge has banned him from drinking): “Stooopid snow. Couldn’t get out the drive, had to take a bus, kids throwing snowballs. It’s alright for you...”

Now quite why it’s alright for me, I don’t know. True, I’m not elderly, disabled or homeless, which would naturally alter my perspective, but I still had to turn the heating up; clear the front steps; slither on ice-rink pavements; and look a buffoon in sub-zero attire that even Victorian explorers – on purely aesthetic grounds – would have turned their noses up at.

And it seems this woman was not alone, since for the past two weeks I’ve struggled to maintain a sense of good cheer in the face of increasing disillusionment.

The favourite sentiment seemingly: “I don’t mind it for the first few days, but then it gets boring...”

Well, maybe it’s me, but I just can’t get my head around that way of thinking. Every year, round Christmas, everyone wants it to snow, and this year, yes, despite missing the big day, snow it did – and properly too.

January at last had the icing put on top – and that’s... tiresome? Irritating? Inconvenient? (Because two days later you can’t pick it up and put it away?).

Such a lame and feeble frame of mind chills me – far more than the nightime temperatures.

I assume the girl who gnashed her teeth and burped her bile because of my zeal, would also complain in the spring about lighter mornings, the summer about heatwaves and the autumn about fallen leaves.

Given I’ve probably only got another 20 Januarys or so to go, I for one have wallowed in it.