It’s always exciting when your regular work routine is disrupted. After a long period away from the office due to Covid, which was lengthened by two months when I recently broke my elbow and was back working from home, last week I rocked up to the centre ready to start back and saw a crowd outside.

Assuming that the stress had just meant everyone had started smoking again, I walked in to find that we’d had a power cut. All staff had to stay in the foyer or outside, and students were not being admitted at all.

The projected time for the issue to be fixed went from 9am, to 10am to 11am. As we have four city centre buildings, some people just relocated but, for those of us who worked in only one building, it was either hang around or work from home, the latter being a lot easier and more familiar these days. As I walked back to the train station with my milk and sandwiches still in my bag, I got nostalgic for the days when the building being shut meant no work for the day.

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Snow days of yore

Back in 2009, when I had been working at the college for nearly two years, I awoke one February morning to a winter wonderland. Still being bright-eyed and diligent, I walked the 15 minutes into town to get my bus to work. After an hour, no buses had come. When a bus did manage to pull up and let on passengers, it assured all of us travelling to Liverpool that our bus would be along “any minute”.

After 90 minutes, I did get on a bus, which travelled very slowly all the way to Liverpool. I then realised it was not possible to walk the 10 minutes from the bus stop to the college, and so had to wait for another bus, which stopped after 100 yards and gave up. I schlepped up a hill for half an hour, drenched with snow from mid-thigh downwards.

I finally hauled my frozen corpse into the office at 2.30pm, having been travelling since 8am in the morning. Far from being hailed as a dedicated hero, everyone told me I was ridiculous for even attempting it. I turned on my PC and, five minutes later, we got a message saying college was closed and we should all go home.

I arrived back at 6pm. For the rest of the week I was told to stay at home. Not work from home, just stay at home. So a week on full pay to play in the snow seemed acceptable recompense for my earlier snowy death march.

A couple of years later, we were once again beset by wintry weather. I had arrived at work in the middle of a snow storm which had very quickly set in. The snow was so thick that there was no visibility at the windows and, at 11am, the principal made the decision once again to close the college, as she was worried that students and staff would be stranded in transport misery. (I like to think that the legend of my snowy 2009 journey to work had been handed down by the previous principal with the missive “never forget”.)

This time, however, the snow storm was just that. My colleague and I walked out of work and, by the time we had reached the bottom of the hill five minutes later, the snow was no more than a couple of flakes. We walked straight into the pub, home working being impossible at that time. I do remember some half-hearted email about “starting a written reflection on our practice” from a try-hard manager, but that was never mentioned again. I was home by 3pm, the snow had melted and I had enjoyed another successful snow day.

But will we ever have such a thing again? Now we have all transitioned into being able to work at home at short notice, I fear that only the students will enjoy the unrivalled excitement of a snow day.

I am keeping a close eye on global warming in case there is the possibility of a tornado. Anything that will knock out the wi-fi.