THERE’S something special about those cold but crisp, clear, frosty, blue-sky days that lifts the spirit in winter.

Those people who move out of this country in search of permanent sun surely live to regret leaving them behind.

They might have a warmer climate overall but distinct seasons are like the chapters in life’s book.

People living in countries near the equator where 24 hours a day, 365 days a year the total temperature variation is about six or seven degrees must get fed up with the sameness of their existence.

But English weather does have a down side. Unlike the rest of northern Europe we are never prepared for it.

On those grey days when it rains and rains everything comes to a halt because of flooding and when ice and/or snow appears at the end of November complete chaos ensues.

We get up at the same time to go to work and, surprise, surprise we have to spend five or ten minutes clearing the windows.

Then we drive faster with irritable urgency because we are running late and become part of a traffic jam as drivers spin their wheels to a standstill.

It’s the gritters fault, of course.

But how unreasonable it is to expect them to have magically salted the road a few minutes before we wanted to use it.

Although it is fair to expect councils to have done enough to ensure that at least some of us can see evidence that some salt has been dropped during the night.

If you are on the school run you feel doubly mad when you arrive to find yours is one of the scores of establishments which has decided to stay closed because of the “emergency situation.”

Trains are late because they had to be de-iced before they could be used and buses get stuck in the same traffic jams as all the other motor vehicles.

It’s the same whenever the thermometer drops a couple of degrees below zero.

All in all we are peculiarly incompetent.

Scandinavian countries take far worse winters than ours completely in their stride. Public transport gets through, everyone goes about their business pretty much as normal – and they don’t moan and moan and moan.

How cities like Moscow and St Petersburg cope is beyond our comprehension.

In wartime we got a reputation as a nation that stoically refused to be defeated by wave after wave of bombing. Ours was the country that didn’t give up even when the odds were really stacked against us. And yet a single night’s snowfall leaves us talking as if we have experienced a tsunami.

Ironically last week there were a few individuals who did see the “bad” weather as a good opportunity.

I’m referring to the youths who broke into the Burnley school, which was closed for the day because of snow, and stole £40,000 worth of computers and other electrical equipment.

What a pity such initiative cannot be positively harnessed rather than used in a purely negative and destructive way.