Grubbly moaning, all good people. I greet you well.

Two whinges for the price of one this morning.

The first concerns the congenital inability of the female to have a sleepless night without making certain sure that whichever unfortunate male is sharing a bed with her shares also every moment of said sleepless night.

In real time.

Endless sighing, lots of complaining, and just in case the male is in imminent danger of nodding off, a way of restlessly turning over that simulates, down to the last detail, a magnitude 10 earthquake.

And when the poor male gives up and goes down to the living room for a little peace - well, he is not allowed it! Oh, no. The female can be relied upon to follow and start wittering on about what a sleepless night she's having - just what a bloke wants to be subjected to at four in the morning.

Now a bloke having a sleepless night can try the old trick of counting sheep (unfortunately we don't have many sheep in our bedroom), or go downstairs to pick up a book, or go on the internet - something to help get him tired. Women - never!

So I looked at Her Indoors (for I am that bloke), still going ten to the dozen on her sleepless night, and went on the internet, to check out the availability of local hitmen.

By the time I got through to Hitmen'R'Us, I noticed that Her Indoors had disappeared. I heard the gentle thrum of a sleeper in the bedroom, and there she was, tucked up and hard on. Of course, I was wide awake by then.

Hitmen'R'Us advised me of their services: Bronze (they supply the gun), Silver (they do the deed, you dispose of the body) and Gold (they fix the jury and nobble the judge - also comes with air miles) - their best salesman came on the line to offer me their 2 for 1 Winter Sales deal - but, of course, I had to decline. But I have got them on speed-dial.

My second whinge concerns the fraught and fearful relationship many people calling themselves "British" have with the weather.

The excitable 12 year-old eco-zealots who seem to staff the Met Office these days can't predict a day of hot summer weather without ascribing it to life-threatening man-made global warming, and recommend that you make up a shelter in your freezer to give you the best chance of surviving the coming inferno.

In the winter they are particularly unable to contain themselves. A mundane snow shower has now become a "snow bomb". Chuck a few flashes of lightning in, and it becomes "thundersnow".

The recent "snow bomb" dropped a whole two inches of snow, at best, over most of England. Cue national meltdown, and Daily Mail (it's always the Mail) headlines predicting mass deaths and extinction-level events from Penzance to Newcastle, and especially London, where a single snowflake is capable of seeing off 10,000 people at a time.

I do believe polar bears and woolly mammoths have been spotted outside Nottingham.

There's nothing quite like a bit of snow to open up the class divide in England.

While the factory floors are fully manned and productive, while the delivery men get to their depots and make their deliveries on time, while the binmen (your garbage men) take away the rubbish, the electricity people, the water people, the gas people, the plumbers, the shop assistants, the supermarket girls, the railwaymen, the bus-drivers, the farm workers, have all got to their work in the dark and the freezing cold and were all at their stations for 8am at the latest, they can't help but notice that those workplaces inhabited by those who wave degrees about are silent as the grave, empty as a discarded Corn Flakes packet.

This is because the English middle-classes, the Better Educated, consider themselves "snowed in" and the roads by far too dangerous following a 2 inch fall of snow (even though they all own 4x4s). So the government offices are all closed (though the security men and the cleaners seem to have made it), so too the local council offices, the schools, and just about everywhere with a computer on the desk.

And yet everything runs along perfectly, without interruption. It always does.

I'd whinge a little longer, but Her Indoors has just emerged from the bedroom to rabbit on about her sleepless night - to the one person in the house who hasn't had a wink.

Telephone. Speed-dial. I'll have the Gold deal. They can't get here quickly enough.