What a novelty our winter wonderland was at first, a pretty picture postcard Christmas scene that soon wore off.

We'd had enough as we struggled to get to work and struggled with the worst winter for decades. It was a rude awakening.

We aren't used to such severe weather. And we aren't through it yet, although the thaw has set in.

And we had better brace ourselves for more of the same in years to come as weather experts predict severe winters becoming the norm.

What has this one taught us? That we are ill-prepared, not just with the grit for the roads but the true grit to get on with it whatever.

What a mollycoddled lot we are, moaning because there isn't a tattie in the Co-op.

We really don't know we're born compared with what folks had to contend with in the winters of 1947 and 1963, with their food and fuel rationing and power cuts.

With central heating, food in the freezer and washing machines, few of us have known real hardship like having to pick coal off the beach to keep the home fires burning or wrap oven shelves in blankets to warm our tootsies in bed.

And at least it's given people something to talk about – running out of snow shovels, grit, rock salt, even plastic for sledges (and thanks to a woman shopkeeper in Sea Road, who came to one customer's rescue by giving away her grown-up son's sledges and made three children very happy).

There has been a fun side, too – making snow angels, keeping drinks chilled to perfection in the back garden and hunting for the cans of coke, beer and cider buried after another blizzard. What's surfaced in ours? Two cans of John Smith's and four cartons of orange juice.

And almost overnight the gigantic icicles that looked dangerously capable of decapitating anyone venturing out our back door have gone.

On Wearside the worst that happened was the binmen not turning up on time. We've never been in danger of being cut off or marooned like John Ure, probably the UK's most isolated man, who lives in a lighthouse in Cape Wrath at the top of Scotland and who on December 19 waved goodbye to his wife, Kay, as she went off to collect their Christmas turkey.
She hasn't been able to get back since because the nearest village is an 11-mile unmade track covered in icy snow and a boat journey across a freezing loch.

John, 57, who is alone in the lighthouse said in a telephone interview: "Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person on the planet.

"Maybe it will thaw in a few days. I hope so. We've still got our Christmas presents to open."

With another freezing week in store, the man who claims to have been the only person to predict the severity of the cold snap Piers Corbyn, founder of WeatherAction, has this warning – after the big freeze, floods before the cold returns in February.

That dinghy in our garage is going to come into its own. Get ready to paddle your own canoe.....