Kate Livingstone: Name game doesn't appeal to me

Thankfully she gave me the thumbs up - as long as my musings didn’t hold up the printing of the paper! - which allows me to get a few things off my chest about the current bout of snow we are enduring.

Firstly, I’m not a fan of the current trend for giving names to weather fronts. I really don’t think it’s necessary and I had a bit of sympathy for my good friend Aileen when her name was constantly being linked with the destruction that followed the storm we had last autumn.

Then there was the occasion when everyone thought it was fun to use a certain part of a man’s anatomy to refer to a hurricane. It was particularly embarrassing for me as i had to ask a (male) colleague at work to explain what it meant.

Now we have the ‘Beast from the East’, which sent a shiver down my spine even before the temperatures plummeted below zero.

I used to associate the word ‘beast’ with the villain turned hero in the Disney fairytale but the tendency nowadays, particulary in certain tabloid newspapers, is to use to describe the perpetrators of some digusting crimes.

That’s what certainly sprung to my mind when I first heard the term ‘Beast from the East’ coined and I’m sure I can’t have been alone.

On a more positive note, credit must go to our local council for its quick decision to close the schools in the area.

Apparently some local authorities weren’t as on the ball resulting in parents dropping their children off in the morning only to return an hour or so later.

Funny how we were all warned about the dangers of travelling in these atrocious conditons and yet their dithering meant mums and dads - with young children in tow - having to make double journeys.

The snow has also meant a couple of unexpected days at home for me and even though I’m keeping a check on my emails I’m also finding some time to get these wee jobs done that I’ve been putting off for ages.

Maybe that’s something considerate employers should consider in the future. We’ve all heard of ‘duvet days’ so why not a couple of ‘snow days’ each year, whether or not we’re under a blanket of the white stuff?

I’m sure we’d all be able to put them to good use,