"It's as if," postulates editor Paul Colbert, "we were in one of those James Bond Films, y'know, where Spectre takes over a weather satellite and threatens to turn England into a lolly if the government doesn't come across with two zillion krugerrands in a plain brown elephant."

"No," says assistant editor Tony Bacon, "it's as if the world has been spun off its axis by a nuclear curry and plunged us into a new ice age."

"Then again," interrupts reviews editor Jon Lewin, "it could just be that a really heavy area of low pressure was somehow right over the country and all the water vapour in the air was freezing and falling on our heads in a wild crystalline form where every flake has a completely, like, unique pattern."

They thought about what he said. "So, we'll go with the weather satellite idea then..."