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The weirdest thing was that reading it, although I think it's despicable to take it to a level of personal threats, the guy has a point. People are much quicker to share complaints than they are to share adequate or positive experiences. If it wasn't for the ****hole Factor, it could be considered a fair manipulation of the human tendency to complain.

I mean if I was being entirely fair, then almost every weekday at about noon I would tweet or blog "yay! the Royal Mail have successfully delivered my mail, including some stuff that I know was only posted yesterday!" but I don't and nor do most other people, especially when it's bills and statements and advertising. We talk about it only when they lose stuff.

If this country had Russian weather, then it would be worthwhile for people to invest in snowsuits, snow boots, chains for their tyres, lagging for their pipes... we'd be set up to deal with it.

But we're in the UK where as I recall for the last decade or so we've had the occasional two or three days of snow per year. It's just not cost-effective to prepare for snow in the UK.

Business-wise it's not making much difference to me at all, since barring the occasional face-to-face client meeting I'm almost entirely based online.

On a personal level it's a little bit bizarre. I can't get around the block to post a letter, because we're on the edge of a residential estate and the pavements are pretty much sheet ice with snow-covered dog-turds (I'm not even going to consider taking the wheelchair into the road where inexperienced car drivers are wheelspinning and skidding all over the place). However yesterday I went to the Birmingham Christmas Market, where although it was snowing, the footpaths were all absolutely clear. It just feels very strange that of the two outings, it was the twenty minute wander to the postbox that was the big dangerous impossible one.

PS Clive, have you grown a beard? If so, sorry for not saying hello yesterday, I didn't recognise you properly. If not, then I must apologise to the bearded stranger I was squinting at...

I'm sure I can't be the only person here who found that even Business Link itself leads to Business Link. When I was first looking into setting up the business, I phoned them and they posted me a lot of information about being a Virtual Assistant - which was lovely, but contained a lot of "look at our website" stuff. Every time I looked at the website I found I was going round and around and around in circles. More and more of the blue links were turning purple and I still wasn't finding out the stuff I needed to know.

Then Business Link advised me to hook up with a local Women's Business advice... thingy. That was possibly one of the biggest wastes of time I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. It seemed like such a good idea - don't take this badly gentlemen, but it can be slightly intimidating for a twenty-something female to try and become part of a group that is primarily males aged 35-plus who, due to the mindset that is necessary for business success, can be a bit, um, robust.

Unfortunately the forum was dead and the online business prep course was aimed entirely at Yummy Mummies - for example, here's a quote from the section about recognising transferable skills: