Tuesday: The news bulletins start to focus on the weather, reporting heavy snow in Scotland and the north and predicting equally heavy snow in the south as part of England’s coldest winter in 30 years.

Wednesday: The news focuses on a rather luke-warm attempt to “settle the leadership question” in the Labour Party (unseat Gordon Brown?) and continues to focus on the weather. In Lewisham, where I live, the snow falls throughout the afternoon – a rare and beautiful sight. One by one, my business apointments for the remainder of this week are cancelled or converted to telephone calls. I attempt to travel to my choir rehearsal in the evening, only to be told that there will be no trains for the return journey. I go back home.

Thursday: I could spend the time I unexpectedly have at my desk – I have plenty to do. Still, it seems a shame to miss out on the snow and I venture out, walking up to Blackheath, across the Heath and down to Greenwich. There are already many footprints in the snow and – no surprises here – people of all ages are out with their sledges. As I walk one of my coaching clients phones: can I fit in a session this week? We arrange to speak this afternoon. Returning to my desk in the afternoon I am delighted to find an e-mail from a client in Dubai, letting me know he has given my name to one of his friends in Kuwait. His friend has already dropped me a line to ask for information about my work in the field of leadership development.

As I walk, I ponder the way the newscasters have been talking of the “worst winter in thirty years”. It is as if there is no judgment or conclusion involved and nothing to be explained. “Worst” is somehow commuted to the status of a fact. Without doubt, there are inconveniences and downsides to the weather. And still, these unexpected times seem to me to offer something valuable – the opportunities that need only to be seen in order to be seized. These are some of my favourite opportunities at this time: