Holed up in Washington

We may have had a bad winter in the UK with possibly more on the way.

However spare a thought for the citizens of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

Howard Jacobsen describes his experience in Washington

The minute we landed, the city's institutions began to close their doors. You've never seen so much snow. Lock yourself in your room and don't come out is the advice on radio and television. Which is all very well if you're in your own home and have a freezer stuffed with pizzas, but an apartment hotel with a complimentary sachet of coffee, two tea bags, and a packet of chocolate chip cookies – the difference between civilisation and barbarism is the difference between an English biscuit and an American cookie – is no place to be holed up in for a month.