Well, Winter is well and truly here then.
As we all know anyone who lives in Britain talks about the weather every single day. As I’ve said before it is simply because we get so much of it.
As you can see interruption to transport services due to inclement weather is not exactly a new phenomenon.
A Croatian acquaintance of mine who works outdoors in England delights in the fact that he can get soaked, windswept and burned to a crisp all on the same day!
So for all Britons the chance to moan about snow, ice slush and the inefficiency of the local authority gritting the roads and pavements (or should I say NOT gritting etc.) offers a delightful opportunity to complain to anyone who will listen, plus most who won’t, about the current situation.
If you live in Scandinavia or Canada it’s easy.
Every year it snows, on go the tyre chains and you’re off. Try that in Essex or Middlesex and you’ll be fine to the top of the road when the bit the Council managed to grit will cause the metal to become redundant and disappear in about half a mile, not to mention the possible tyre damage.
Don’t fit the spiky beasts and you might not make it out of your own drive, let alone up the frog and toad.
Underneath it all however most reasonable people know that everyone is doing their best. Neighbours who barely nod to each other for the rest of the year talk whilst they clear paths and their kids lob snowballs at them. Folks do a bit of shopping for the older residents. Gritter drivers work all night to keep the highway clear, no way in the world will they ever be able to oblige in the side roads, if Councils lay in five times the normal amount of rock salt they need a bigger depot and we all moan about the rates.
The upper echelons are as confused as ever. The men from the Ministry spend all year trying to catch drivers out on their hours, one bit of snow and suddenly the Government says the Euro rules don’t count and “can you please take that spreading lorry out and work all day and night, there’s a luv.”
Of course there’s a darker side, the media (present company excepted) talk of Armageddon and pensioners frozen into statues, phone and electrical failures, central heating fuel running out etc. causing everything edible in the shops to be bought up.
By the look of our local Tesco on Saturday (don’t ask) some blokes will still be having soup for dinner in August.
All in all though we residents of this Sceptred Isle love a bit of a crisis, so this cold snap is right up our street. Despite all the whingeing I notice the post has arrived every single day, albeit at variable times. The legion of delivery men who call from Play.com and M & S humping their precious merchandise for youngest sprog with money and her who’s the boss, seem to arrive here with the same monotonous regularity so well done to all the guys behind the wheel and those who struggle into the hubs for keeping things going.
I had a clip to show from Seaton but it’s been withdrawn (I’m guessing because it looked like someone had set up the whole thing with a hosepipe on a frozen hill) so you’ll have to make do with these.
And last but certainly not least !!!
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