Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow…

Posted by Paige Lucken on 02/12/2010 · 3 Comments 

Brrrrrr...

I have to admit that I am still like a small child when it starts snowing as I jump up and down excitedly and press my face to the oh so cold window. Snow is still as enchanting and mystical to me as it always was and I am still moved by the way that it takes all of the hardness and grubbiness out of the world. Everything has a clean white downy cover, well until some bugger goes and stomps all over it and makes it all mushy and brown and slippy.

As a child there wasn’t a downside to snow. ‘Snow day‘ meant no school, lots of snowman building, lots of snowball fighting with my brother and sister and sledging down a too steep hill on one of mum’s tin trays. Now unfortunately it isn’t quite the same. I woke this morning hoping for massive snow drifts (really should know better as I live in London) and as my alarm went off I pressed my face to the window and saw two inches of snow. Two inches!?  Don’t get me wrong they were two very pretty inches of snow and more than enough to stop the trains running so that I could have my ‘snow day’, but then I remembered the responsibilities of adulthood and the need to keep my job. So I moped and sulked my way towards the home office and logged into work via VPN.

So here I am blogging in my lunch break about the fact that I am more than mightily miffed that I am sat here looking out of my window at all the lovely snow that I could be freezing my arse off in. Although not really enough snow to make a snowman, maybe a snowmouse though?

I know that many non-British people reading this will be shocked to hear that the trains are unable to run in two inches of snow, but the UK just isn’t kitted out for actual weather. Oh yes we talk about it all of the time, but as a nation we aren’t prepared for it.  Normally UK weather is variations on the theme of grey and bland and a bit wet. When it snows the nation shudders to a halt and the news broadcasts are all about the snow and the effect it is having. With people taking 9 hours to get home or sleeping in their cars on the motorways etc.  With all our technological advances and our understanding of global warming, (or cooling , or wetting, depending on your point of view), shouldn’t we be better prepared for weather in all of its forms? I live in the Western world where we have every advantage available to us, yet we don’t seem to be advancing in this area, Every year local authortities all over the country run out of salt and grit for the roads. This is not the first time in recent years that we have had snow across the UK so why aren’t we learning and improving?

So here I am ranting about the fact that my country hasn’t got the infrastructure to support normal life when it snows and at the same time wishing I was having a ‘snow day’ and moaning beacause I don’t actually need the infrastructure to work to be able to work. Hello world, I am British and this is what we do to pass the time.

Typical!

Fin.

Filed under Weather · Tagged with Inch, London, Snow, Snowball fight, Virtual private network, Weather