I love the way this country doesn’t seem to be able to cope with ANYTHING. I woke up this morning to the beautiful sight of a glistening white carpet of snow (outside in the garden obviously, not on my bedroom floor). Thinking about it, it was more like a linoleum floor covering of snow - definitely not deep enough to be considered a carpet. Despite this somewhat stingy portion of the white stuff, I was filled with a child like feeling of excitement and elation. I somehow managed to get myself out of bed a whopping 17 minutes ahead of schedule, the reason for this was I know how bad the busses are on a good day, if you throw snow into the equation you’re looking at a possible catastrophe. I washed and dressed and left the house. Crunching my way through the blank canvas of snow that had appeared overnight was the most fun I’ve had in the morning since, well I can’t remember, as I’m not a morning person. It was, as it always is, short lived. The journey from my house to the bus stop was a dangerous one. People think the real danger of snow is that it’s slippery, not true. The snow wasn’t deep enough to do any real damage, it was however deep enough to mask several substantial piles of dog shit scattered precariously along the path. Fortunately, I took extra care to avoid any suspect looking snowdrifts and arrived at the bus stop in good time and with clean feet. It was obvious from a brown stain in the snow that not everyone had been as lucky as I had.
When the bus arrived I got on with the 5 other frozen wimps that aren’t fond of the cold weather, and we raced to get seated before the maniac driver pulled away. Some made it, others did not and were hurled down the bus and forced to grab a handrail and stagger to safety. Despite the fact that the gritter vans had been out all night dispensing salt to make the roads safe, the bus driver somehow still managed to miss the road a few times throughout the journey, mounting the curb at one point and more worryingly, a roundabout at another. We arrived safely in town around 10 minutes later than we should have, which I think is good, but for some reason others did not. At first I thought there must have been something horribly wrong with the brakes on the bus because of this strange hissing and clicking sound. It turned out to be a middle-aged woman tutting and sighing. Fortunately she went a funny colour, and I think she learned her lesson.
For a majority of the morning, the bank was deserted. People clearly didn’t want to take their chances with the 1-inch of snow and so I was able to just gaze out of the window and watch as it rapidly melted into an orange sludge. Those that did venture out of the safety of their homes were happily complaining about how awful it was that it snowed. We the British love nothing more than being able to complain, you see. Nothing else really happened until around 2pm, but what did happen was worth waiting for. The clouds opened up for a few brief minutes and it snowed again. It was like being in a snow globe, or surrounded by fluffy angel feathers.
And then I saw a fantastic orange glow in the distance. It was warm and beautiful and it started getting closer. For a while I couldn’t work out what it was and then it got close enough for me to see it. Despite the fact that there was enough salt on the road to wipe out all the slugs in England, and on the path, and on a few unfortunate people that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was the bloody gritter van! I nearly fell of my chair. It was poetry in motion! 2 minutes of snow and gritter man must have been thinking that it clearly needed another layer “THIS IS IT! CODE WHITE, CODE WHITE! GO GO GO!” He probably had visions of people lining the streets and cheering as he crept by at 2 and a half MPH with Tina Turner singing ‘Simply the Best on his cassette player. Alas, there wasn’t even time for the fist verse because as suddenly as it started it stopped. I bet he cried as he drove back to his shed.
The other high point for me had to be the local news. This news was not just any news, oh no. This was ‘SNOW NEWS’. You see, there’s no news like snow news and snow news is good news, except when it isn’t. 5 minutes of my life, that I will NEVER get back, were wasted tonight as I sat down to see what was happening in my region only to be told that ‘it’s been snowing’. Obviously it was slightly more in depth than that. The traffic had been ground to a halt for over an hour and they were asking drivers to go slowly. Not to be picky, but what choice did they have?
Not only this, but they’ve been predicting this snow for little under a fortnight now, so it isn’t as if it’s a surprise and yet, somehow, everything still manages to fall apart. The schools close because the heating breaks down, the roads are death traps because the grit was put out too late. The shops sell out of soup because everyone panic buys, and anyone that thinks they might be able to get away with it, claims they can’t make it into work because of the snow. At least it isn’t long now until the annual drought and water shortage.
