It's interesting, this sudden onslaught of winter. In the south of England I think we must somehow have become immune to the possibility that, as the nights lengthen and the cooler winds blow, it sometimes snows!
Yesterday it took me around 2 hours to drive from Sindlesham to home - a journey of between 3 and 4 miles. It started snowing on my way back from Winchester at 12:30, and by 4:30 there was absolute chaos. There was so much traffic that any grit that had been laid down was rendered next to useless (not that I saw any evidence of grit at all), and the traffic was so slow that every time you moved off, ice had formed under the car and you were moving through the snow that had settled on the road since the last time. Nothing for it but to know that I could easily walk home if absolutely required, and no-one else was going anywhere either!
But the "something must be done" brigade is out in force again. The snow was heavy. Nowhere copes with prolonged heavy snow. Continental Europe is knee-deep in the stuff, and they have all the airport closures, road problems and hassles that we do - even down in the south of France and around Barcelona. But somehow we seem, in this country, to have got it into our heads that we simply cannot be inconvenienced by mere nature - we're too important to have our lives disrupted by anything as trivial as snow - and then, when we're left impotent, our pomposity is punctured.
Sure, there was a hell of a lot of inconvenience - I was OK because I was the only one of my family out and about, and even then I was really close to home with no demands on my time - but surely a prepared society is one that has fallbacks. Rather than forcing everyone to drive round shopping and racing to pick kids up at the end of the working day, wouldn't a more localised and less traffic-intensive world be better? I write this more as an aide-memoire, as my business gets busier and busier and I start recruiting people all over the country - rather than huff and puff about the inconvenience that this planet sometimes throws my way, take the time to look out of the window and admire the beauty of this amazing ball of rock.
