Opinions of snow...

 

Every year we get snow. Certainly here in the South Pennines - although it still seems to take people by surprise, as if the forecaster didn't really mean "that" kind of snow.

We have a difficult relationship with the cold white stuff - on the one hand, the child in us leaps for joy. We head for the shed, the cellar or the cupboard-under-the-stairs to dig out the sledge. We tell the children that we'll build a snowman (in the morning) or even throw snowballs. Snow makes us smile.

Almost at the same time the survivalist in us takes over. We stock up food, bank up the fires, mutter under our breath about getting to work or struggling to the shops. The news programmes gleefully tell us (oh how they love a 'crisis') of trapped motorists, of further blizzards and even - joy of joys - the snowed in pub complete with trapped residents or regulars. People rehearse the ear-bending they will give the council (or their councillor) when they get the chance. Snow makes us grumpy.

Somehow we can't win with the stuff. OK, so it makes it tricky getting about and for a few more isolated places can cause problems. We're rightly concerned that the ill and the elderly are cared for, thought about but most years the extent of the 'snowcopolypse' is three of four days of inconvenience.

The bother is made worse - with week day snow - by the almost instantaneous decision of schools to close - not because the children can't get there but (most often) because the teachers can't get there. So, instead of a slightly bothersome day or so, we get a huge dent in economic activity as people decide that because the kids have been sent home they'll have to stay home too!

Thinking back to my childhood, I don't remember this happening. OK, I'm from London and, in those pre-global warming days, we didn't get much snow (the best ever was when it started during Christmas midnight mass). Maybe the schools in Bradford were shut as soon as the first flakes fell from the sky? Perhaps everyone rushed to jam up the roads the moment the boss said "you can go home if you want"?

Somehow, I fear we've become less tolerant of snow, less appreciative of winter and more angry at it's inconvenience.

Maybe we should just enjoy snow? Enjoy the sense of community it brings. Enjoy the smiles and laughter that there'll be once we can get out, kick it around, build with it and slide in it.

Yes, that's what we'll do! Tomorrow. Right now we'll be grumpy, eh?

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Growth

Spring is on its way, things are starting to wake up from winter's slumber. From resting out the deep cold. Growth begins - in tiny ways at first with the shoots of snowdrops and daffodils poking up through last years dried leaves, with the little pink buds on the currants and with the pale signs of future flowers now visible on the rhododendron buds.

However, winter isn't over yet - February, the month of snow, lies between us and the full flowering of spring. It may not snow - we might have got our measure with that hard, tough month of snow and frost before the New Year. But I wouldn't count on it - they aren't called snowdrops for nothing!

I've spent this morning in the garden. Just tidying, trimming and checking stuff out - plus shifting another ten barrow loads of leaves to a place where they can rot unmolested. And I was struck by nature's ability to spring anew - fresh from what seemed a dead world. The rhododendron our neighbours hacked back almost to the ground has sprung shoots - plus one or two buds. The big copper beech is lighter, somehow feels happier for having its canopy lifted and the roses - pruned right back before the winter - are showing how they'll grow again bringing with that growth those glorious flowers.

In our mad, rushed, tangled urban lives we find the seasons inconvenient - for many they've been replaced with 'climate control'. With systems regulated to provide an even temperature all year round. So we step safely from unvarying office temperatures, to air conditioned cars and from there to hermetically sealed, temperature controlled homes. Technology has banished the seasons.

So when those seasons fight back - when the winter throws snow at us or the summer delivers a heatwave - we moan and grumble. It is so sad that we - little ants scratting on the surface of a huge planet - think ourselves so important that the audacity of nature takes us aback. Why have the government not done something, we cry! It's getting warmer - it must be man's fault, we are after all so huge, so important.

Nature will win, dear reader. She always does - we watch helpless at floods, droughts and snowdrifts trying to pretend somehow we are at fault. We are not at fault - although it is perhaps the vengeance of Caradhras that we are seeing in these things. Nature is putting us back firmly in our place, laughing in the face of our hubris.

And then blessing us with new growth. Magic.

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On the arrogance of head teachers...

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It snowed this morning - in fact it's still snowing now. It started while I was at the gym - about 9.30 - and has been pretty heavy resulting in the usual 'snowcoplypse' of traffic gridlock as everyone heads for home as that first snowflake settles.

One of the trainers at the gym gets a text message from her child's school telling her to come and pick up the child as they wanted to close the school. I must admit that, on hearing this, my blood frothed and boiled a little. Understand that this is one worker texting another worker telling that worker to stop work and make it possible for them to go home early because it is snowing.

The school had absolutely no right to do that - they cannot expect someone to leave their place of work in that manner. The children - I assume since this is a school - are safe and warm and will remain so for a fair while. What the school is asking is for parents to struggle through fresh snow to collect their children - for no good reason. Solely to facilitate the teachers making a quick getaway.

Such unforgivable arrogance.

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The next time somebody moans about the snow...

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...show them this little film.

The section of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route linking the Tateyama station and Ogizawa only open from mid April to November, the reason for this hiatus is wintry snow, snow on this section reaches a thickness of 20 meters the most amazed of all is that in mid-April, much of the snow still lingers, so you have to make real corridors of ice to get through that stretch.

Amazing!

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Nothing much to say....

...so instead a rather atmospheric snap of Fountains Abbey.

How are the mighty fallen?

Scrap the climate change levy and save a few lives.

I am as you know, dearest reader, notably grumpy. Hardly a day passes without me finding some aspect of what's going on out there to rant, whinge and moan about. Of course, all my grumbles are entirely justified - we do pay too much tax for too little return, the state does try to control and direct us to its preferred style of compliance and West Ham United don't win nearly enough football matches.

However, I refuse to grumble about snow. Every year it's the same. We get a pile of snow (it always 'sweeps across the country') and there's chaos, gridlock and a load of tosh filling up the media about how one or other columnist couldn't make it to the shops meaning her children missed out on organic polenta and had to eat sliced white bread and baked beans from the corner shop instead. And yes I took five hours to travel home - a journey that usually takes about an hour. But this isn't a big deal. It's usually one day - a couple of days at the most - before we can get about our daily lives without a great deal of fuss and bother.

However, cold weather kills people. It's much better at killing people than hot weather (whatever the climate change obsessives want to tell you) which is why the climate change levy is a moral outrage. By driving up the price of heating our homes it is directly contributing to the deaths of the old and the ill. Now I appreciate that many greens are closet eugenicists who see our future as something akin to Logan's Run but I am uncomfortable with supporting a tax that kills people.

We pontificate about fuel poverty while supporting a tax that promotes fuel poverty? Look at the impact of high fuel prices:

Policy in this area has been developed around the concept of ‘fuel poverty’ – a household being considered to be fuel poor if it would have to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel to keep the home at an adequate level of comfort, as well as provide for cooking and lighting. Current estimates are that 4.5 – 5 million homes fall under this definition. In addition, it is recognised that there are around 25,000 excess winter deaths each year. Small scale studies suggest that as many as 400,000 emergency admissions could be the result of living in inadequately heated homes.

Simply by abolishing the climate change levy we could take tens of thousands of elderly people, young families and people with long-term ill-health out of 'fuel poverty'. And maybe keep them alive. We spend millions fussing about smoking and drinking and miss the very clear evidence that the biggest preventable cause of death is cold not smoking or drinking.

So scrap the climate change levy and save a few lives.

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Random thoughts from a five hour homeward journey...

The snow arrived - or more to point, the really big snow arrived - in Yorkshire. And the result of this is both good and bad. A five hour journey home is part of the bad and the sight of the front door at the end of those five hours is definitely good!

The white blanket covers up all the sharp edges of Yorkshire and heightens the beauty of the place. People go a little slower - sometimes with a little grumble but just as often with a smile as they enjoy the snow. Kids throw snowballs around, build snowmen, sledge and show the excitement we all remember from our own childhood that comes from the sight of snow. No sane 10 year old will be able to stay in the house with the snow around! And because the children are loving the snow....

....we love the snow!

But with this wonder goes 'snowcopolypse' - grid lock on all the roads, a spate of accidents large and small. Every emergency siren in the land seems to be going off as cops and paramedics scuttle across the whitened landscape. People get cold, wet, irritated and angry as the snow disrupts their plans - even plans as mundane as getting home at a reasonable time for once. Trips to the pictures are cancelled, the meal out with the parents-in-law is postponed and the Christmas shopping will have to wait for another day (although heaven knows when that will be given all the other stuff we've to do before the day). It's inconvenient, annoying, cold, disrupting and because those around us are grumbling, griping and moaning about the snow....

....we hate the snow!

But wait one further moment, there's another little bit of this tale to tell. Picture the scenes - real scenes...

Cemetery Road, Bradford with traffic struggling up the hill towards Lidget Green. Sliding around the road, some struggling to get any purchase at all. And folk come to push the cars - first it's people from behind in the queue who, I guess, have an interest in getting the traffic moving! But then people come out of the houses - there's half-a-dozen teenage Asian lads (the sort we more normally associate with less thoughtful acts) all be-hoodied. There are women wielding shovels and scattering salt. I didn't see carpet pieces but it wouldn't surprise me to see those as well.

These people didn't have to do this. They could have stayed snug and warm in their houses with a mug of tea and whatever they fancy on the telly. But they chose not to - instead they stepped out into the cold and helped people. Indeed, they helped people they'd never seen before and will probably never see again.

Some good things come from bad weather.

I really like the snow - even when it takes five hours to get home - it brings out the best in us.

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Snow (or a figment of your imagination?)

This photograph was taken yesterday at Studley Royal - a fabulous crisp day with the fresh snow crunching beneath our feet under a clear blue sky and bright winter sunshine.

And of course we don't get any of this now do we? Or may be some people should own up to saying silly things and eat their words?

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said*

So there you go, folks! In what is now a third cold winter (or looking that way) with plenty of snow and not just in North Yorkshire, the global warming argument looks ever more shaky. However, one observation I'd make is that snow was a pretty rare and exciting event in 1960s South London too!

*H/T to Old Holborn for the link
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Elsie's snowmen

Elsie, assisted by Nadia (and Elsie's Mum & Dad) built these. So shut up all you moaners - snow is good!

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Wednesday Whimsy: Remembering a White Christmas

I was nine when I experienced my first white Christmas. My memory may be a little rose-tinted but we’d set off to walk to midnight mass at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Addiscombe – probably a mile or so. It was cold but not snowing and about 9.30 in the evening as we were serving so had to get everything ready for what would be the full on smells and bells service.

During mass – almost perfectly – it snowed and when we set out home the roads were covered with a pristine layer of snow. We walked the old organist home (he was over eighty and a little wobbly) and set out home. And it started to snow again. Perfect.

Today our relationship with snow seems angry – we don’t seem to take in its beauty. To look in awe at the way in which it covers blemished places making them fine and grand again. We run headlines saying: “Fury of the travellers grounded by snow storms” or “Transport chaos: blizzards bring Britain to standstill as more snow on way” and “Snow-hit Britain: another day of chaos as roads and airports are closed”. Snow is an obstacle to our lives, it interrupts our frantic scuttling about doing important things…we care more about whether the bookies will pay out on a white Christmas than we do about seeing a stunning white blanket out the window on the morning of 25th December.

I like snow and worry that our anger with the inconvenience of the white stuff takes away from the magic it brings. The pleasure of the “snow day”, the excitement of sledging, giggling while we throw snowballs or building the biggest snowman in the village. Pleasures that shouldn’t go away just because we’ve grown up a bit. And to those pleasures us old folk can add a glass of mulled cider or Christmas ale, a log fire and “White Christmas” on the telly. What could be better?

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