Monday, December 28, 2009

Memories of a snowstorm

Quite an amusing programme on tele the other night (it was on More4 so you probably missed it) - an hour about the snowstorm of February 2009. Billed as the story of what happened when the whole country came to a halt, it caused the wife and myself some bemusement. We couldn't even remember the blizzard for a while, and I actually had to reread my entry on this blog as an aide-memoire [I love it when he talks French: Ed] then we dimly recalled having one day when heavy snow brought London to a standstill. Yes, one day. February 2nd. After that we got back to normal.

Ten minutes into the programme and we had moved on from people trapped in their cars and doctors walking 50 miles to work, and had reached sledging tragedies. Twenty minutes later and the worst they could come up with now was a couple of girls getting wet in an icy stream for a few minutes. At that point we switched over. You see, we don't really do bad weather in the UK. Flooding is becoming a real problem, granted, but not snow. Our hair does not stand on end when they screen footage of Kings Cross tube station being closed - after all, Bob Crow and his merry men manage that feat more often.

We will probably continue to have a couple of days every year when snow falls sufficiently heavily and quickly to paralyse the traffic and the trains. And within a day or so it will have melted or been pushed away and it will not be a problem any more. No idea how anyone can justify devoting an hour of TV to it.

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