What snow?

I am probably going to regret typing this, but whilst there is snow in nearly everywhere in Britain, my little corner of the world is just a little damp and cold.

Don't think I am gloating, in honesty I am a little let down. Not that I would actually enjoy snow far from it. But I seem to live in the most over prepared area of London, if not Britain. There are gritters out ready, more twitter notifications than my time line can cope with and and general feel of military organisation. Some times, like this, I feel so proud of my borough. That is why I would be so loathed to leave this area. Even our own MP is updating us of what is in place. That is one MPs phone bill I don't mind paying in my taxes! He was even out in a local town in the cold, ready for questions and advice. Apparently he is there once a month with out fail on a Saturday.

Anyway back to the the point, the weather, or rather lack of it. I am busy watching pictures of iced white landscapes. Yes they are pretty, I have my own snaps of a beautiful landscape round here the last time it snowed. But there is the flip side. With the snow comes the chaos of closed schools and the problems that causes for parents. More concerning is the driving in these conditions. As a driver who learnt the hard way how to drive in snow I am very cautious about it. My first driving experience of snow, was in a foot of snow in a mark one ford escort with the heating capacity of a small flea. I won't deny it was scary and taught me the hard way sometimes you just have to brave it and go at the speed of your own capabilities. Over the years I have had to drive in snow, and once even spun the car in a double 360 and ended up facing a wall. Not because I was speeding I was doing 5 miles an hour, but instead because I ended up on sheer ice patch as I turned the corner. It was probably because I was going so slowly that meant both me and the car were unhurt.

It isn't just snow that we Brits seem to have problems with. I have lived through both of the hurricanes in the 1980s. The first one I slept through, like most of the country, the second I was trying to get home from college. That was scary the trains stopped as it was too dangerous to run and we had to get a bus the last two miles home. Just getting to the bus stop was bad enough a shop window blew out right beside us, by window I mean half a shop front. When we finally got to the bus the only room was on the top, How I wish I had never been on that bus. Because it was from the top of the bus we saw a tree come down onto a car. As it was my stop I hopped off and the local shop I worked in on a Saturday was on my short walk home from there. Instead of getting home they asked me to go in and cover the till. I had no idea why they would want me to do that, especially considering that tree having just come down in the school opposite. Until some one came in crying and asking for a mug of tea. Then the reality hit, that tree I had just seen fall had just killed a child in that car.

Thinking back it makes me realise how little we as a nation understand what to do in extreme weather, or how to drive in it.. There is a few fundamental problems with our system, the main one being the lack of coverage of adverse conditions in the driving test. Or common sense of how to deal with travelling in a high wind. At the end of the day we are an island nation, anything can happen in the blink of an eye.

So yeah I am grateful we have no snow in my area, but I am well aware I could wake up in a winter wonderland tomorrow.