Snow Day Afternoon



Dig this, snowmen are for wimps



Snow Afternoon



Day before the snow morning, birch tree handy

 We were up before 6am to travel to Edinburgh airport, the forecast of light snow was wrong on both counts: it was dark and the snow flakes were like giant cornflakes and accumulating fast.  We spent 15 minutes clearing the drive and packing the car for an adventure.  Normally it takes about an hour to the airport but we started with 2 hours in hand.  The first 10 minutes were like a Fawlty Towers episode as the car slid and twisted itself down the drive wedged between two rows of snow shovelings. I had an urge to beat it with the nearest birch tree but eventually we coaxed it out. I dug another trench across the road to allow us to reverse out and we started the journey.  For the first time in a week there had been no gritter so we were driving on 6 or 7cm of new snow.  Once some momentum was gained it was possible to ease along at 25mph.  There was hardly any other traffic as we  headed towards the Lake of Menteith and then Thornhill. The car angled its way up some gradients in an extended trot but momentum was not lost. 

As we arrived in Thornhill a Peugeot was on the final incline but skidding on the spot looking every bit as elegant as Anne Widdicombe doing the rumba.  We halted at the foot of the hill, I got out and pushed the Peugeot up the last section and then, with the surface nicely polished, we made two or three attempts to follow but to no avail.  As if by magic two giant tractors appeared, the drivers informed us that all the roads into Stirling were neither gritted nor ploughed and that the trunk road and motorway to Edinburgh were even more dangerous and the airport was closed anyway.  I did not rise to the jibe that the Council was bloody useless.  With the aid of three farmers and a man in a 4x4 we turned the car on the spot, the snow in this instance acting as a lazy susan, and retreated home.

True enough Edinburgh airport was closed and, according to the websites Glasgow was open, so I asked for my flight to be switched. I had given up on the prospect of getting very far in a rear wheel drive car so I tried to order a taxi only to be told that the road was blocked and that Glasgow was in gridlock.  Shortly afterwards I heard that Glasgow airport had closed as well but getting any sense out of any of the travel, airline, airport or council websites today was harder than finding wikileaks.  I phoned Kaye and, in the unflappable and happy way of someone who is 7 months pregnant, she transferred me onto tomorrow's flight from Glasgow. 

It was finally a snow day with a free afternoon.  It made me realise how all our energies are focused on defeating the snow and very little ever gets done on a snow day.  So bearing this in mind I had a snooze, sorted out some papers, put another two rolls of insulation in the loft and tidied up my e mails.  The snow finally stopped and there was chance for another bit of snow clearing before the light faded at 3:30pm.  With weather and winter conditions like this it is no wonder that the buoyant economies are in places like India with warmer climes and the west, according to Gordon Brown in today's paper, is in terminal decline unless it unleashes another dose of Keynesian economics.