A few days of wintriness and utter madness takes hold!
SNOWMAGGEDON! The Beast From The East! Weatherbomb! Thundersnow! Baby, it is indeed cold outside, but why does everything have to be so dramatic these days? A few falls of snow and the entire country convulses into a corporal Jones state of utter panic.
The national reaction to bad weather has become so over-the-top, so histrionic, so completely shrill and mad that it is beyond all reason.
After all, we live in northern Europe, where — and i appreciate this may come as a shock to some people — it gets cold in winter. Sometimes white, wet flakes fall from the sky and that stuff is called snow.
i know it is called snow because every hour, on the hour, TV reporters in North Face anoraks and with red noses are sent out in blizzard conditions — correction, raging blizzard conditions — to point at the snow and tell everyone exactly how bad that snow is.
Weathermen and weatherwomen, newsreaders, disc jockeys and anyone within spitting distance of a public address system will take it upon themselves at regular intervals to urge citizens to take care, not slip on the ice and wear warm clothes, particularly if they are elderly.
All this nannying drives many people to distraction, including the Mail’s gardening writer Nigel colborn.
‘Look! i’m 75. i can look after myself & do NOT need patronising announcers telling me to wrap up warm and watch my step,’ he roared on Twitter. he also pointed out that snow is not unusual at this time of year, and i am glad somebody finally did.
he said: ‘This is not “Snowmageddon”, it is normal February rubbish weather. This is the first snow we have had in South Lincolnshire all winter. That should worry people more.’
Of course, i know it is bad out there. Really bad in some areas. People have been stranded overnight in cars. Some roads are impassable. Trains have been cancelled, airports and schools closed.
ON Wednesday night the centre of Glasgow was like a ghost town. in central Scotland my sister can’t get her car out of the drive, like many thousands of others.
her husband is stuck in Manchester. My parents are snowed in, my father’s operation has been cancelled and my mother made mince and tatties before nine in the morning yesterday ‘in case the power goes off’.
Not sure if i am following her logic there, but come rain or thundersnow there is no way my dad isn’t getting a hot meal put in front of him.
People do just get on with it, especially in areas where heavy snowfalls are the winter norm.
however, there are places where common sense flies out of the window when the first snowflake flies in. And when i say ‘places’, i think you all know that what i really mean is London.
here in my beloved capital city, the inhabitants are not minded to cope quietly and nobly with adversity, even a tiny bit of adversity, without going absolutely bonkers.
Pause a moment to consider that this is the same hardy place where, on this very night 74 years ago, 900 houses were damaged and 500 people made homeless in one of the last German offensives of the war. But next morning the milk was delivered, shops were opened and the city struggled on.
Today, there are emotional meltdowns if snow on the tracks means Piccadilly Line trains are running 15 minutes late. There were near-riots when The White company ran out of cashmere hot water bottle covers, and Yummy Mums now triple-park outside school gates so Sophie doesn’t get her toddler snowboots wet. On Wednesday morning, as i pulled on my own boots, my Londoner partner was aghast. ‘What are you DOiNG? Surely you’re not going to work in ThAT?’ he cried, pointing outside, where a thin crust of snow edged the pavements. Eh? Of course i am, i said. ‘Let me call you a taxi,’ he replied, afraid his darling might perish in the mighty blizzard before she reached the office a mile away.
i walked to work as planned — and it was beautiful. The sun shone, the city was hushed and quiet, there were no cyclists, few cars and at no point did i feel the need to panic-buy sliced bread and six pints of milk.
in north-east Scotland, i remember walking to primary school in far worse conditions with only a pair of ribbed woolly tights to protect me from certain death.
Now that Storm Emma is rushing in from the west to clasp the Beast From The East in a hideous embrace of wintriness that forecasters are calling a Red Warning risk of Extreme Weather (shriek), how will we cope?
Southerners are advised not to travel unless their journey is absolutely essential, while Northerners are advised to put on a coat.
Back in 1947, a bitter wind from the north blew for a month without stopping. There was no sunshine for weeks, the temperature didn’t get above freezing for most of February. The Thames froze. Big Ben was silenced as its mechanics seized up and the RAF had to drop food parcels in the home counties.
The Big Freeze of 1963 was perhaps even worse, with much of the country in the grip of one of the longest and coldest winters on record.
Today, a few days of bad weather and a kind of madness takes hold. if there is any slight weather-related hitch in the smooth progression of one’s day, people seem to regard it as a personal affront.
HEAVEN knows how they would cope with sustained cold spells like those of yesteryear, although there is the consolation of taking all those frosty selfies.
Even Nigella Lawson was at it yesterday (left), looking ravishing in her fur hood, like a beauty out of Dr Zhivago.
You see, there is a bright side to all this. The beautiful drifts, the hysteria, the muffled reporters, all the proud photographs of snowbound back gardens, even the OTT responses from the more fragile members of our community. i just love everything about it.
So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. it is a winter wonderful, after all.