How a Beast brought out the best of human spirit
WHAT a week. What a ridiculous, glorious, terrifying whiteout of a week. Confined to barracks thanks to a snowed-in car and a cancelled train service, I have been constantly rotating between my weather app, local news and the front window.
When you get down to it, there is no greater bellwether of how bad the snow is than to count the number of small children advancing down the middle of a main road on Asda sledges.
This, in the words of an anxious cousin who contacted me from all the way across the pond to check on my safety, was a red warning, not a red herring.
I know it’s terribly fashionable these days to talk down bad weather, to grumble that in the old days the snow came up to our shoulders and we still walked 20 miles to the coal pit in flip-flops and a tank top, but whichever way you look at it, the Beast from the East was the real deal.
All public transport cancelled. Roads impassable. People snowed in for days and supermarkets left with no food, while gas supplies came dangerously close to running out (How? Why? Didn’t anyone think to check?). There is something tantalisingly terrifying in the realisation that the thread which separates normal daily life from complete chaos is, in fact, gossamer thin.
On Thursday, having surveyed the bare fridge and empty cupboards (I do my weekly shop on Fridays, so supplies of bread and – quelle horreur – red wine were running dangerously low) I decided there was nothing else for it. I strapped on my snow boots, pulled on my biggest, woolliest hat and went to chap on my elderly neighbour’s door to see if I could pick her anything up from the local supermarket.
In weather like this, that’s just what you do. Look at those brave souls living near the M80 who, upon hearing that motorists were stranded overnight, headed out into the freezing cold with flasks of Bovril and cans of Irn-Bru. One family cooked up a batch of pizzas, wrapped the slices in foil and went from car to car, keeping up spirits and feeding hungry bellies. Another young man walked up and down the motorway pulling a sled laden with bottled water. Meanwhile, on the A1, a Greggs lorry driver delved into his own cargo to hand out cakes and doughnuts to stranded drivers.
Then there was the nurse down in Lincoln who walked ten miles (ten!) through a freezing blizzard to get to her job, looking after patients stricken with sepsis. During a video of her epic trek she said: ‘I am mad, yes, but I also love my job. I tend to think that there are sicker people in hospital than me sat at home watching, let’s face it, Jeremy Kyle or some cheesy thing on netflix. I could be at work doing a bed bath or giving out meds.’
A woman in north Yorkshire got out her 4x4, drafted her teenage daughter in and has spent the last three days checking on elderly members of the community, picking up prescriptions and doing their shopping for them.
Call it the Blitz spirit, call it community caring, call it good old humanity: one way or another adversity, it seems, brings out the best in us. As I gingerly made my way down my snow-blocked street – thank you, by the way, to the NHS for their sensible advice to ‘walk like a penguin’, it made all the difference to someone who tends to trot about like Bambi on ice skates when it comes to snow – people did something remarkable: they smiled, and said hello. One woman, building an igloo with her daughter on the pavement, stopped and chatted with neighbours, while another lurched forward to catch a passer-by in danger of losing her balance.
The streets felt more friendly somehow. I live in a suburb of a big city, the sort of place where you can go for years without ever really getting to know your neighbours, yet here was everyone out and about, several chaps with shovels trekking back and forth from the gritter bin to grit the pavement and clear each other’s driveways.
It is immensely heartening to discover that despite being a nation that increasingly communicates online, has snappy arguments about politics and seems more inclined to pick a row than start a rousing verse of Kumbaya, we will nonetheless look after each other when the chips are down.
When I finally made it to the supermarket there was no bread, just an alarming proliferation of Scotch pancakes.
What they did have, and what everyone in the queue ahead of me seemed to be buying, was chocolate. Easter eggs, Mini Eggs and great slabs of Dairy Milk were being stuffed into baskets with last-day-of-the-holidays style glee.
As I trudged back up the road it struck me that there aren’t many things we humans can’t face as long as we’ve got the bare essentials. And when there’s a blizzard raging, chocolate and kindness aren’t a bad way to start.