It's Snow Joke...

Monday: February 2nd - We wake to a thick white carpet of snow

So in addition to creating the 'credit crunch' and demonstrating that the materialistic rock-concert of the last 25 years, has endured it's final encore... in addition to being punch drunk on debt, credit cards maxed out, exposed to negative equity, ridden with toxic debts and with a prime minister that reminds me of the robot from lost in space - as if that wasn't enough to sink the psyche of this once great nation, it's always left to our insane relationship with the weather, to deliver the killer blow...

Being serious now, by the time we get to the weekend, 'Snow' jokes will be, well, no joke.

But honestly - what is the matter with us?

How is it possible that we have world-leading meteorologists and they were all going "SNOW - IT'S COMING - LOOK! SNOW! SNOW IT'S GOING TO SNOW!" for 48 hours before it happened and *YET* we can't get the gritters out in time?

Meteorology basically describes a set of heuristics which enable us to better predict the weather, not always accurately (because you cannot accurately predict how a dynamic system will function,all you can do is spot patterns and make broad predictions based on previous observations), but in the case of a MASSIVE cold front like this, they always see those days in advance!

So? Well - there was grit on the up ramp at Hackney Wick station yesterday but whats the point of that because the trains aren't designed to clear the snow off the tracks anyway, so they can't run, yet where we really *need* the grit - on the roads - there isn't any!

It's snowing now and will snow again tonight (monday) on top of the snow that's already on the ground, that means ice, so the gritters probably can't go out now either - it's too late!

I have witnessed this 'Paralysis by weather' scenario that we uniquely suffer in Britain, maybe 3-4 times during my lifetime. If you have too, you will be familiar with this very difficult relationship that the British have with our weather! The British nation is by dint of it's geographical location, confused as to how it should react to weather. We are 'Bi-polar' with regard to our climate. It's not cold enough here for a Scandinavian level of organisation when it comes to dealing with severe cold conditions (they have to be efficient and serious about snow for example, otherwise their country's would be at a standstill most of the year) - it is no wonder that Ikea is NOT British! That kind of organised, almost Teutonic, attention to detail gets you through trecherous cold when things have to keep moving.

However, at the other extreme, neither is our climate friendly enough for us to take the attitude of someone in Southern Italy either, where if the roof develops a hole you just raise your hand to it and go 'Eh! Vafanculo!' and carry on with what you were doing, drinking a glass of wine, or painting a masterpiece - it will never get that windy or that cold, it certainly won't snow and so as your weather is kind to you, thus you have a relatively stress-free attitude towards your it.

The British, by contrast, get such a range of weather conditions, sometimes boiling summers, sometimes freezing fog and snow and also the largest number of tornadoes each year for any country in the world, that we, well, can't cope with any of them! In the same way that the Eskimos have 15 different words for snow, how many words do the British have in order to complain about the wind?

We have tornadoes, gale-force winds, breezes, squally conditions (whatever that means) - snow is quite fun if it lasts, you know, half a day or a day, but we have horrible things like drizzle and sleet or that horrible type of precipitation which is somewhere between heavy fog and light drizzle - only for Britain could the weather invent a curtain of cold and annoying rain that clings onto your face and stings your lips.

This changeable weather stops us from finding a rhythm in this country, it's why we binge drink, it's why we have the unhappiest children and the largest drug and mental health problems in Europe and it's why we love to moan about the weather! Especially in The South East of England, when it's hot we get heat exhaustion and when it snows we are all crashing our cars, letting our old ladies fall down in the street and getting marooned in our cars, at 9.00am thinking "I'll try and go to work" - wearing just a blouse and a small, close fitting jacket! No thermos of Coffee, no shovel, nothing. And on the radio and TV over and over they repeat the message "And please, don't travel unless it is absolutely necessary" The radio show host then proceeds to waste the time of an Ambulance man on the phone asking him "Can you give the listeners some idea of what qualifies as 'absolutely necessary?'" There is a long pause and he makes his excuses...

Then they ramp up the rhetoric some more - "If you travel today, there is absolutely no guarantee that you will make it home! So DON'T!" Notice the subtle repetition of the word 'Absolutely'! What's next "There are packs of hungry wolves roaming the street eating your kids!?"

You have to love our media! Did I say love?

Our host then takes a teary call from Anne who says "I need to get into Ashford Hospital ICU because my husband is on a ventilator!" - "Oh Anne I'm so sorry" replies the show's host - feeling awkward, our host then tries to raise the mood bar by making a light joke "If anyone in Ashford has a 4x4 and wants to give Anne a lift?"

Stone dead silence. One can only imagine the hand signals coming from the show's producer.

Then we hurriedly return to a gap-filling "Ring in and tell us how deep the snow is in your part of London"

Cruel Britannia!