Snow

When it snows, the world comes to a standstill. I don’t get it. How can one measly little inch of snow affect the world that much?

When I used to live in Edinburgh and tiny bit of snow would bring the entire bypass to a standstill. On the other hand, when I used to live in the countryside in Dumfries and Galloway, the world would still carry on as normal despite heavy snowfalls. I suppose it’s just the difference between townies and non-townies! Townies are wimps!

In France they take this problem to the extreme though. A few years ago my mum took Isla up to school one morning only to find that school had been cancelled! The teacher was there, and she told her that there was no school that day because the buses wouldn’t go out in the snow – there was less than a centimetre! My mum told her that she used to drive a school bus, and she went out in much worse snow than that. The teacher smiled at her and said “Ah yes, but you’re from Scotland. You’re used to snow!” Another time, I had a phone call from the school saying that school had been cancelled for the day because the toilets had frozen!

We weren’t particularly used to snow at all actually. There was only one year, 1996, that it snowed really badly, but apart from that we got the odd day of snow now and again, but it wouldn’t stay on the ground long before melting away or being rained on! In 1996 the village we lived in was snowed in. Unfortunately I wasn’t there, because I was at uni in Edinburgh – I have never before or since been so pissed off that I wasn’t at home! Anyway, the village lost electricity. There were loads of elderly people there, none of whom had any power at all. There were two houses in the village that had Rayburns (like Agas) which were oil fired and didn’t require any electricity to run, one of which was ours. So, my mum and our neighbour made soup for the old people and kept massive pans of water boiling so that people could come and fill up their thermoses for tea etc. Our problem was that the Rayburn heated the water – if the water got too hot, the central heating was meant to kick in and send it around the radiators. As there was no electricity, the central heating didn’t work, and if the water got too hot with nowhere to go, the boiler would blow up! So, my mum and dad were offering hot baths to anyone and everyone to get rid of all the hot water! It got so bad at one point that Dumfries and Galloway was declared a state of emergency, and the army were sent in with provisions! It was amazing, though, how in times of trouble the village people really did pull together and act like a proper community.

So, back to France…today I have been informed that there will be no school bus tomorrow, in case it snows. Snow is forecast – there is a 30% chance of it. But, whether we get it or not, there will be no bus. Just in case.