Did You Hear About The Snow?

It is extraordinary just how fascinated everyone in the media seems to be with the severe weather we are currently experiencing. Article after article on the BBC (which is our local broadcasting station in this country) is being presented to us, all focusing on a different aspect of the unusual conditions. Obviously, the heart of the reporting is on the crippled transport system – we are nothing if not a nation permanently on the move – but I am also impressed with the diversity of other angles from which our intrepid journalists approach the rising drama.

We have items about winter weather payments being made to pensioners – not deemed adequate enough to prevent them from freezing in their beds; we have tragic reports of people falling through the ice in country parks and dying (why do people do that?); there are accounts from businesses small and large about how trade is being affected by the snow; jolly tales of children tobogganing down local hills; pleas from the leaders of teaching unions that the public shouldn't see the closure of schools as just an excuse for their members to take a day off work (?); and now – even how to prevent children from getting 'cabin fever' due to an extended stay away from school! The huge number of different ways in which we can examine our current arctic plight is truly remarkable, yet truly self-indulgent.

I think that the news people should ignore the whole thing and leave us in peace. Instead, they could show us pictures of fields of kittens, or of Delia Smith cooking a summer pudding, or reports on the iniquities of the baboon trade, or even images of foreign wars. These would help us to take our minds off the weather. I suspect that we're going to grind to a halt very soon anyway, so it is imminent that the situation will no longer be news. I'm just wondering how many more times I will hear the phrase: "Gritters have been working round the clock". In my view, gritters should be working round the streets, not the blooming clock. It all sounds a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, if you ask me.

What I want to know is this: If the transport system closes down completely, how in hell am I going to get away for my skiing holiday? I haven't seen anything on the news about that!

My next missive is going to be about some of this country's writings that have changed the course of history. In the meantime, for anyone considering banning an Islamic march through the town of Wootton Bassett, I give you these words of Rudyard Kipling:

And still when Mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the mood of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

Tootle pip, old loves!