The weather where you are...

I switched on the TV very late on Sunday night. It was already snowing in some parts of the British Isles and the news was full of warnings about staying off the road unless you knew how to drive in snow and staying at home unless your journey was urgent.

On Monday I turned on the TV at teatime to find whole news bulletins taken up with the weather. Snow had hit southern England and boy, did we hear about it. Along with the pictures of children out playing on their sleds, there were four hour traffic jams in Oxfordshire and pictures of cars, vans and lorries that had overturned in the snow. Bits of London were described as snowy, although to be fair, it looked as if they had a light dusting or at worst a couple of inches of the white stuff. Schools were closed. In one of those ironies, a Christmas market was cancelled somewhere. 

There are places in the British Isles where having snow in winter is normal and people are ready for it. I'm talking about the rural north-west of Northern Ireland, north-west Scotland, parts of Perthshire, the Cairngorms, bits of Argyll and the Borders, some of Yorkshire, central and north Wales and Lincolnshire. It's got to do with where our islands lie: some areas get the snow straight off the Atlantic and other areas get it from Siberia. But folk know it's coming.

People who live in these areas tend to buy sturdy cars that have good road holding and don't spin like a top when they encounter snow. They tend to have practice at driving in snow and they also take advice, carry provisions and a blanket and a shovel in the car in case they need it - and they don't go out if it's not safe. When I worked in Argyll, I knew the phone number of Arrochar police station off by heart. They always had an update on whether the Rest and be Thankful was shut - or if it was likely to shut in a couple of hours. We also knew how fast snow could blow in. 

It seems to me some of the UK is now peopled by folk who think weather can be ignored. Or rather, they think nothing should happen to them when 'bad' weather hits. Maybe we need to remind these people that road gritting and ploughing, along with road accidents, cost the economy more than taking a day off your work or keeping your kids off school for a day or two.

And maybe southern England could give the rest of us a break from complaining about 'bad' weather. There's no such thing as 'bad' weather, in my opinion. Just weather. Live with it.