I really shouldnt keep neglecting this blogging business. Again its been a while since i blogged, i need to remind myself that i have a blog and i must update it, so readers (if i have any) may peruse over my musings.
Anyway its another new year, christmas seems an absolute life time ago, although I am still seeing the remains of it around the house, the christmas chocolate pile does not seem to decrease in size at all, and what with all this horrendusly cold and gloomy weather, making myself go to the gym to burn off said christmas chocolate, is alot more difficult than i would like. January is such a grim month, it seems to go on forever, with little sight of an end. Weeks and weeks of being poor after spending so much over the festive season and cold, dark days!
The snow has set in and as usual facebook and twitter accounts have become a weather forcast, who needs to look at the BBC website or watch it on the news, with every other status in your news feed about the snow, or people wishing it would snow. Well you have your wish, although i cannot see the appeal myself. South Wales appears to be the worst hit with the met office issuing a red warning, which is quite rare, airports have delayed flights, there is travel chaos everywhere. So it does make me wonder why anyone would wish for snow. It might appear fun for a day if you do not have to go to work and you have no plans. Im sure we all relish in building a snow man or having a snowball fight with friends, but once that trampled snow freezes overnight and becomes a sheet of ice the next day, then the appeal starts to wear off.
Britain in the last few years has had a lot of snow, so one would think we would be better prepared. Granted it may only be a few days a year that we get snow so there is not a huge need for specialised snow equipment, but the fact that a few inches of 'the white stuff' brings the whole country to a stand still perhaps we should invest a little more in overcoming this.
Gatwick airport, after last years snow, invested thousands into specialised snow equipment to prevent such a huge disruption to its flights. So when snow was expected this week it said it was prepared, however still chaos insued, with lots of cancelled flights in Gatwick, Heathrow and many other airports, with some airports even closing. So clearly we werent so prepared as we thought!
Countries who are used to months of cold weather and snow, such as Sweden or Norway or places in the US have the amenties to prevent its infastructure collapsing at the first sign of snow. Snow ploughs clear the roads, snow chains are attached to car tyres and people are far more prepared. However they expect months of snowfall and thus investing in specialised snow equipment is worth while. For us in this country to invest millions in such equipment would be a waste, for it would be needed perhaps 2 weeks of the year. Therefore we should probably resign ourselves to the fact that unless snow becomes a regular occurence for months on end during the winter, we will never be wholly prepared for it, because we would never be able to invest the money and time into it.
So we should deal with a couple of days of disruptions and hope that it all goes back to our usual grey gloomy rainy winters!
