Earlier this week I was feeling quite disappointed at the amount of snow we'd had. Well this morning I was very surprised to wake up to find that we'd had about 3-4cm of snow overnight.
Undeterred I located the large pile of snow that marked where my car had been when I parked it last night and rumaged around inside it to find the driver's door. The drive out of Didcot in my self-propelling igloo was very slow but it was also uneventful.
It was the hill between Upton and Chilton that presented the most problems. Actually the road was okay, it was just that the person in the car about three ahead of mine had decided that it wasn't and was somehow managing to make absolutely no forward progress. I was having no trouble making a very slow but steady progress along that road but re-starting, which was necessitated by Mr Stuck up in front on more than a couple of occasions, required a bit more work. Fortunately my procedure of flailing my arms and legs to manipulate the steering wheel, gear stick and pedals into all possible combinations seems to get the car moving again.
On arriving on site I found that the roads at RAL, unlike anywhere else in Oxfordshire, had been snowploughed and gritted. I was impressed!
When I did finally roll into the car park it only had about a third of the number of cars it usually has in it. I suspect that this is because surprisingly few people at RAL, or indeed the country, subscribe to my particular brand of "live near to where you work" witchcraft and so decided not to even try driving in. Perhaps I can learn a lot from them, as a day off work just playing in the snow would have been welcome.
Since I've gotten here it's snowed again quite a bit. I'm hoping, hoping, that the drive home won't be too bad. Who knows it might even be possible!
It does amaze me how the country's whole transport system goes to pieces with just a few centrimetres of snow, but then I guess it's a question of how often we have to cope with conditions like this. What use is a huge and expensive fleet of snow ploughs if they only get used on a couple of days every few years?
In fact bet there are conditions in Britain that we take for granted that would make other countries grind to a halt. Indeed, countries like Canada may be well equipped to cope with snow blizzards every other week, but let's see them cope when they're faced with... er....
Goodbye!
