Call this snow?

This isn’t snow!  I remember when I was a lad, back in the winter of ’63 when it really snowed.  It went on for weeks it did and we had to dig a tunnel to get out of the house because it had drifted over the height of the doors.  The electricity went off for weeks and we had to heat soup in an old canteen over two candles to have warm food.  We still went to school though and we even went outside at play time and made snowmen and slides and threw snowballs.  My dad still went to work and mam still managed to get to the shops.  But we didn’t complain, oh no, we just got on with life. Nowadays it seems that half an inch of snow is enough to shut all the schools and block all the roads and bring the country to its knees.  But things were different then.

Were things different then?  Yes, they were but it wasn’t the snow.  It snowed then and it snows now.  Up here it snows every year and sometimes its deep and sometimes its light, sometimes it lasts for weeks whilst at other times it as away on the same day.  The physical properties and structure of snow hasn’t changed. 

It’s not the people either.  Fifty years or so is not long enough for evolution to have affected man’s ability to endure the bad weather.  Perhaps our houses weren’t heated as well as they are today and perhaps our clothing wasn’t as weather proof but the snow made us just as cold then as it does now.

So what is it that is different?  What is it that makes the snow so much more debilitating?  It is our love of the motorised vehicle, our addiction to the car.  Over this period the number of cars on our roads has increased significantly but, more importantly so has our reliance upon them.  Half a century ago most people would have lived within walking distance of their work, most people would have had access to the shops in their neighbourhood and most children would have walked to school (I even walked back for lunch each day).  Nowadays so much of our life is spent ten, twenty or thirty miles away from home. 

So when the snow falls and the roads get treacherous it affects so many of us, indeed nearly all of us.  Journey times take longer, simple trips to the shops become impossible and schools have to shut not because the students are not able to get there but because the teachers are travelling that much further. 

Next time the snow falls and the country falls to pieces, don’t blame the weather but blame the motorised lifestyle that so many of us subscribe to.  That’s what is different.