Snow day

2nd February 2009 – 7.40 am

We have our biggest snow fall of the last six years! Everything is so pretty with a blanket of untouched snow covering it. Unfortunately, because we get snow so rarely, maybe a couple of times a year in any significant depth, we simply are not equipped to cope with it gracefully. The radio is telling me that many motorways and A roads are blocked or traffic is significantly hampered, several tube lines have vastly reduced or no service, and London busses aren't running until further notice.

I still got up and brushed the inches of snow off my car before heading out to get to work. I got maybe half a mile before turning around and coming back to relax under my duvet. It's not that I find driving in snow particularly daunting, I'm okay with it, it's that I remember the immense traffic jams that snow inevitably causes and all the problems and delays associated with them. I know that getting to work this morning—and, with the snow expected to continue to fall all day, this evening as well—will take me considerably longer than normal and I don't see the point in inflicting this on myself.

There is nothing particularly important happening at work at the moment. I can't motivate myself to spend an extra hour or more commuting through hellish traffic just to get to the office and stand around talking about how bad the traffic is. Instead, I'll take a day off and build a snowman.

  1. 4 Responses to “Snow day”

  2. Sitting here at work, having had to fend off the country's entire population of road-using idiots, you can consider me quite envious of your subduvetaneous position.

    Tomorrow I'm staying in bed.

    Even if there's a heat wave.

    By Melmoth on Feb 2, 2009

  3. What a slacker you are. I work in the country and live in the city and i still got in to work.

    By Anon on Feb 2, 2009

  4. I saw an interesting blog post about why the London Underground stops running when it snows, even though "it's underground."
    http://severe-delays.livejournal.com/67893.html

    By BugBot on Feb 2, 2009

  5. I was all ready to reply that I have previously realised it must be cheaper to shut the city once every five years than to maintain the infrastructure required to cope for one day in the same period, and that there is some other good information about the Tube coping with harsh conditions in the link, but anonymous internet man has completely rattled me with his insightful comment.

    By pjharvey on Feb 2, 2009

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