As I write this, the snow is falling. Who knows what it will be like when I actually publish this tomorrow which will be 19th January. I have been out to put our household rubbish out. Our local council has decided that rubbish can be collected once a fortnight. We don’t generate much, but if you miss a collection then you could have, for example, chicken bones hanging around for a month. So despite the weather, out I went.
It is not pleasant. It is the wind that is the problem. It was driving such snow as there was hard and near horizontally. If I look out now it is looking better. The snow is falling quite heavily, but it is falling rather than blowing horizontally. It’s a bit of a white out world out there.
But this blog is not a diary of present day events – it’s the thoughts of a happy nerd. So time to get thoughtful, or nerdy.
I’ve had a mail from my son this morning which comments on the fact that the local supermarket had been scragged of stock. He said they were able to get most of what they wanted but with the snow forecasted in advance, folks, in droves, have been out panic buying. My guess is that this will mean even more good food ends up being wasted. What a shame. It can almost make you think that those old days of rationing had a lot to commend them. Everyone had an allowance and it had to be enough.
But I am staggered by the response of train companies some of whom have rewritten their timetables in advance of possible bad weather, closing certain lines before the snow had even started.
My sister looked back to that long winter of 1962/63 and felt that there weren’t the same problems. I have already commented, on this blog, that I got bronchitis and it probably means my memory of events isn’t what it might be. However I was a nerd and was taking ‘The Railway Magazine’ which, of course, I still have. So I can see that trains were more or less lost for days at a time – with passengers. It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing – or railing. Back then we didn’t have freezers and quite possibly not even a fridge. We didn’t have the ability to even think of stockpiling food. I know in the 50s my mum used to bottle surplus fruit but you can’t do that suddenly unless you have stockpiled bottles. My wife and I bottled fruit into the 70s. These were some of our jars, now in the local museum.
So times were very different 50 years ago. I’m not sure that people were that different.
Tags: 2013, kilner jar, snow
January 19, 2013 at 7:12 am |
The snows not deep here in Lancashire, but the wind as you say makes it worse. It’s absolutely bitter out there. Lodges outside our flat have been frozen solid for a week now. Poor ducks, don’t know where they are hiding.
Long time since I saw any kilner jars!
January 19, 2013 at 2:47 pm |
We have about 6 inches of snow – but variable due to drifting. In places it is more like a foot deep. I must get out to enjoy it.