Well it seems that I cannot avoid the subject that the rest of the country is obsessing about at the moment; that of the snow. It is not so much the snow that bothers me, even though I have never particularly cared for it. It is the attitude to it that amazes me. I have heard of young people refusing to walk for ten minutes to get somewhere, because of the snow. People in their 20’s saying that roads are impassable, when they are clearly not. A headmaster telling his pupils that it is their choice to make as to whether they attend school or not. Our public broadcasting channel deciding that it will put on a “Snow Special” on primetime television. There has been snow in the North of England and Scotland for the last two weeks, but all of a sudden, there is snow in London and we all have to hear about it.
These are just a few of so many examples of a change in attitude. It is difficult to make the point without sounding like a grumpy old man, so I shall do it in style. “When I were a lad”, I remember walking through snow that was knee deep, and spending the day at school with cold wet feet, in classrooms that were not heated. We just got on with it. If you couldn’t drive, you walked. If it was cold, you used to put on an extra jumper, or a hat. I have seen school kids wandering the streets wearing no coats and moaning that they are cold. The thing is, with the attitude that so many schools seem to be taking, and the fact that 40% of the workforce didn’t turn up to work yesterday, what chance do we stand? Have the schools given the kids anything to do at home today? Did they use the opportunity of the Internet to perhaps set some work for them to do at home? Are there any contingency plans for the fact that there could be another couple of weeks of this? What do we think? It is clearly a totally new experience this snow business. We have never experienced it before, and my childhood memories are clearly figments of my imagination. Where I live, the kids will all be up at the local hills, flinging themselves down slopes treating this as a day off, and when they get older, and are working for a living, they will all stay in bed at the slightest sign of a snowflake. This will be our fault, and we will have no right to complain about it, because we are encouraging it now. I shall be dropping the headmaster of our local school a line to ask him why he took the decision he did, and updating with any reply, sensible or otherwise. That is of course, if the inclement weather has not prevented him from typing a reply. I have a daughter who is going to be taking GCSE’s this year, and probably thinks that my attitude stinks, as her friends all appear to be spending the day in bed, and this is largely because of idiots in positions of power making ridiculous knee jerk reactions and decisions.
As I type, the BBC news is running a feature on “Snow through the ages”. Astonishing!
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