Let it snow, let it snow, etc.

It snowed this morning. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse had been sighted trotting over the snow covered horizon followed by a plague of locusts.

As I predicted yesterday chaos ensued. Roads were closed, schools were closed, runways were closed, trains were cancelled. A man called Malcolm from the Highways Agency also appeared on the news in a high-visibility jacket.

He wasn’t apologising though. In fact he looked almost smug. You see they got it right. A BBC news reporter showed us a computer simulation the agency was using to work out the exact time a road would freeze so they could send out a gritter just before. I’d have thought they could just watch the poor weather reporter forced to do broadcasts from television centre’s roof dressed only in a vest-top and heels, but there you go. It worked, so I won’t complain.

There’s been 24-hour coverage of the snow on the television, and it’s become a national event of similar importance to the coronation of a new monarch or the selection of a new Pope.

I think it was partly the timing. The country’s snowday came in the week when most people apparently ‘throw a sickie’. Parents stayed at home and played with children. Children stayed at home and played with parents. Families got on and had fun. The kind of stuff families are supposed to do at weekends but don’t because they become too complacent. Fathers cobbled together sledges out of baking trays and airfix glue whilst mums supervised artistic snowmen complete with hats and gloves to keep them warm. It was like national family day and national fun day rolled into one.

I’m even pleased to say the Health and Safety boffins stayed away too. They should have been preaching to motorists driving sales-rep cars far too fast and without ample lighting, but perhaps they were kept at home making sure snowballs were kept to regulation size and only thrown inside a half-mile exclusion zone. In fact, it’s probably one mile. Meanwhile one school I visited today sent everybody off to the field farthest from the school for an extended snowball fight. Oh to be a kid again…