Wednesday 1 December 2010

Snowed in again.

Well, almost. It's as well the OB and I did the shopping yesterday when then was just a light covering of the white stuff. It must have snowed continually through the night - not heavily, indeed quite lightly, but enough for there to be almost two inches lying around this morning. Our drive slopes up to the road with an incline of about 1 in 5, maybe 1 in 4 in places, and although I could get the car up it as the snow has blown off most of it, the road is also a pretty steep hill and I would have great difficulty getting back home again. We were scheduled to have the Lions Christmas meal tonight but that has been cancelled and the same menu will apply for the next dinner meeting on the first Wednesday in January.

I was hoping we would be spared the snow here in Brighton, especially as yesterday afternoon the radio was announcing all sorts of problems in Surrey and the north of Sussex but I understand even the trains from Brighton to London are having trouble today and Gatwick airport (20 minutes drive away in normal conditions) is closed until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Even so, we have been spared the worst of it. The north-east of the country has had feet rather than inches of snow.

I have just been speaking with a fellow Lion from Switzerland who is in Brighton for a short while and was due to attend our meeting tonight. He joked that we had laid on Swiss weather for him when I told him that England closes down when we have a little snow. The problem is that we don't have enough of it to make it worthwhile preparing for it as they do in Switzerland.

My big concern at the moment is whether we will be able to leave for France as planned. I have a nasty feeling that we will be staying put.

3 comments:

Suldog said...

So interesting to here about the snow from so many UK bloggers. Having visited there many times, and never having encountered any snow, even during dead of winter - and knowing that it generally doesn't ever become as drastic as in some other northerly locales - it's fascinating to read about how you all are handling it.

(not necessarily your) Uncle Skip said...

To paraphrase a certain U.S. politician - "I can see it from my house."
There's snow, much snow on the mountains in all three directions, but fortunately none has, as yet fallen anywhere near our neighborhood. It's a good thing, too, because nobody knows how to drive in the stuff.

Brighton Pensioner said...

You are quite right, Skip, in that people here don't know how to drive in snow and ice. As somebody was quoted as saying yesterday, the problem is that we don;t know when it's coming or how long it will last or how severe it will be. It's not like Scandinavia where they know it will arrive in December and stay till April and they have a pretty good idea how bad it will be. as it's so regular.