Getting on with it

Not the post I anticipated but my camera's batteries gave up when I tried to upload/download some new photos! Typical is the phrase that comes to mind right now-what I actually said at the time differs ever so slightly. On top of that my camera has since then spent the whole time on my table hidden by various papers, reels of ribbon, stamps etc and thus STILL isn't charged! Must do that in a mo and it doesn't take long thank goodness.

What I will post about is an incredible conversation I had with my neighbour yesterday.

As I arrived at his house to medicate Rat the cat, the news was on his television (he's early 90's so it was VERY too!). The news was full (as always at the moment) of the snow everywhere and horrendous stories of people being stuck in their cars for 5 hours etc.

I did a few 'oh no that's awful' and alot of 'why are people climbing mountains when there's blizzards and 20 foot of snow?' when Len managed to find the mute button (to my great relief) and announced 'you don't know what snow is'.

I found a seat (Len is a great and lengthy storyteller) and Len told me of the time in 1947 when it snowed for weeks very heavily. I've heard about this snow event many, many times-snow piled above telegraph poles, not being able to open your front door, not able to get to work etc. It sounds utterly horrendous and we'd never cope nowadays in truth-Len is right.

Apparently the snow in 1947 started on the Thursday. It snowed and snowed and people tried desperately to carry on. It's incredible how well they did manage to carry on-the train service (Dr Beeching deprived my town of) managed to keep going even when nothing else did. The buses did their best, initially managing to keep going, then small villages and minor roads were removed so the bus just stayed on 'major' (major in 1947) roads. On one day the snow was atrocious. It had piled up so high at the sides of the roads it was higher than houses. The wind did part of this and people clearing the roads contributed to this incredible sight. It was Monday and the bus set off from my town, managed to get to the next and eventually the next. It began it's return journey and got just over a mile outside my town when the snow became simply too high to keep going. There was the driver and about four or five passengers. It was a desperate situation and they must have tried so hard to keep going being only a mile or so from home. It was not possible to continue so the driver and passengers had no alternative but to head to the two cottages nearby.

Thankfully the cottages were occupied and took in the desperate travellers. It took until Thursday (from Monday) for people to dig through the snow and find the bus!!! They must have been so relieved as with no mobile phones, limited landline use and cables down due to the deluge of snow, it must have been a very worrying time indeed for the families of those involved when the bus failed to return to depot on the Monday as expected.

Can you imagine how that incident would have panned out in 2009? Army helicopters, TV crews, Prime Minister's statement etc. Afterwards the driver and passengers would have had counselling and they'd probably have sued the bus company who would have sued the Council for not gritting properly and so on and so forth. The newspapers would have been full of 'exclusives' by 'terror snow hell bus passengers' and the cottage where they stayed would have become a local tourist attraction! Back in 1947 people just got on with it.




When Len said that we don't know what snow is, he was clearly right. I post these pictures of the primroses/primulas as way of proving how nature is 'getting on with it' and under trees and hedges there are lots of signs that Spring is on it's way, with flowers and shoots galore and snowdrops rather appropriately too!