I know I harp on about the railways at present. I guess it’s those years of saying the right thing and following the party line etc.

On Wednesday I awoke at 0600 to a very cold morning and made made a decision that going to Canterbury (14 miles) on the Moped was perhaps a tad dangerous. We hadn’t had any snow, but it was minus 3 and the driveway was reminiscent of the scene set for Torvil and Deans ‘Bolero’. Cutting out the writers licence, it was blinkin freezing!

I got a lift down to Ashford Station and immediately saw ‘Due to adverse weather conditions, trains this morning are subject to delay and cancellation’. This was displayed alternately with ‘bla, bla, ice forming on the conductor rails’.

Call me old fashioned, but isn’t winter supposed to be adverse? Doesn’t winter happen about this time every year? Ah, but further up the line, they’ve had 3 centimeters of snow, which I believe to be about 7/8th of an inch in old Money.

You’d have thought with all the technology and the years of hearing the same old story, someone somewhere would come up with something. I did manage to get to Canterbury and the Conductor announced proudly that we were the first ones to do so that morning – the last lot got a bus (seems the roads and the 20 year old coaches get through OK!).

Upon returning home in the evening, I switch on the Local TV News and, yes, it’s the headlines “Kent comes to standstill as winter sets in”. Sorry, but blimey o’riley is this what makes the headlines – minus 3 and less than an inch of snow.

We duly watched the fascinating scenes of children, whose schools had been closed, sledging down the half grass / half snowy slopes of Calverly Park, Tunbridge Wells and hear horrific stories of people stranded for 2 minutes waiting for the Supermarket to open because the keyholders car engine had frozen.

Are we really that bad as a nation, have we come to this! We hear a reliable forecast some 5 days beforehand, ample time to check the de-icer, anti-freeze, get the melting trains out, service the school heater boilers.

I believe we are, it’s just we love something different no matter what it is, something to phone up a mate and ask “what’s the snow like there”, “Are you sure you shut the cat in” and so on.

We can agree or disagree, but I don’t think we can argue the fact that it’s a part of our heritage to be agasp at the weather or something else.

Now we have to wait for the inevitable “hot day causes lots of people to overheat, Chemists sell out of Sun Cream” and one certain tabloids sure fire headline ‘Phew folks, wot a scorcher’!

Adverse adjective [before noun]
having a negative or harmful effect on something


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