It's just snow!

I adore all this snow malarkey, this is no secret, I spend every winter wishing for it, but all I seem to have heard this last week is people grumbling about it, so much so that even I begin to wish it would thaw just to stop the negativity.

Perhaps it isn't the snow itself that presents the problem, rather our seemingly complete reliance on that great invention, the car! The moment the roads are difficult to negotiate the whole infrastructure grinds to a halt, we are all so used to travelling distances to work etc. that it becomes impossible to live life 'normally' and many seem either never to have learned even the basics of controlling a vehicle in snow.... or apparently have lost the use of their legs as an alternative.

Minor panic seems to have set in, those who do venture to the supermarkets are buying up stocks of the staples like Armageddon is about to hit us and all around I hear precious little other than whingeing about how 'awful it all is'. Hells bells, it's a bit of snow, not nuclear fall out we are dealing with.

I do however appreciate it doesn't necessarily make life easy from time to time. Having found myself responsible now for my mother, the snow does present something of a new challenge. She can't walk any distance in this , well she thinks she can but all we need right now is a broken arm or hip to add to her misery, so walking has been banned by myself and her quack and the car is the only option for her from where we live.

This is however not an insurmountable problem, as many seem to think it might be. Yes, we need food to be bought etc. just like everyone else but I can walk and I have and do, each day, the two or so miles into town to get anything we need badly, and I have arms, I can and have dug my car out and negotiated the steep hill too and from the house on a few occasions, with the mother in tow to relieve the cabin fever she is beginning to suffer.

It's not all ideal I will readily admit but please, it's beautiful, it won't be here long, it's not an international disaster it's just a bit of snow, and it has it's positives. For those who really can't get out and are seriously inconvenienced by it due to illness or infirmity, there is always that old thing community spirit....which incidentally I have found quite heartwarming.

I have met people this last week who have lived for thirty or more years in the same street as we do and who until now, I never knew existed. We have organised gangs to clear the street, we have called on neighbours and shopped for them, I have had a coffee with someone I hauled off the pavement when he slipped over and I have watched families sledging in the park enjoying one another's company for a day or two, instead of having to spend their time negotiating the rat race.

It's not all bad guys, what is bad is that it brings into sharp focus just how insular we have all become in our day to day lives and how skewed we have our priorities...and I include myself in that!