Actually, it's not snowing at all. I'm lying. We haven't had a flake this side of Christmas, just a stark unrelenting cold spell (-6 while I was walking to work yesterday apparently, with a balmy high of -1 at midday) but apparently we could be in for a light dusting of snow later in the day. At which point the University will no doubt be closed in a panic and everyone sent home.
So, what's it like for everyone else at the moment? Are you all cowering in your beds, thick duvets pulled tight around you as you try to beat back the icey hand of death, or are you just, like, getting on with it?
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We do actually have proper snow here in Cheshire. About 10cm. First time I've seen it like this in years and years. Cars are getting stuck on the road outside our house. I set off to walk with the boys to school and then decided to phone and check, just in case, and they said to stay at home. First time I can remember school being shut anywhere that we've lived, even in the mid-90s when we had a couple of bad winters.
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It was pretty bad here last year. My car got stuck in the snow in my street (it's a convertible sports car. Snow was the last thing they were thinking of when it was designed) so I walked the six miles to work in almost blizzardlike snow. When I was crossing the field on the final stretch of my journey, the snow was up to my knees in places. Took me the better part of two hours to walk in. Then I was promptly told that the place was closed because nobody had shown up so I had to walk home again.
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Last February was bad here, too. Impossible to cycle. At the moment it's just flippin' freezing, so business as usual. Of course, it's not as bad as American snow, which is made of anti-matter and therefore obliterates everything it touches as it sweeps the country back to the state of nothingness that existed before the big bang, and even then they still carry on as normal.
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Super-cold, here. No snow, though. Cycled in to work. Nearly got knocked off my bike at Vauxhall. So, to the gummy twat driving the JMD Recycling van, "Yes, you ARE a wanker!"
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I think you're getting confused. America wasn't made in a Big Bang. God waved his magical hand and everything suddenly popped into existence 5000 years ago.
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LOL. You call that stuck. ralph would have driven that at 100 mph all the way and taken advantage of the cars skidding off the road to get to work extra quickly.
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It's cold in Brighton but no snow. Apparently it will start tonight and continue for 5 days.
I'm wearing a full on suit as I was meant to have my final interview at 10.30 but I've just got an e-mail to tell me that the woman who was meant to be interviewing me is off sick so it will be rescheduled but obviously I don't know when so basically I'm going to have to keep wearing a suit to work until I find out.
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It's snowing in Sheffield. Luckily only had a 5 min drive from hotel to work. I did have to drive up a snow filled slope to the car park though which I'm a bit worried about going back down later. My Brakes were struggeling on the flat road as it was.
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Surely a 5 minute drive is only about a 20 minute walk? You could probably sell your car and pay off your nan in no time.
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He's had quite a few haircuts since then. But yeah, he does need to sort that out. He also needs to have a better supply of vegetables and bits of coal so we could have made a more traditional looking snowman face. I sculpted the face, incidentally.
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quote:Originally posted by Cherry In Hove: LOL. You call that stuck. ralph would have driven that at 100 mph all the way and taken advantage of the cars skidding off the road to get to work extra quickly.
Oh no. You don't take a rear-wheel drive MX5 out in the snow. Well, not in the kind of snow you get 'round these parts anyway.
We've not had much in the way of snow yet (maybe 36 inches all winter) but it's been cold (highs around -13, wind chills of -40). Then again, that's about normal for winter here.
quote:Originally posted by mart: It's no wonder your finances are fucked, Hades, if you insist on living in a hotel...
I work away from home ocashinonally. My company pay for the hotel. I'm here for 3 nights then back home.
quote:Originally posted by Cherry In Hove: Surely a 5 minute drive is only about a 20 minute walk? You could probably sell your car and pay off your nan in no time.
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An MX5 would be fine in that snow if it had a locking differential, like a hydro-locker or a spool diff, but with a Torsen you just get mad wheelspin on one wheel and the other doesn't turn, because it acts as an open diff when there's no traction. I tried easing on the handbrake to get the diff to lock but it did nothing unfortunately. Just stuck in wheel ruts and then refused to go any further.
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quote:Originally posted by Cherry In Hove: You should get your company to pay you the money for your hotel and then keep the money and sleep in your car.
Well the bottle of water i left in there overnight had frozen ....so maybe in the summer.
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Thing is though, right, you get all these people being all like "oh this country's so gay, we can't even cope with a little bit of snow, Europe laughs at us, rah rah rah" which is pretty cretinous because it implies that we should plough (pun) millions, if not billions, into the infrastructure needed to cope with what amounts to a few days of snow a year. Generally speaking it's easier just to say to hell with it and shut up shop for a bit, and wait till it thaws slightly. Obviously there are plenty of examples of people taking this too far - like schools which will close the moment snow falls because apparently kids these days are so fat and unbalanced that they can't stand in a snowy playground without slipping over and hurting themselves on the numerous sharp edges that you would assume litter these places. This is obviously stupid.
But actually it seems to me that for the past 5 years or so we've seen a fairly big increase in the amount of time we're being affected by stuff like snow. So I wonder if actually it is time that people learnt about things like snow chains, or kept a spare set of winter tyres, and companies made more of an effort to encourage their staff to come in on snow days. Here we have home working contingencies so a fair number of people would be able to work from home if it came to it, but on the other hand when it snowed last year people were given free days off - they didn't even have to take it as holiday, even if they lived within a couple of miles of the place, and there was no requirement for people to demonstrate they had made an effort to actually get in.
Surely there comes a point where closing down businesses for a week or more each year ends up costing more money than putting in place the infrastructure that would allow businesses to stay open through these snowy times.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: Obviously there are plenty of examples of people taking this too far - like schools which will close the moment snow falls because apparently kids these days are so fat and unbalanced that they can't stand in a snowy playground without slipping over and hurting themselves on the numerous sharp edges that you would assume litter these places. This is obviously stupid.
I find this quite depressing, really. We quite happily set off to walk to school this morning. Cars were really struggling, but walking was no problem, with a bit of extra adventure thrown in. But the school is shut, so the kids are lazing around on the sofa. I'll get them outside later, but they should really be having mental snowball fights with their mates, and generally learning how to deal with snow, how to keep warm, how to move about in it. Shame.
I suppose it's not the teachers' fault if they can't get in to work from miles away, but there should be a scheme (think this has been mentioned here before) where teachers always report to their local school if they can't get to where they work, and hopefully that would roughly balance out and at least someone could supervise the kids and give them something to do, even if it wasn't a proper school day.
I dunno, no big deal I suppose, but it's not the kids who are fat and unable to walk, really. Not round these parts anyway.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: schools which will close the moment snow falls because apparently kids these days are so fat and unbalanced that they can't stand in a snowy playground without slipping over and hurting themselves on the numerous sharp edges that you would assume litter these places. This is obviously stupid.
I find this quite depressing, really.
I'm not sure where this actually happens... maybe it's just made-up Daily Mail stuff? The Masketeers have been to school in SW1 and SE15. I've got friends with kids or working in schools all over London and as far as I can tell kids DO go mental in the snow. Last year the boys' school WAS closed for a day but they and all their mates headed outside. The streets, Peckham Rye, Telegraph Hill, all full of kids playing, sledding, making snowmen, having snowball fights. Where are all these lazy, accident-prone, fat kids?
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Well they do exist, these schools. A colleague has two kids and not only is their school shut the moment it so much as gets cloudy, they are so obsessed with health and safety that when they have their annual sports day, the sacks used for the sack races have the bottoms cut out becuase jumping in a sack is too dangerous.
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Also, just to give it all some balance, when I was a kid (quite a long time ago) our school closed down one winter because the heating broke down, which coincided with them removing all the asbestos, if I remember it right (though I might be merging two incidents of closure into one), and it meant that we spent weeks (it felt like weeks, and was certainly a fairly long time) off school, coming in one day a week for lessons that lasted ten minutes, when homework was given out and handed in.
Everyone sat in class in parkas and scarves and hats and gloves and so on. Then fucked off home again.
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