Snow

On radio just said that in the Midlands the worst will be SW Mids - that'll be us then!

Here in North Cheshire it's been snowing thickly for most of the morning. Where we live, only way onto a road going to shops etc is down one of two steep roads. I could possibly get down it but a neighbour has just had real problems getting back up the 'hill'. So looks like we're snowed in. I've had a lovely time in the kitchen clearing out the fridge and making soups / casseroles with what I can find. Felt really cosy with the radio on as well. I was going out to do a big shop when I realised how bad the road was. We're very lucky to be safe,warm and well but I really feel for those whose lives are really disrupted by it all. Hope other gransnetters are tucked up warm.

Just tiny flakes again here, not making much difference to the few cms we already have.

Not a flake, so far, in Kintyre. You lot...please take care.

Except on foot of course.

Here in the S E its coming down quite thickly and settling.

Bad enough for DD to cancel her visit and me not to be able to go out this afternoon.

lily its possibly local childminders collecting the children and walking, that happens at our school.

I think you're right, glass. One of my DS and DDiL lives right opposite a primary school and it's a total traffic jam from 8.30 to 8.50. You can see from the way the drivers are dressed that they are on their way to work. Not nearly so busy at home time, so I think the children must walk home.

I would love to walk the DGC to school its only 2 miles in the next village, but due to location and tiny country roads its not possible, when the weather is suitable we do park some distance away and they travel the rest on their bikes or scooters which are then left at school in the bike stand until home time.

But there are people who live a stones throw from the school still drive, it must take longer to start the car and seat belt up than it would to walk.

Possibly working Mums do the drop on the way to work.

It is Snowing heavily in South Cheshire now. I am not going out with a ruler to measure it and my welly boots are in the Wendy House.

Given that so many schools around here are rural and need transport. Many very small village schools have closed in the last few years. There seems no point in bussing kids out to schools when they could get stranded if they cannot get back.

I think the massive increase in road traffic is part of this problem. more vehicles more small collisions, more congestion because of the collisions. Ad infinitum.
Its far better for all to just miss a day at school.
In the 1960s deep snow the cold remained for months but once the roads were cleared as long as the snow stopped they were passable.

Movedalot You are so right. It is unusual for children to walk school these days and in order to encourage them to do so all sorts of special schemes are put in place, such as Walk To School Fridays and the Walking Bus. Of course there was far less traffic when we were children so crossing roads and walking to school on your own was much safer. It was only after I had posted the anecdote about snowballs that it struck me that it was normal for mothers to let children under seven walk to and from school on their own in the 1950s, but I always walked with absentdaughter in the 1980s and, these days, most children are ferried there by car.

PJs, that is!

I think Tanith has exactly the right idea - PPJs and GN.

Don't you think 'walking distance' is a lot shorter now then it was? I remember walking miles in 1963 when we had a bad winter and again in probably 1967 being one of the few who made it to work even though I lived the furthest away.

A few years ago all the dancers at Birmingham Royal Ballet made it through the snow for a show and the orchestra gradually filtered in as the shows progressed. They audience appreciated it and gave thema cheer.

jeni , yes did not feel the quake but heard it. Sounded like a plane in the distance.

Well this weather wimp is trying to work out why her lounge still feels freezing. I know it's 20, just, but I usually keep it at 23! Still it's better than the 16 it was when I emerged from from bed like a butterfly ( a very drab one) from its chrysalis !

Yesabsent bunch of wimps is right. I know of two schools both on the outskirts of London , that announced yesterday they were closing today because of snow that hadn't started to fall. There is a bit now in London, but not awful.

glass!

Someone slap me "and yes everyone is wimps now."

artygran

Lilygran, I'm not surprised, then! You always have a basin full before everyone else (and it stays around longer!). We live in the South of the city on the Derbyshire border and we haven't seen any yet, but it's due to start any time now. We went over to Chesterfield yesterday and the countryside was in deep freeze but my goodness, it was pretty. Better than any Christmas card. Keep digging, Lilygran!

If it snowed hard during the morning our school would ring the bell three times, signalling that we would close at lunch time, but this was so that the pupils who had to travel some distance by train or bus could get home. The rest of us raced home to get the sledges out. But the next day the school would be open for business as usual and the roads and railway cleared. Even in the hard winter of 1947 when I was 6 and had had pneumonia, schools were open though I had my work sent home for me. In the winter of 63, I was travelling daily into Edinburgh and the railway was never affected in all the six weeks of 'the big freeze'.

Today it's snowing steadily. Overnight the snow just drifted lazily down and gave hardly any coverage. However, it has stepped up its efforts and I have scaled down any plans to go out.

I could walk to infant school (10 minutes) and primary school (25 minutes) but travelled by two tube trains to secondary school and still went during that terribly long, cold winter in the 1960s. Few members of staff or girls lived within walking distance and sometimes we were "late excused" because the trains were delayed (and on one famous occasion a cow was on the line near Rayners Lane) but there was never any suggestion that the school should be closed even when the ancient central heating was having serious wheezing problems. And didn't Boris the Blond Bombshell decide to close all bus routes in London when there was about 1 inch of snow a couple of years ago?

Bunch of wimps – definitely.

I remember crying on the way home from school because the snow was over the tops of my wellies and the gap of bare skin between my wellies and my skirt was blue. Alfred Wainwright said there's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing. He was right as far as what little girls wore in the 1950s!

I can remember going to school in bad weather and sitting at the desk wearing my coat scarf and gloves - like jeni said teachers and pupils lived within walking distance of schools then.

Thick covering of snow here, at the moment I have 2 adults and 4 children in the field next to my house some with a toboggan and the others making a very large snowman!!

I am stocked up so don't have to go out for about a week - hope its all gone by then!