SOGGY SNOW

I really don't like people who use their creative output vehicles to moan. It's such an easy way to pen a few witty words by making observations on the world around you and then moaning about it. The BBC seems to use half its licence fee indulging old actors and journalists to do exactly that. It doesn't require much thought or reasoned argument and most people of a certain age can relate to it but it's a lazy way to write.

That said, this morning I can't help myself. SNOW. Snow is only any fun if you are skiing and the snow is deep and crisp and the sky is the purest blue and you are surrounded by a breathtakingly beautiful Alpine scene. The rest of the time it's a right royal pain.
All week the Met office have been predicting snow of gargantuan proportions. Ever since that hurricane that wasn't they have covered themselves by predicting the most extreme weather conditions. Occasionally they are right but the accurate prediction of snow seems to defeat them.
Of course, in the light of such voices of doom, the media ( which has nothing better to do since the invention of 24 hour news) goes in to overdrive and winds the whole country in to a frenzy of anticipation. It as at this point that I start to lose my rag. Notwithstanding the fact that the snow predictions for my part of the world are rarely correct, people in positions of power ( and my particular bug bear today is head teachers) start cancelling things. This all occurs despite the fact that they do not know how much snow there will be. They just listen to the media hype and over react. Yesterday the senior school decided to close before a flake had even tumbled gently from the sky.

And so, we wake this morning and open our curtains to see a thin covering. Even at 6.30 our suburban road was easily passable, clear tracks being visible in the slush. It's not even cold so there is no ice to speak of. Shame we haven't got the 8 inches that they predicted but, hey, we didn't really expect it.

Then the phone starts to ring. Lots of mothers twittering about what to do. Ilkley is a very small town. Barely any pupils live more that a 15 minute walk from school. There is hardly any snow and what there is is melting fast. But, as the Head is concerned for the welfare of his staff he will only have the school open for children of parents who work. Is this because teachers cannot drive through slush? When I had a proper job if you failed to turn up on a snowy day and personnel, on checking with British Rail, discovered that the trains were getting through then you were docked a day's holiday if you failed to make it. But that is the real world rather than the one populated by academics.

But, and I do apologise for going on but I am on a roll now, half the teaching staff and almost all the classroom assistants live in Ilkley. I am dismayed.

I know I should be pleased to have my children marauding through the house with hundreds of soggy and over excited friends leaving boots, wet gloves and chunks of ice in their wake but clearly I am not a good enough mother and I would rather they were all at school doing what they are supposed to do, learning that life goes on no matter what the weather and that snow can provide a bit of a distraction at playtime. Hear endeth the lesson. Sorry.