Heart attack

Saturday, March 03, 2018

Arctic Conditions

The wintry weather continues. It didn't snow over-night, but looking out of the window at the road in front of the house, it has the appearance of a Siberian wasteland. Not that I've been to Siberia, you understand. The car has a pall of snow across it. Alfie rushes out into the garden, but doesn't hang around for long, as you can imagine. Being a little dog, he doesn't take to the cold very well.

If I did want to go out in the car, I'd have to negotiate around a very annoying van which is parked in the immediate space behind the car. It's going to be quite difficult to get out and so avoid this van, made even more troublesome with the road conditions being so slippery. I don't think the grid roads in Milton Keynes are going to be too bad, but the roads in Eaglestone, the inner ring road in particular, are likely to be hazardous, with hard-packed ice. I just hope we get a decent thaw and the snow goes completely. There will be trouble if we get a hard frost and the surface of the roads around here become like an ice skating rink.

Saturday morning. There's been quite a considerable fall of snow over-night. The road at the front of the house has quite a layer of snow on it. The large van is still parked immediately behind the car as I mentioned in the post yesterday. I went out earlier to clear the snow off the car with a broom and cleared a path from the door down to the car. Quite a thick carpet of snow around the car, but it's not really a problem, you just have to be careful how you move about so to avoid slipping over.

I eventually managed to manoeuvre the car out of the drive and onto the walkway to the side of our house. I did this just to make sure I could actually get out of the house, because there was quite a deep layer of snow immediately behind the car and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get out. I had to get out to go to Sainsbury's as we were slowly running out of food, although we had some bits and pieces in the freezer just in case. The snow is making all sound very muffled, a bit like having something, such as material that absorbs sound in a recording studio or concert hall. There is a man further along our road clearing snow with a shovel.

 I drove out of the estate, leaving via the exit near the shop. The road surface along the inner ring road was covered in snow, so I had to drive very slowly as I didn't want the car to slide as it might have done if I'd braked suddenly. The grid roads going towards the centre of Milton Keynes was relatively snow-free, but you can't trust other drivers to drive at a reasonably slow speed so it was necessary to drive at less than the normal speed. The underground carpark at Sainsbury's looks like a lake. No doubt this is caused by snow that has come in via car's tyres. Just one huge mass of water. The actual store was very quiet and the carpark was virtually empty, do doubt because most people didn't want to venture out in such bad conditions. Who can blame them? Fortunately I was in and out of Sainsbury's fairly quickly.

Unless we get a further fall of snow, conditions should remain fairly reasonable to drive in. That being said, people need to reduce their speed when driving and just take a bit more care as well as respect other people. It's those who drive too fast who are responsible for accidents, running into other vehicles, sliding all over the place and possibly ending up in ditches and hitting innocent people. I just hope that we don't get a hard frost over the next few days and then we will have to contend with flooding when the thaw happens. Gary next door has been clearing snow at the front of his house. At least people are making an effort to keep going, regardless of the snow. On the television news this morning, people are complaining that there is too much coverage of the snow. Why does it have to be described as 'The Beast From The East'? Just a sort of tabloid journalism term. People being stranded in the snow, in cars on a motorway somewhere, I'm not entirely sure where, and some passengers on a train near Christchurch, Dorset. Did they not listen to the news? We had been warned about the current weather conditions, so why so surprised when things grind to a halt? Just don't go out and then expect others to risk their necks to be rescued. Although there was a more positive piece on BBC Breakfast about people who have four-wheel drive vehicles helping to ferry N.H.S. staff to various hospitals, somewhere in the West of England. It's good to see that some form of community is thriving, however small it might be.

We had a delivery from Very. We weren't expecting it until Monday at the latest. A Tassimo coffee machine and some clothes for Carol. The instructions for the coffee machine are quite complicated. It didn't come with coffee pods so we couldn't try it out, but we had to fill the water tank and flush it through so it is now ready to use. We have ordered some of the pods through Amazon which should arrive sometime before 8 this evening.

Later. It seems that the thaw has begun. By the look of things, a lot of the snow seems to be disappearing. The road at the front of the house is beginning to clear and you can see the tarmac surface. I'm just wondering whether all the snow, or some of it, will be gone by the morning, although if we get a sharp frost over-night I doubt if will mean the end of the snow.

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