Enough now…

Well it’s Sunday and with a new working week looming horribly at me my mood is being brought down by the sight of snow. Not now deep and crisp and even. More compacted, slippery and increasingly mucky. The sky is also a lowering grey so I can’t even go out and take photographs of any still relatively virgin expanses of the white stuff in the late afternoon sun, as I had planned. The Met Office has now suggested that the next fall of snow will not be as heavy as feared, so we can’t even get over excited about a possible armageddon/new ice age/shortage of bread in the co-op. I might even have to get on a bus and go to work.

To cap it all, my nearly 19 year old son – fruit of my loins, light of my life etc etc – has been watching the blatant electioneering and has again been persuaded by David ‘Its not my fault I went to Eton’ Cameron to consider putting a cross against a Conservative party candidate at the next election.  That candidate is one Mark Formosa, who has been to Tory boot camp, learnt the oily smile and done his best to jump on every local bandwagon making its way across the plains of Taunton Deane. Fortunately my son has parents whose Liberal Democrat credentials will soften, but not cancel out, the impact of his naivete by putting their marks against Jeremy Browne’s name.  So can’t we just get the election over and done with – how about Thursday next week? Save us 5 months of  a daily dose of what will undoubtedly be the worst soap opera on telly.

Let it snow, let it snow etc

This is, I suppose, a kind of diary. Perhaps even a travelogue in a way, or that may be a tad pretentious. However, much money can be made and humour gleaned from simple observation of the world we most closley inhabit, and poetry – well Keats can take the most everyday occurance and find exceptional beauty in it. Would I had a tenth of his talent, or a tenth of the income Stuart Maconie gets from his fabulous social commentary.

 At present, the land outside our door, literally, has changed from murky, foggy, damp and rather typically west country wet and miserable to an icy waste, where 21st century glaciers are forming, literally breaking up the surface of our world. I exaggerate not – there are going to be a hell of a lot of re-suracing works done on the roads and pavements this year. That is if it ever thaws out. Minus 9!! Whoever thought that possible. Crisp snow is gradually being turned into pack ice as the sub-zero temperatures continue, and as the sun sets patches like glass are highlighted.

There is a lot said about how the transport infrastructure in Britain, and our general readiness for these ‘extreme weather events’, falls far short of other countries. To be frank though, we could all go out and buy snow chains and skis and we wouldn’t see another flake of snow in the southern half of the country for years. This is only ‘extreme’ because the whole country is covered in the white stuff. Anyone living north of Nottingham must fume when the London centric BBC changes the TV schedules to cover the ‘big freeze’. They have been dealing with these conditions every year in living memory, finding ways to live with it.  I would be interested to see how many women ‘up north’ still try to walk to work in high heeled court shoes – undoubtedly muttering under their breath at the lack of grit on the pavements. And did you know for instance that you shouldn’t try and drive off in first gear in snowy conditions? Causes unnecessary wheel spin. Apparently. We soft southerners are wusses to the core.

Well at least I thought we were. My daughter’s school has decided to open tomorrow, despite being in one of the most inaccessible positions in Somerset. The kids who live locally have to walk in or else, and my daughter is so desperate to be there for the fun that she has got her dad to agree to dig the car out to drive her the six miles in on country roads tomorrow morning. Who said teenagers today were lazy and lacked comittment to education? A hopeful parent who would much rather stay in bed in the warm I should think.

Kids, Keats & Kicking Out – they’re growing up, so now what?

The very public musings of a poetry loving forty-something as she struggles to come to terms with time to herself again…..