It's Snow Joke

When I was young I lived on the 7th floor of a block of flats. It felt like the group of four blocks were in a hole rather than a valley. To the front and back fields rose steeply. The road between them fell steeply to the bus stop and then rose upwards before swinging to the right.

In winter, buses would carefully slide down from both directions and be unable to climb out.

The drivers and conductors would huddle in groups smoking.

Us children would take the shortcut to school, over the fields, knee deep in snow. I thought that was normal.

When I grew up and started to travel, I found that British were far from normal.

I would sit at the airport and hear the announcement: "Due to the weather conditions all flights have been cancelled until further notice". Followed by: "Finn Air flight AY4321 is now boarding. Please go the gate immediately".

I learned that in Sweden and Finland there was a law that said on November 1st all motor vehicle owners will take off their summer tyres and replace them with their winter tyres. And of course in spring the opposite happened.

We travelled around as normal. No one got stuck, no accidents. It was just a normal drive, except it was sometimes on 6 inches of compacted snow.

When we reached the hotel we parked in front of a little post, took a cable from the front radiator grill and plugged it into the post. Inside the car it was connected to a little fan heater which kept the car warm until we returned in the morning.

One evening we drove out for a pizza and parked the car on some spare land. It was dark, the sun goes down about 3:30pm at that time of the year. There was a car about 100 meters away. Its internal light was on and we could see two people smoking and talking inside.

We left about 10pm. The car was still there. Now the light was off. The windows were steamed up and it was rocking gently!