I was getting increasingly irritable at the BBC footage from St Pancras station. The reporter was doing his utmost to provoke good natured passengers who had been waiting for hours in the cold."What do you think about the way the UK has handled this?" he probed relentlessly, but the charming Europeans refused to give way. "Has it ruined your Christmas?"
Every time a train breaks down, we're told by peevish passengers that the train company should have had space blankets and drinks on board. Well seeing as snow is entirely random, not guaranteed, and hits these islands for, oh, two weeks a year, tops, what about passengers being more prepared instead, on the off chance?
Then there are the airports.Yes they could all invest hugely in snow ploughs and de-icing rigs and goodness knows what else. But there isn't that much money sculling around, is there? Can you imagine if BAA did just that, and then their profits went down and there was no snow. The newspapers would of course have a field day, and start trotting off statistics about the likelihood of snow.The last thing that really bugs me is when people start talking about Finland and other countries, and how well they prepare. Yes, they have winter tyres, snow chains, the full Monty. But they also know that they WILL get snow for several month. It's a dead cert. So they have to prepare for it. For us it's like a roulette wheel at Las Vegas.
Photos show those people made of sterner stuff, J's friends the Orion Harriers, on their Sunday run through Epping forest.
