Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Personally, I am not terribly excited by the fact that it has snowed, because I still have to go to work and I wasn’t allowed to go home early yesterday. I admit to being a little perplexed as to why if I can get to work with no problems, none of the teachers in Birmingham schools are capable of doing likewise, but I am rather glad that they seemingly cannot, because it meant the roads were nice and free this morning and my bus arrived in record time 
I would add that I am also rather impressed with myself that so far I have managed not to fall over in this particular snow, but they say that pride comes before a fall and so perhaps I’d better not!
The chaos in London yesterday does strike me as a bit ridiculous, although I do recognise that we can’t be expected to own as many snow-ploughs as the Russians. And I certainly don’t advocate anyone blaming Boris, who is the bestest mayor in the history of the world ever and the only guy I would dump Babel for 
Something which did make me smile yesterday, however, was what happened to the US audit partner who was flying in specially to review my file.
His flight was scheduled to arrive at Heathrow early yesterday morning, but Heathrow was of course closed due to the bad weather. As a brief aside, it also made me laugh on BBC News 24 last night when they interviewed someone from Heathrow explaining that the problem was not that they didn’t have enough snow-ploughs, but more that there was so much snow they had nowhere to put it! Anyway, our audit partner had his plane diverted elsewhere. Midmorning he rang the office in a state of extreme agitation, explaining that he was in Scotland. We all became rather agitated too, imagining that he’d been flown to Aberdeen and would have a 12 hour train journey to reach us, throwing us out on every deadline we had worked so hard to achieve. Fortunately the audit manager had the presence of mind to ask him whereabouts in Scotland he was.
Cardiff.
Now really, it is unfair to laugh at that, because there are a lot of American states I might struggle to mark on a map. The manager explained to him that Cardiff was in Wales, and further that Wales was not part of Scotland, when this seemed to be creating further confusion. It is really a very simple matter to get from Cardiff to Birmingham on a train, all the more so because there was actually no snow in Cardiff, but for some reason the Powers-That-Be had decided that it we couldn’t possibly ask an American to catch a train. The plan had originally been for him to take a taxi from Heathrow to Birmingham – OMG, can you imagine how much that would cost?!! 
He therefore made valiant efforts to find a taxi prepared to take him to Birmingham from Cardiff. He failed, miserably. Apparently Welsh taxi drivers were somewhat averse to driving into England.
In the end, he hired a car and people attempted to give him directions from this end. He managed to find the M5 but went down it in the wrong direction and ended up in Bristol 
Worse, he didn’t realise that Bristol wasn’t Birmingham (well, they both begin with B!) and caused great confusion when he announced his arrival at my company’s office there. By the time he finally arrived in Birmingham it was gone half four in the afternoon, which meant he had a mere hour to review my audit file – hardly enough time to make any criticism at all
He was one angry guy though, having come from Denver, Colorado where they are accustomed to an awful lot more snow that we have here!
February 4th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I originally took that to mean he drove on the wrong side of the road! I thought there would be carnage!
February 7th, 2009 at 12:18 am
That is hilarious. I guess there are obvious reasons why he didn’t become a geographer. But even if he did drive to the wrong place I have to give him credit for driving on what to him would seem like the wrong side of the road!
February 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Yeah, to be fair he did quite well considering he was probably tired/jetlagged after a long flight and then unexpectedly had to drive for several hours on the other side of the road in the snow. There were further problems two days later when he needed to fly from London to South Africa, but his hire car had to be taken back to Cardiff. In the end they stuck him in a taxi and one of our members of staff drove the car to Wales and took a train back!
I hastened to add that we only had about three inches of snow, which probably isn’t snow at all by your standards
February 7th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
By my standards, three inches isn’t much. But by Washington standards, it would be a crisis! Last week schools — even my university — closed for two days because of maybe an inch of snow. Obama complained that DC residents are wimps and such a thing would never happen in Chicago. But I guess DC doesn’t have the snow trucks or experience to know how to deal with a little snow.
Does London really get so little snow normally?
February 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Yeah, I was watching the news just and they said it’s the worst snow we’ve had for 18 years. That sounds about right – I can remember there being really heavy snow when I was seven, because I had pneumonia and wasn’t allowed to go and play in it
If it snows in the UK it’s normally in Scotland or northern England, so I guess it was quite a shock for London… But even so I think they overreacted slightly and I’m especially confused as to why some of the Underground (subway) lines were closed!!!