Mid-week, with snowflakes

[la_marquise]

We had some mild excitement on Saturday. The marquis and I, with others, had been out at a friend's house for a gaming session (Aftermath, for them as likes to know what system), and, while we were playing, it started to snow.
This happens. Snow is, as we know, a natural phenomenon. All over the world, countries are snowed on and people say, oh, it's snowing, and get on with their lives.
Apart, of course, from the British. We never learn. It snows almost every winter. And, almost every winter, the entire country goes completely insane with panic. OMG white stuff! On the roads! It's white! It's, like, on the roads (and the rails and the runways). Every single year without fail, the country slithers and gibbers its way to a halt.
So there we were, at J's house, 5 miles outside Cambridge, with three inches of snow and more falling and, to be fair, some side wind.
At this point, it is unavoidable that I sound slightly smug. I apologise, but, as I said, unavoidable. Y'see, I spent several years living and working and driving in Wales. It snows in Wales. There are mountains -- actual mountains, as opposed to the local variant (in Cambridgeshire dialect, 'hill' means a slight dip. It also means a hill, which is confusing, but never in reference to the same geographical feature). I have had to drive in and on snow before. (Remind me to tell you about the time I had to do the high pass above Machynlleth in a snow-storm at night.) I am not hugely bothered by snow. My little Citroen is light and game and front-wheel drive. We bounced and clambered our way out of J's village (via one U-turn, to avoid where two other cars had become inextricably entangled with a ditch), up the little hill, down the longer hill, round the roundabout and so on, back into Cambridge to deliver first muninnhuginn and then ourselves to our respective homes. It was a little slippy. The drifting was a little disorienting. We coped -- and so did the large double decker bus I saw cheerfully completing its route. It was, pretty much, fine, and I am very proud of that small Citroen. My underpowered, fibre-glass girl car was light enough not to have problems with the depth of the snow, and just powerful enough not to struggle with getting going again after stops.
But it got me thinking, about driving -- which I have done a lot of in my time, and which bores me, and which, nevertheless, does not intimidate me. Snow? Black ice? Freezing fog? Enough loose water to cause vehicles to aquaplane? In the dark on a narrow mountain road with bits of rock falling off? Been there, can do that, survived to tell the tale. I drive because it's useful. I have, in the past, driven because I had to, because that car, that skill, was the one thing that let me put some distance between me and the hell of my job, that let me get to the place where I didn't feel frightened all the time. I've driven through heavy snow and gales to get home -- or to get back to where I worked, to be there to do my duty. And because I *had* to -- felt I had to -- I long ago learned that fearing bad roads and bad light and bad weather doesn't get me anywhere, I just have to do it anyway. I'm an average to mediocre driver. My only virtue -- if it is a virtue -- is that, when it comes to bad driving conditions, I grit my teeth and do the best I can. (The aquaplaning is the worst: I was okay, but I was terrified one of the cars that was aquaplaning was going to hit me.)
And I have a small light car, when it comes to Saturday. A friend who is a much better driver than me got stuck, because her car is that bit heavier and that bit more complicated. She was okay -- she got to a friend's house. But that could have been me.
And it's snowing again as I write. Tomorrow, I have to get up at Oh! My! o'clock to take the car in for a service. I guess it will be Oh! My! -30 mins, to allow for snow conditions.
And, y'know, I like snow. I really do. The light it casts at night; the way it reshapes and re-shadows the world, the way it turns angles and edges into curves and waves. Even the way, sometimes, it gets under my wheels and makes them spin.

Comments

[muninnhuginn]

You were a reassuringly calm and capable driver.

Today's lot doesn't look half so threatening, I say hopefully, since LL's at the theatre in Bury St Edmunds and M has to pick her up from Gt Abington later. Shall worry until they're back.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Thank you.
I am sure she'll be fine: they seem to be very prepared this time.

[helen-lerewth.livejournal.com]

This is really vivid -- felt as if I was experiencing it with you! Our snow came and went like a dream.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ours thawed a bit, but much of it is still in place, with a thin new layer over the slippy bits.

[lagilman]

There are all different kinds of toughness & bravery.... :-)

I have to admit, there is a LOT of snickering on the NorthEastern Seaboard when England gets hit with a snowstorm. By now, y'all should have invested in some plows, salt, and tire chains...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I know. The Scandinavians and Germans laugh at us, too.
I'm not sure it's brave, exactly. it's the same thing I do when on difficult ski runs -- I put the panicking off till later, because I have to get through this first.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

It only really snows in the South of England for about two weeks of the year - it's cheaper to shut down for that time than to invest in snowploughs, chains etc. (just as we don't bother installing air conditioning for the two weeks of hot weather we get in summer).

The people who can drive in snow/ice usually learned in Scotland and Wales where they had the chance to practice (and they do have snowploughs and grit).

The roads are not the problem - it's the ungritted pavements where there's a dusting of snow under solid ice that lead to the most accidents.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Anne has fitted winter tyres for this winter, and has a shovel and a set of 'get out of trouble' ramps in the back - but then, she may have to get out of a snowy farmyard at 3am....

I OTOH have a set of snow socks for my driving wheels, since my commute is almost entirely on cleared roads except for getting out of the small private road we live on. I also have ABS, and a brain :D

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think you're an excellent driver, especially after being in the car with you in Wales. I grew up in the mountains (the Rockies) where it snowed, and I know what a pain driving in snowy mountains is. The difference is, your roads are much narrower and winding compared to the ones I drove on, so it's even harder to drive in Wales. And at this point, I've lived in oh-my-God-it's-raining-what-do-we-do California for so long, I've forgotten how to drive in snow. I salute you.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Thank you.
And yes, California in the rain... That one makes us Britons laugh, I'm afraid.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I, otoh, was born in and to snow. Culturally, geographically and personally. Born in a blizzard. Where blizzards were the fact of life. Where winter was the fact of life. Summer's function was to get ready for winter (with all that fun stuff you got to do in the heat and plus mosquitoes).

OTH, running away from winter if you can, which started in my cultural geographically locale about the time of my parents getting to be Our Parents, became a natural thing -- for some. It wasn't almost ideological, it became political, the people who went away for some time or all the time of winter to warmer climates when it got to be financially feasible for people to do.

Love, C.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I would love to have been born in a blizzard. How distinctive! (Though, given I was born in July, I would either have had to be in the southern hemisphere, or the weather would have had to be doing something really weird even for the UK.)
I like the cold: I like the winter: I am one who would run away from the heat, given the option.
You get some worrying extremes of weather over your side: a friend in Chicago veers between 12 foot of snow and unbearably hot and humid.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

It's very clean, fluffy snow (well clean in places) isn't it? Panda is still not impressed .

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's lovely. The boy cats have now decided they quite like it, and are out making sure everyone knows that it's *theirs*. Moon, being more sensible, is on the boiler snoozing.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

We have a weird mixture of opposites here -- people who think, "oh, it's just a bit of snow," and carry on as if it were dry, and people who think, "OMGSNOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!" and drive so slowly that they don't keep momentum and get stuck. What's really fun is when people haven't thought about the fact that there is frequently rather a lot of ice. And ice is not at all fun. It is for this reason that I now live half an hour's walk from campus and a quarter hour from the nearest supermarket!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I took the AMT (advanced motorcyclists' test) years back and it made me realise that most drivers are never trained to drive/ride to the conditions. Riding a bike on a skidpan is....um.....interesting!

What it couldn't train me for though was the day when semi drunk white van man sideswiped me...............

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ice is scary: I can drive when its about, but I try not to.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Don't get me going on the Brits and snow!

We have a Russian friend, Anna, who's a Muscovite and she giggles herself silly if she visits in winter at the reaction to 2cm of the white stuff.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I can well imagine!

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Heh.
I remember at least one instance of the aquaplaning....

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Me too. The week after I passed my driving test!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I don't drive at all, and am very impressed at your sang-froid.

I don't ski, either - and don't fancy it in the least. I managed to sit down unexpectedly on a patch of ice, this morning (here in the frozen north, we have ice rather than snow at the moment).

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ouch.
I think it's like anything else you've had to deal with more than once. Grit teeth, because the alternative is worse.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I wonder if part of the problem is that we seldom get ENOUGH snow - we get enough to obscure kerbs and road markings, enough to be a nuisance for drivers, but not enough to make it either worth while preparing (unless you have a job that requires you to be out in it in the wee small hours in the countryside) or, more to the point, enough to settle in and be 'proper' snow. My Skoda is, I discovered two years ago, too heavy for snow. I've never had a problem driving in snow before I had this car - my old Metro was fine, and every car before that. But this Skoda ... it's like driving a brick on an icy surface. It slides around on even the smallest amounts of snow, and in anything deeper grinds itself into a hole and stops. Bah! Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that if you live in a country that gets ENOUGH snow, you can put snow tyres on your car and carry on for the several weeks/months that the snow is there. When I discovered how useless my Skoda is in snow, I investigated winter tyres, and was told that they're fine on snow, but useless if you're NOT driving on snow. Chains are great if there's lots of snow, otherwise just damage your car. And so on. I investigated all types of wrap-around tyres devices, all of which state firmly that they must be removed AS SOON AS the car is not driving on snow.

Where I live, in a nice corner of suburban Bicester, my little close leads onto a fairly narrow road that invariably has cars parked on alternate sides, causing driving along it to be a zig-zag process at the best of times. If I can get through this nightmare and get to the main road, that's sufficiently well used for the snow to be pretty much just slush for the average British snow. So tyre covers wouldn't work. If I could pick the car up and carry it round the corner ...! But the thought of trying to slide JUST SO through all those parked cars ... I'd rather stay home!

PS I love driving in fog, I used to live in Norfolk and we had real fogs there, none of these slightly misty days that people all fogs round here .

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I'm sure this is the reason. We don't have enough to make the infrastructure worth it.
Fog is good, though the fact my car is pale blue isn't the best thing for that condition!

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

As you say, it varies from place to place. We happen to have had several winters in a row with a couple of weeks of snow, but many years southern and eastern England don't get any snow at all.

I did most of my learning to drive in Herefordshire, which tends to have a bit less snow than Wales. Mum did most of the teaching, but Dad did weigh in on how to cope with snow. His favorite story involved going over Bromyard Downs to find that a lorry hadn't made it up one hill, and was coming down again sideways.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I vividly recall our family car going up -- and sliding back down -- a hill near Bodenham three times before making it, one year when there was snow.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I had to do the high pass above Machynlleth in a snow-storm at night

You are braver than me! When I arrived back at Machynlleth station last Christmas and dug the car out of the snow drift that had covered it, I went round the coast to get home. Even that was Not Much Fun in a sporty Astra on a road that had several inches of snow on it. There was even snow on the beach at Aberdovey. But this year, we have not had a single flake yet. There's not even much on the mountains.

I used to drive in snow every winter to get to work because it's always worse up through Bala and Corwen, but now I work from home, there's no point in taking unnecessary risks, so I tend to leave the car and walk instead.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I'm scared to death even as a passenger driving mountain roads -- and in winter, the terror is even more intense!

Gah.

Then I think of Eleanor of Acquataine and her ladies crossing the Alps in the twelfth century, walking, carried in a litter and on horse and / or muleback, in the snow .... She was a very brave woman. Me, not brave at all, rather a total coward.

Love, C.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

I think we Brits make such a deal of snow, because we don't get enough of it? With a rare treat, you want to milk it a bit. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

There is that!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

The year I passed my driving test (age 17) happened to be one of those snowy winters so I got lessons from my Dad in how to drive in snow. I had one of the few front wheel drive cars in those days which made it easier, of course. (Now they all seem to be FWD.)

Living on the edge of the Yorkshire Pennines is also a good place to get experience of driving in snow. I'm not dead keen on driving (boring) and my night viosion isn't as good as it used to be, so I'd always rather let someone else do the job, especially after dark on unlit roads, but I have done a lot of snow driving. I once came back over the Pennines after a gig in snow and freezing fog with BB curled up on the back seat with a migraine. We'd been diverted from the Woodhead Pass, which was closed, so we had to take the A62, which I wasn't familiar with. In situations like that you just have to get on with it and take it steady, avoid first gear like the plague, try not to touch your brakes except very gently when you're not on a bend, think ahead to the next potential obstacle and don't panic. Fresh snow is not so bad. Slush can be horrible.

Once, on Artisan tour in the old Renault Trafic van (front wheel drive) we ended up in a jam on the M25 with about 6 or 8 inches of snow down and cars and trucks slewing all over the place. We got as far as the exit around the A12, heading north, and there were three HGVs stalled in a line across all three carriageways, so traffic was diverting down the sliproad, but BB spotted the hard shoulder was empty and covered in fresh snow so he aimed for the gap, got past the three HGVs and we did the next two junctions of the M25 on virgin snow with not another vehcle in sight. Bliss. The snow itself wasn't a problem once the traffic was out of the way. We just strundled slow and steady, made use we had enough momentum for the hills and enjoyed the ride.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I thought of you, in fact -- as in, 'I bet J would have no problem with this'. And yes, the teeth gritting and just doing it is the only real way to deal with it.
Slush is awful: I'd almost rather have ice, because at least then other people take more care. But slush *looks* safe, so they go too fast and skid and...
And snow by oneself is lovely.