Well, not quite. Behind this fairytale facade there’s another, far more ominous reality. Cars bumping into each other, bumping into trees, bumping into snowmen, burying in snow, driving into ditches, into snowbanks. Flights, train and bus services cancelled, schools, to pupils’ delight, closed.
Ach, a total disaster.
And then I think: ‘only in Britain’…
Since the time I arrived in the country, each year the BBC has made these ‘special reports’ on the ‘severe weather conditions’. Newsreaders, politicians and god knows who else warned the people of Britain of how dangerous it is to get in your car and drive… anywhere. Same old story every year.
And this is what I don’t understand. If this happens every year and has been happening for years and years, why do they not finally stop calling it ‘the big freeze’, ‘extreme weather’, ‘treacherous conditions’ and simply call it ‘winter’ instead, like others do? Or if this has only been like that for the last five years, is it really so difficult to learn how to deal with the snow? Come on, every north European country continues to function normally in much worse conditions but as soon as a few centimetres of snow fall in the UK, the whole country comes to a standstill.
What struck me at first was that people had never heard of winter tyres. Whilst compulsory in many countries in Northern Europe, they’re seldom use in these parts. Come on, Britain, change your tyres for winter ones as soon as it gets cold and you won’t have to worry about ‘perilous driving conditions’.
Oh, never mind.
3 comments:
Great English :) I'm soo proud of you :))
Oh, thanks :))
Kamila said that everything is paralysed there because of snow, the shops are closed, there are no buses so people can't commute to work and so on... and, as she said, this is because they don't have "piaskarka"... It's uneconomic to mantain such machines where there snowless weather in England. Well... everything changes and so does the weather but stupidity never.
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