stop press

People keep asking why we are still talking about the snow, why it is headline news. Part of me agrees but at the same time it is so there, all over the country; rarely is a news story so relevant and directly visible to everyone. It is there on my street, no gritters here. It provides endless possibilities for skidding and sliding and crunching and crashing. Snow, the beautifier, the silent, the sinister aggressor. It is there in the park, draining my energy and straining my muscles to keep balanced while dog-walking (or dog-skiing, as I have come to call it). Falling can be a comedy pratfall or a sudden blow to the head.
The trouble is, there is no news. Nothing new to say. No-one really wants to hear politicians argue about whose fault it is. The occasional human interest story of devastation grabs us by the head and dunks us into cold water but trickles away as we move on to pictures of snowmen and sledging children.
I was reading The Day of the Triffids recently (balm after watching the ghastly TV adapatation) and a scene of the book that really appeals to me is the apocalyptic vision of London just a few years on from its being abandoned. It seems to me that snow is one of the few times, the few weathers, when we can see how quickly the natural world can overwhelm us. It reminds us that our intrastructure is based on a daily fight against nature, the weeds in the driveway, the cracks in the pavement. That given a short space of time, undiscouraged, nature would return things as it found them.
I am no fan of 'what if' news stories. We haven't run out of grit, or gas, yet. A man did not get further than the runway, did not have explosives and was not there on the same day as the Queen (yeah that's an old news story but it still grates). However, I think the snow story is current and its prevalence forgivable. To paraphrase an esteemed friend, it awakens something primal in us (often the urge to hibernate). It feels like the whole country is under siege (not under neige). We can't get to where we want to be, wear what we want to wear, we have bumps and bruises and red noses and pink skin. It burns us and freezes us. We want to play with it, fight with it, feel it on our nose and eyelashes. People talk to each other in the street, or exchange news of snow days on Facebook. We get to enjoy it AND complain about it (and complain about complaining about it); what can be more satisfying than that?