It is tough NOW. So how are we coping

Charis

elizabunny wrote: »

Well, I can absolutely understand having a healthy repect for snow on the roads when driving. I can even accept that snow could disrupt trains and planes. What I cannot understand sorry if I'm being dim here, but how does snow affect the underground and prevent it from running DS2 has been stuck on the wrong side of London, miles from where he's meant to be because of severe disruption on the underground! Why?

Does anybody have any idea?

If any of the drivers had to get in by bus or car they wouldn't have made it. No buses running (this morning at least) and car wheels spinning on ice below the snow.

Also, from my memories of using the tube, it's not unknown for the points to freeze, especially in exposed locations (or semi-exposed like Mile End). Because the whole system is so complicated, a foul up in one area can cause havoc along the whole line and any adjoining lines. One stuck train = an unusable line, cos you can't drive round it .

EDIT Oops, that'll teach me to read to the end before posting. Still I agree with the others, even though I'm not a proper Londoner any more ;-) My little Sis was a tube driver a few years back though.

Sylvan

kittie wrote: »

ahh but 2 feet of snow beds down to give a good driving surface and everyone has chains so driving is relatively easy. Our few inches is not thick enough and we are driving on slippy tarmac with icy patches ie the surface varies all the time. It isn`t comparing like with like and I think we are doing pretty well

Are you being sarcastic? (Sorry, I've never understood sarcasm).

I think my boys are insane. Whenever their schools are closed they take the poor dog up onto the fells in blizzard conditions and laugh at her as she bounds through the drifts - occasionally disappearing altogether. They've actually taken photos of each other up to their necks (or more) in snowdrifts and yet I still can't get them to see why it might, just possibly, be slightly dangerous for one of them to do it on his own. (No phone signal of course)
The other week DS4 was out for 4 hours - turned out he'd been building an 8ft snowman on the summit. I was frantic!
Is it something about being male and teenaged?

I think the school thing is something to do with the ridiculous Health and Safety rules. I remember when there were power cuts the village school wasn't allowed to stay open because they were unable to provide hot dinners - even though most of the kids lived within a few hundred yards so could have easily gone home and not had a hot dinner! They're not allowed to throw snowballs either.
My kids used to go to school in the next county and the taxis wouldn't take them in if the forecast was bad because they didn't want the insurance nightmare. We were told we could take them in ourselves provided we picked them up as well - and accepted it was at our own risk.

:rotfl:DS5 has just shouted at the radio "For Dog's sake you've got legs you lazy Southerners!"

Those presenters are so stupid though. They keep saying "There could be up to half a metre (with such a frightened sounding accent on the phrase:rotfl:) in some parts of Northern England." For goodness' sake - half a metre is just over 18". DS4 has just measured - that's only just up to my knees and I'm shorter than the average adult.

[Deleted User]

no it is fact also drivers in the uk are not equiped for snow driving. eg How many people know that driving in 1st gear will spin the wheels and how many drive with winter tyres. People should drive in as high a gear as possible

this is from norway:
During the winter, you must drive with winter tyres with or without studs. All-year tyres can also be used. Use of studded tyres is allowed from 1 November - 15 April. In Nordland, Troms and Finnmark studded tyres are allowed during the period 15 October - 1 May. Studded tyres may also be used outside these periods if the weather and road surface conditions make it necessary.

Sylvan

kittie wrote: »

no it is fact also drivers in the uk are not equiped for snow driving. eg How many people know that driving in 1st gear will spin the wheels and how many drive with studded tyres.

Then WHY don't they know it? The government's quick enough to put out leaflets to tell us we should keep our cats entertained - why don't they advise people, when they put out these weather warnings?

By the way studded tyres are a really bad idea. They tear up the roads. They're not necessary in this country anyway. Even if you're driving something like a front wheel drive motorhome, in which it's impossible to put sufficient extra weight over the driving wheels, all-weather tyres are perfectly adequate. In a normal, rear-wheel drive car a small bag of sand or cement in your boot will give you more than enough traction (or you could use a bag of grit and then it's handy in case you do get stuck:rotfl:)

Most of the problems with snow are caused by people driving too fast for the conditions. The worst offenders are the poseurs in their Chelsea Tractors who think having a 4 wheel drive means they can bomb along with impunity (Well apart from the nutters in porsches that seem to think they can get over snowbound summits when the locals have told them it's impossible:rolleyes:)

Frugalista

Burp wrote: »

My OH has now been offered a job and fingers crossed if it all falls in to place he starts next Monday

I hope things are starting to look up for others to

Burp x

Congratulations on OH's new job :T.

My OH is waiting on the result of an "un-official interview" for a job within his industry.

On the down side, his last expenses cheque bounced and the lease company have been in touch about collecting his car :sad:. Also, I work part-time (12 hours a week) and have been told they have got no work for me for the next few weeks!!

I'm trying to stay positive but OH is (understandably) on a real downer and is beginning to drive me nuts!! :rolleyes: Maybe I'll go and cheer him up with a list of all the jobs he's never had the time to do .

[Deleted User]

sylvan I did change my post to winter tyres, which I used to have put on my land rover in winter and yes I agree that people should be educated about driving in winter conditions

Are you cross sylvan? you sound as though you are

Sylvan

Frugalista, you are MEAN!:rotfl:

Hope it works out for you.

Great news Burp.:cool:

Sylvan

Sorry kittie - didn't see that. No we're not cross. We're all just "gobsmacked" at the amount of fuss the media are making about nothing. We ALWAYS shout at the TV and radio. Doesn't everyone?:p

(Sorry - we've lived with ADHD for so long we think it's normality. I do realise, once I think about it, that most people probably don't:D)

I used to have to keep all weather tyres on the motorhome all the year round, since it wouldn't get up our steep gravel track without them, but it did have advantages in the winter.

Don't Land Rover tyres count as winter tyres anyway?

Primrose

I was a very small child who had just started primary school in the dreadful winter of 1947 when snow was on the ground for the whole winter and we had sub zero temperatures. There were hardly any cars on the road then in that immediate post war period so everybody walked, often several miles to their workplace, with patches on their rubber boots because they had no clothes coupons to replace them. . Schools were shut on occasions because there was no coke for the classroom stoves and burst water pipes in the lavs. I also recall the school milk being frozen. And when we had to stay at home, coal fires were not permitted to be lit until mid afternoon because of the fuel shortage and we had french toast in front of the fire using a toasting fork. And the wireless and power cuts always seemed to happen right in the middle of Children's Hour so we just sat by candlelight watching the steaming clothes drip on the clothes horse in front of the miserable fire. .We also had to use a bucket instead of the loo because the cistern had frozen and when you turned on the taps nothing came out. . They were actually times of great hardship, with vegetables having to be dug out of the frozen fields using pneumatic drills, but somehow in retrospect it all that snow seemed very magical for children. But sheer hell for their parents trying to cope.

Sylvan

1947 sounds absolutely terrible. Some of the old people in the village I used to live in have photos of the men hanging their coats over the tops of the telegraph poles while they were digging out the main road :eek: and of the walls of snow on either side after they'd done so. (I'd be terrified of them collapsing inwards!)