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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Too cold to go out


Here in Toyland™, we have been under a constant white carpet and sub zero temperatures for nigh on three weeks now, with no end in sight.


All the skools are closed, chaos and starvation is upon us, but funnily enough I've always managed to get to Toy Town™ to serve the public.

Today, the collective neighbourhood were out shovelling the street for hours on end to get us all moving and it worked.

What is it about today's Teechurs and our precious urchins that they cannot get to skool these days? Two weeks off not enough?

... and where were the kids today? Sledging of course.

It was just as well Mr Elfin Safety couldn't see them. He'd stop that too.

© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times

5 comments:

George Saint said...

Noddy, back last February Mr Elfin Safety did indeed stop the snow play, a couple of playgrounds in London were closed along with the schools because the white stuff is too slippery and dangerous, especially when you grab a handful of it, squidge it into a ball and throw it at someone.

uphilldowndale said...

I want a polar bear (but only a small one!)
I worry that this generation of kids will make no effort what so ever to get to work in bad weather when they are older. Now in my day, we had to go walk to school wearing a skirt and socks. Made me the girl I am! (my mum did dry my welly boots with a hair dryer each morning though, bliss.)

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Keep up the good work. Happy new year.

Stonehead said...

I haven't looked in for a while. Too busy with all the white stuff on top of the usual work.

Anyway, the OH is a teacher and I'm getting a bit fed up with the comments about lazy teachers not bothering to show up because of a little snow.

Out here, we had snow up to my neck (I'm 5ft 10in). One morning, I took four hours to dig our car out and then clear a few hundred feet of public road to the nearest junction. (We're not a priority for ploughing or gritting.)

The OH then drove a couple of miles to our village, over icy roads, partially blocked with drifts, picking up a colleague on the way. When she got to the other side of the village, she found conditions were even worse.

As it had taken her 30 minutes to travel 2.5 miles and with another 18 to go in atrocious conditions, she returned home.

It's not laziness or idleness to fail to turn up at work because you can't get through serious ice and snow. Especially when you're in a Land Rover Defender with snow tyres.

While the OH and her colleague were trying to get through, I was dissuading a neighbour, also working in education, from walking the 2.5 miles to her school. We couldn't get her FWD car out and she's been quite sick recently, but her manager told her she would be making a note of who failed to show.

Should she have trudged 2.5 miles cross country, through neck-deep snow, with a 20mph wind blowing and temperatures of -8C, just to keep her SMT and assorted "taxpayers who pay her wages" happy?

Should the OH have pushed on through conditions that were challenging even for a Defender with snow tyres? Especially when the school was closed to transport students and almost no village students turned up either? (And there enough local teachers to do the baby sitting job that was all they could so with so few students.)

I don't think so, but I'm clearly in a minority.

McNoddy said...

Stonehead,

Nothing personal and especially so when the sna up in your parts is really wild. I'm just somewhat hacked off that our local skools in the burbs failed to open when I managed to get to my work OK. Admittedly the neighbours and I had also spent much of the preceding days clearing mounds of snow and about 4" of solid ice from our street, including the neighbour with his very handy mini JCB. Fortunately once we get off the hill our street is on we are on a bus route! It's just getting off the hill that is the problem, and I might add the Academy is right on said bus route!

It also seems to me that there is overkill and mass hysteria in some situations, rather than an acceptance that for some there is genuine difficulty in getting to work, whilst others seem to use it as an excuse to go out sledging.

We had minus 13 a couple of days and that was pretty severe, but certainly not enough to stop the world spinning!

However, keeping your croft running must have been a nightmare.