The winter weather has hit the UK, again. I remember last year February when the snow was falling going to the University in the morning. Surprised at the light traffic I arrived in good time, as did three of my colleagues. However to my huge surprise I learned that the University was not open for business that day and all lectures and teaching had been cancelled. This brought back some memories when I was still in secondary school in the Netherlands. We lived about 6 miles from the school and I would cycle this everyday, in suns, rain or snow (my parents did not have a car until much later and there was really no bus to the school). I do not recall that the school was closed in any weather condition. The most spectacular journey to school was one winter when the journey took an hour instead of the usual 30 minutes. The temperature was well below freezing and it was snowing heavy. Arriving at school I had to leave my gloves on the steering wheel of the bike and pry them away as they had frozen solidly the the steering wheel!
Hearing on the news of schools closing makes me think fondly of my childhood. I am glad I was exposed to circumstances like that, it gave me a not giving up attitude. It taught me that ‘there is suffering in life’ but that we can live through it.
Also heard on the news that 8000 homes were without electricity but that the repairs could not be made for health and safety reasons. I find this astonishing. How far away are we from having our police force state they can not chase criminals for health and safety reasons (‘Well if they come to the police station and politely confess to crimes, yes we can arrest them, but not if they speak rudely, oh no, our staff would be traumatised!!!’). I wonder if the organisations involved have heard of the term ‘duty of care’. More and more it seems like life in the UK is set up in a molly-coddling style: no effort is spared to make life easy for organisations that should be there when life gets hard!. I expect to see councils rewarding themselves for having kept the roads snow free from May till October!!! I expect train operators to praise themselves for announcing the cancelled trains correctly without spelling mistakes. What all this does is convey the message, if life is not easy going, let’s give up.