Alun Thorne: Have we got the white stuff to deal with snow?

Jan 7 2010 By Alun Thorne

When I was at infants’ school an Australian boy called Greg appeared in my class for a term.

I say a term, it could have been a week but gauging time has never been a particular strength of five-year-olds.

With his large mop of sun-bleached hair and deep-brown complexion I remember him being something of a curiosity for those of us growing up in rural Shropshire in the early 1980s – in that pre-Neighbours era Australia was just this side of the Moon.

Then one day it started to snow. Now back in the late 70s and early 80s, as many readers will recall, this was not a particularly unusual occurrence, but to young Greg it was as if the end of the world had begun.

In a scene reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greg slowly moved towards the windows, seemingly transfixed by the alluring power of the blizzard and there he stood for the rest of the day, staring in wonder at this thing we call snow.

Fast forward three decades and it would appear that we have turned into a nation of Gregs.

Maybe it is because we are now so unused to the kind of snowfall that was an annual occurrence 30 years ago or maybe there is something hardwired into the psyche of the British public that when the snow comes, everything else ceases to matter anymore.

Now the recent cold snap has been pretty exceptional, it has to be said, and the amount of snowfall has been such that snowmen have become a regular roadside feature for the first time in a generation, but then it only actually takes the merest flurry to bring the UK to a grinding halt.

The cost to the UK’s ailing economy of the recent inclement weather must be extraordinary, but not because people cannot get to work – which many cannot – but because as soon as the white stuff begins to settle on the ground people no longer want to work.

Like an army of little Gregs, office workers across the country stand with their noses pushed against the windows, staring longingly at the freezing downpour and wishing they were in it.

Any follower of social network sites such as Twitter or Facebook will have noted that the only subject worth talking about in the past few weeks has been the snow and how frantic people have been to pull on their wellies and indulge in some snowy frolics. Earlier this week I received an email from somebody who had been desperately trying to get hold of me to discuss a project, asking me to leave them a message as they were now “out sledging”.

Later this month we will almost certainly become the final country in the developed world to emerge from recession when the latest output figures are published but the economy remains in a perilous state with a number of factors such as the end of the 15 per cent VAT rate threatening to push us into the dreaded double dip downturn.

The last thing the British economy needs is more snow. If it comes, however, then more gritters or some new snowploughs are not the answer to getting the country moving again – it’s time to invest in some curtains.

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Red faces at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham this week over a press statement announcing the cancellation of an already-rearranged Chuck Berry concert due to take place later this year.

The statement explained that the 83-year-old and his American band would no longer be coming to the city “due to unforeseen circumstances” and apologised to those who had run preview coverage “for any incontinence caused”.

Now these kinds of errors are not uncommon in the fast-moving world of media and communications but one can’t help wondering whether Mr Berry’s troubled history and the potential age range of the audience has led to the first example of intelligent spellchecking.