More Snow and Ice

Categories: cycling, ethics

Tags: Envrionment, Snow

Date: 08 February 2009 15:51:32

We've had a lot more snow here - Friday morning it was really heavy, forcing me to walk to work, and due to the deep frost, it hasn't properly melted even now. Saturday morning when I walked the two miles to work again, I was one of the first people to walk along the ice rinked pavements - as it was 6am. In my job it is quite difficult to get to work on time with weather like this. Many people live out in the country, and they've either not been able to get in, or have come in late. Because we start so early, and most of the snow fall has been overnight, then all the roads are still covered with snow. On Friday absolutely none of the roads had been gritted, so on Friday night when the snow was still prominent on the ground, and temperatures when down to -7C, it made it incredibly dangerous. At least until the sun came up.

And my department isn't exactly one where you can manage with half the staff. I heard a story of one department where the every single nurse rang in on Friday morning, to say they'd be unable to come in or they'd be late. The night staff were forced to stay until someone arrived to take over from them. Yesterday I heard that at a residential house in the country the carers had been unable to get home since Thursday. There have been other sad and tragic, medical stories which I know of, which may have turned out differently if it weren't for the weather. On the other hand though, when a vial of medicine was required from the other side of the country, it managed to be specially couriered through the snow and it was given successfully to my patient.

At the moment the remaining snow is slowly melting and I'm hoping we don't get anymore - at least not when I'm trying to get to or from work! I don't mind cycling in the middle of the day, when there's some snow around, because most of the roads are clear. But at 6am, you can't tell what it's going to be like.

On a slightly different subject - I discovered the other day that the radiator in my room was off. It has numbers 1 to 6, and then an picture of a snow flake, and it had been on the snow flake since I moved in last May. Since the beginning of winter I've always thought my room was quite cold, but generally I just put another jumper on. And I didn't think anything else of it. I can't believe I was so stupid not to check the radiator. But, on the other hand, I am quite impressed that I survived most of a fairly cold winter without any heating in my room. It's very ecologically friendly. My window is single glazed - think what proper insulation and a couple of jumpers would do for the environment and your heating bill!