What A Fucking Liberty...

as the Grandma in the Catherine Tate show would say.

Today we woke up to snow. Proper, deep, drifty snow. Well proper, deep, drify snow Scottish style. Which means we've got about 5 inches on the pavements and drifts of about 5 feet in places! Still it has been enough to ground the country to a major halt...again!

Better Half had was due to get his eyes tested this morning and so we figured we'd venture out to meet the appointment assuming the main roads would be alright. We got the car to the end of the cul-de-sac and then went into wheel spin, so we decided to head out of the village by another route. We made it to the main road which connects Edinburgh and Livingston but when we got down there it was chaos, cars were stationary, lorries were stuck and other cars were wheel spinning for fun. The snow was too deep to drive on and there had been no clearing done on it so basically no-one was going anywhere. . However as luck would have it a snow plough appreared as if by magic and started clearing the road. So the cars started following in it's path...eventually we made it to Livingston and a journey which normally takes about 5 minutes had taken 40.

We negotiated the car park which was a bit dodgy and headed into the centre and to the opticians...only to find a handwritten note stuck on the window of the shop reading "Due to bad weather this store will not be opening today, as staff have been unable to make it in. sorry for any inconvenience".

Un-fucking-believable. So I whipped a pen out of my handbag and promptly wrote underneath "staff might not have made it but your bloody cutomers did!!" much to the amusement of the onlookers before heading back to the car to begin the journey home.

We got back along the main road in record time...yeah right...and turned into the road leading to the village only to find car's stuck in deep snow and a helpful driver came to tell us "the car's are aw stuck, they're just gettin' oot and leavin' them there cause ye cannae get past". Why the drivers thought it was a good idea to try and drive into 4 & 5 feet snow drifts is beyond me anyway. So we had to about turn, rejoin the main road and find another route into the village. Finally we made it back to the street and back home just as the snow started falling heavily again.

Honestly there are 3 routes into the village and whenever we get snow they never bloody clear any of them. In 2001 when we last had really deep snow we were stuck in the village for 3 days, seriously, no clear routes in or out and the whole street missed work and played on sledges instead...it was great!... but that year the snow was several feet deep on the pavements and the drifts were huge, eventually the council sent tractors and jcb's into the street to pile the snow up so we could re-join the rest of the world! Still we have one semi clear route (for now!) so we know we can get to civilisation if we need to this time...but it seems civilisation can't get to us though because the one shop in the village has had no deliveries today. One wee bit of snow and there's no bloody milk for anyone. You'd think they could afford more snowploughs with all the council tax we pay!

What a fucking liberty!

Jenny xx

p.s 9 year old is deeply concerned in case school is closed tomorrow. She is due to go on a field trip to the Scottish Parliament and is worried in case the weather means she'll miss out on getting to go. Quite frankly she should be more worried in case she does have to go and visit it...she might get hit by one of the bits if the £460 million pound building which are falling off...what a fucking waste of money that building was...imagine the number of snowploughs they could have bought for £460 million!