There's snow business like snow business

This originally appeared in the Bath Chronicle on February 9, 2012

Let’s face it, we Brits love to talk about the weather.


Due to the crazy fact that our weather is so changeable, we never seem to tire of talking about/moaning about and speculating about what Mother Nature will throw at us next.

And, pun very much intended, the weather is the ultimate conversation ice-breaker.

Forget footy, Simon Cowell or the euro crisis, if you really want to engage a fellow Brit in conversational exchanges then phrases such as “it’s a bit parky out there” or “this rain, hey?” are guaranteed “ins”. We don’t always love our weather but we sure as heck love to talk about it.

As such, last Saturday was manna (or rather snowflakes) from heaven for many. Or indeed a glimpse of hell for others.

That is because snow is the ultimate Marmite in the weather kingdom – you either love it or hate it. And unlike Marmite (which is foul by the way) you may even do both depending on how deep it gets and how quickly it disappears.

Saturday’s one-day snow blitz summed up our mixed emotions beautifully. As we had our first serious flaking locally since last winter we went into overdrive with our fingers as active as our toboggans.

The fingers were playing their part by setting the Twitterati alive as the good folk of Bath and beyond told each other about the size of the flakes, where they were landing and (very helpfully) which roads to avoid, which buses had been cancelled and which supermarkets had already run out of Heinz beans as those believing we were heading for a snowbound Apocalypse started stocking up just in case.

A couple of hours on Twitter and you could get the impression the new Ice Age had begun.

The fear was palpable.

And yet, despite the nervous tweets and urgent radio broadcasts, last Saturday was actually a hoot for many others. For a start it was a weekend and so delighted schoolchildren were able to be out in the snow rather than frustratingly watching it through their classroom windows. Excited youngsters took the opportunity to get out and experience the fresh feel of the flakes on their faces and their smiles were a joy to behold. Memories of last year’s genuinely dramatic ‘snowbusiness’ probably left many disappointed that things weren’t quite as a dramatic as they had first thought but nevertheless plenty still took every opportunity to revel in the fun.

And if every cloud has a silver lining, when those are snow clouds then every one creates a silver lining. I truly believe that practically everywhere looks more beautiful when it has a dusting of fresh snow on it and when you have a city and wider area as beautiful as this, then it is like adding a layer of sumptuous cream to an already glorious pudding.

For every “the world’s about to end – stay in your igloo” tweet there were many other pictures being shared around of the day the snow came to town. Although it was probably not much comfort if your bus was cancelled you just knew that many of this year’s Christmas cards had already been given their images thanks to Mother Nature’s weekend visit . Yes, snow may be dangerous, disruptive and at times downright annoying but it has the unique ability to bestow collective beauty as well – and at the weekend it certainly did that in these parts.

Personally I had my own reasons to look nervously out of the window on Saturday., For, as you read this, I should be in Venice and on Saturday, as I changed my pounds into euros, I was rather too gleefully informed by the lady who fed me my crisp new notes that the Venetian canals were all frozen. It’s like getting set to go to Niagara Falls and being told they had dried up.

So I will check into Twitter today and if you are there send me a note (@samholliday) and tell me what the weather’s like here. And in return I will tell you if I am boating along a lake – or skating on it.

The weather. Don’t you just love it?

Online, offline, onwards and upwards.

This first appeared in the Bath Chronicle of March 24 On a recent Tuesday at about 2.30pm something dramatic happened in our office. Grown men exhibited panic. Frustration levels grew. The air was tense - the mood unpredictable. Why? Because, oh reader, the internet had been switched off. For reasons which (as usual) were unfathomable, none of us could get on to our own site (thisisbath), Google was as impossible to access as the mind of Colonel Gaddafi and, to misquote Frankie Howerd, it was a case of "Twitter Ye Not". That sense of minor shock and awe bought on by the loss of our online contact may sound a bit OTT but as the minutes passed into the hours on Tuesday and people got decidedly twitchy it brought home again just how much cyberspace has affected all our lives. As journalists the "interweb" is an essential tool for what we do but it goes much deeper for people like us than a mere resource. So much of our lives both personally and professionally have become entwined in the nether regions of the world wide web that it is only when it is taken away - as it was on Tuesday - that you see how hamstrung and rather bereft people can feel without it. You get the impression some people think life and communication didn't begin until a bright spark thought it would be an idea to link his computer to someone else's just a few short years ago. But it is worth remembering just how few years ago that was. YouTube may, for example, seem to have been around forever and with an estimated two billion videos being shown every day on the site you could believe it took decades to build up that clientele. But YouTube has only been an entity since February 2005 and it (quietly) hit the world at the same time as, for instance, Charles and Camilla announced they were to marry. And that doesn't seem that long ago at all does it? As for Facebook with its 600 million users, that only became available to us as members of the public in 2006 - the same year as Twitter began building up to its now 190 million users. In industry terms these are baby companies and yet they are the biggest, noisiest and most impact-full babies in history. The phenomenal speed in which these sites and the internet has taken over all our daily lives in such a short period of time is, truly, a source of amazement. Life will never be the same again now we have this astonishing technology and the only remaining question is just how much more of our lives will the all-embracing internet envelop. And yet . . . . Anyone watching Comic Relief on Friday night will have seen that for a world that can get so smug about its massive information technology advancements we are remarkably bad at simple things like keeping children from dying of starvation. So, while the world wide web may be developing at a pace the offline world, sadly, seems as slow to really change as it ever did . . .

Insomnia: a cruel night-time mistress

This week I once again had a very unwelcome guest in my bed.

She (because I am convinced this ‘person’ is female for some unfathomable reason) is an occasional visitor and is one that always leaves her mark and makes the whole bedroom experience very distressing.

Her name is insomnia.

And she’s a pain.

This unwanted lady has been a visitor to my bedchamber for many years and tends to come unexpectedly and without warning and usually sticks around for a couple of weeks.

So, three times in the last week she has dominated my night-times and left me feeling completely shattered the morning after. And, frankly, I no longer know what to do about her.

Take Monday night.

I went to bed at my usual time, read a few pages of my favoured book (Robert Harris’s latest novel on the Roman empire) and then I closed my eyes at about midnight expecting to sail into the land of nod until I was woken by Radio Five Live at 6.45 the following morning.

But insomnia had other ideas.

For the next 3-4 hours (the last time I checked the dreaded alarm clock said 3.42), she left my mind in a total state of turmoil which meant that in the battle for night-time supremacy (which she had instigated) she was victorious

Although my mind wasn’t particularly active, when you are alone with your thoughts in the middle of the night you notice everything. The normal melodic humming of my heating system suddenly sounded as loud as if Motorhead were playing in my living room and the slightest sound of a distant car sounded like a Formula One race.

Everything was amplified, everything was exaggerated and everything combined to leave me more awake at 2.30am than I usually expect to be at 2.30pm.

So, like everyone who suffers from insomnia I tried all the usual ‘cures’. I got up, wandered around, read some more of Mr Harris, popped a DVD on at 2am (an old Seinfeld which was very funny but sadly didn’t leave me very sleepy), had a quick drink, changed my position in the bed dozens of times and even resorted to the totally pointless activity of counting sheep. The latter is the singular most ridiculous way of getting to sleep I can imagine but, hey, it works for others so I was busy counting them cotton-picking lambs at 3am.

But all to no avail.

Eventually I must have drifted off (and again I have no reason why – perhaps even Mrs Insomnia had got bored) and the day after I felt as if I had been out at an all-night party. Without any of the benefits of having been at an all-night party.

So if you have any ideas of how you can help me to defeat this bed hopping irritant, I would greatly welcome them here or at the usual address or at s.holliday@bathchron.co.uk. I have also set myself a new year target of trying to ‘Tweet’ more (you can find me at @samholliday) so pop in and say hi – but preferably not at about 2.30am. After all at that time I am usually watching Seinfeld and dreaming (or rather not dreaming) of sleep, glorious, sleep.

Night night.