A few weeks ago, Britain received a snowy blessing from the skies above, or as some would see it, a frozen plague from Moses’ deepest fantasy. I told my fellow British comrades to ignore the snow “See it as a frosty bonus,” and I was right, you should have done … back then. However, the time for enjoying our cold crispy friend is over. For the snow that school children know and love has melted, and left behind a horrible metaphor of injury and dismemberment (extreme?). Ice.
Now ice is something that, unlike snow, I detest. The way it lays there, hiding on your drive way, waiting for an unsuspecting granny to tread upon it, just so it can make her plummet to the bitter pavement – without motive may I add. If ice were a person it would be Simon Cowell, pure evil.
Not only is it made up of pure wickedness, ice is also a relentless irritant/danger. I’ve spend a good hour this week chipping away at it, and after that extraordinary amount of time, you’ve managed to remove something the size of a 50p coin. The council won’t get rid of it either, they spend their days throwing salt on it, when in reality it would be of better use on my chips.
The salt melts the ice, sun goes down, water from melted ice freezes again… pointless! And they don’t even do the pavements anymore. So what are we supposed to do? Skate? Or get run over? Well, the logical answer is to embrace you local community, help each other out. Everyone fit and able with a shovel; get out onto the streets and clear lots of 50p sized chunks of ice, and before you know it the thoroughfare’s would be clear. But, oh no. Storming into the equation is Mr Brown, and his army of nut-cases. They don’t want you to clear your street, because it’s dangerous, obviously a lot more dangerous than leaving it as a replica of the dancing on ice set – I half expect Jason Gardiner to insult me after I’ve completed the jaunt to the paper shop.
I also learned this week that you can be sued if you ‘tamper with the ice on your street’, and someone slips on it. Have you ever heard anything so stupid in your entire life? This seems like a deterrent laid down by hi-vis health and safety freaks, and it probably is.
So, to carry on your duties of commonsense and community service with such a deterrent in place requires a thick skin. And a thick skin is exactly what one of my fellow Yorkshire men had. For one reason or another, I can’t find his name, so we’ll call him Ken. Now Ken was a farmer, with a lovely big red tractor and, conveniently, a plow. Ken cleared his own driveway, and his farm yard, like a normal person with a plow would. Later that day he trotted into Kilburn, his local town, and was appalled at the state of the ice encrusted roads.
So, like a fictional community hero, Ken donned his cape and decided he would do the council’s job, and clear the local roads in his trusty red tractor. Recognising the fact we live in a barmy country, Ken thought he best follow the correct procedure, and inform the council of his intentions. Naturally, they sent him a scroll full of precautions he’d have to undertake, should he carry out his duty of commonsense.
Obviously, there were the usual hi-vis clothing requirements and a hard hat in case someone throws a snowball at you, the kind of crap we’ve become accustomed to. But as he ventured further down the never ending list of pointlessness, he discovered that he’d have to have Pounds 5,000,000 worth of insurance, sign several disclaimers, send forms to every citizen in Kilburn, undergo a full health and safety check, only use a certain type of diesel…..the list goes on. By the time all this was done not only would he have lost a fortune, but the ice/snow would have melted. It begs the question, what is the point? Why do people bother? This is broken Britain…
