Hunkering down in the snow?

Cloudy today, after yesterday’s great freeze, as we await fresh snow over the coming weekend:

Various people have been commenting on the closure of our schools — over 170 in Buckinghamshire. It’s fun for a day, but puts working families to considerable hardship, especially single parents.

I vividly remember a two mile trek to school through conditions like this in the days just before obsessive health & safety anxiety and the great car society. Someone was telling us that in the big freeze up of 1947 schools were assiduously kept open, because they were well heated with food supplies for all the children.

Perhaps we are experiencing extra inconvenience because of our dependence on the car — most teachers, like everyone else, live far further away from where they work than in the 60’s. We do have the Internet, but the freeze is forcing us to think local.

I am really impressed by the ways various Bucks churches were instantly opened and made available for overnight accommodation with people stuck in the last fall of snow. If we are in for an extended bout of such weather, it will become increasingly urgent for all of us to be looking out for neighbours who may be housebound, ill, short of fuel or basic supplies, or stuck for childcare — ask what you can do to help in Church in Sunday, if you can get there...

all pictues from Great Missenden yesterday, except for the picture from the Coventry Telegraph of Mrs Margaret Darmody (nee Pratt) of Leamington going to Coundon infants school in Coventry in 1947.