Boss Radio

And as the nation grinds to a standstill the populace queues up to stand in front of a TV camera and ask why bad weather always catches us out when other countries just deal with it.

You think they could have worked it out for themselves but hey, I'm willing to have a go.

Firstly, other countries don't just deal with it. If they know what's coming because it comes every year at around the same time they deal with it, otherwise they're as unprepared as us; and secondly, we're not prepared to pay for it. Perhaps no one else has spotted this, but we don't seem to like paying taxes, we actually pay less than the USA yet still all three of the major parties are talking about tax cuts. Obviously they sense tax cuts would be popular...

Me, I'd rather pay for necessities via tax because it's far more cost effective, but I've done this rant all ready so I won't duplicate it.

This time....

Meanwhile I find my self wondering. What exactly do these people mean by 'Do something'? What precisely can you do about snow? The first thing you can do is salt the roads, but when? Put it down too soon and it'll be swept away before the snow falls, so the best time is just as the snow starts falling. That means having the people and equipment on standby from the very first moment that it's even remotely possible that the snow may start to fall. Someone needs to buy that equipment, even if it may never be used, and those ungrateful bounders the workforce are going to want paying even if they are sitting around idle, as the working classes are wont to do. Anyone want to volunteer to pay for that?

So then there's the grit. There's no point putting that down until the snow has fallen so it's a whole lot more cost effective, but it becomes useless if more snow then falls on top of it, that requires another coating of grit. More investment, more overtime, more tax...

Anyone like to estimate the cost of clearing a county of snow via snowploughs?

When I were a lad back in Hazel Grove we used to get regular snowstorms far more ferocious then today's offerings (Good old climate change) so motorists had snow chains in their boots, most would also carry a large packet of salt and a spade, the really prepared would also have a length of carpet or matting, all of it very handy self-help; no one bothers with that stuff these days, and yet they expect some mysterious 'them' to be ready to at least clear all the roads which they themselves want to access of snow, instantly.

Personally I support the principle of a holiday whenever it snows. It doesn't do it that often.
Firstly, other countries don't just deal with it. If they know what's coming because it comes every year at around the same time they deal with it, otherwise they're as unprepared as us; and secondly, we're not prepared to pay for it. Perhaps no one else has spotted this, but we don't seem to like paying taxes, we actually pay less than the USA yet still all three of the major parties are talking about tax cuts. Obviously they sense tax cuts would be popular...

Me, I'd rather pay for necessities via tax because it's far more cost effective, but I've done this rant all ready so I won't duplicate it.

This time....

Meanwhile I find my self wondering. What exactly do these people mean by 'Do something'? What precisely can you do about snow? The first thing you can do is salt the roads, but when? Put it down too soon and it'll be swept away before the snow falls, so the best time is just as the snow starts falling. That means having the people and equipment on standby from the very first moment that it's even remotely possible that the snow may start to fall. Someone needs to buy that equipment, even if it may never be used, and the workforce are going to want paying even if they are sitting around idle. Anyone want to volunteer to pay for that?

So then there's the grit. There's no point putting that down until the snow has fallen so it's a whole lot more cost effectve, but it becomes useless if more snow then falls on top of it, that requires another coating of grit. More investment, more overtime, more tax...

Anyoe like to estimate the cost of clearing a county of snow via snowploughs?

When I were a lad back in Hazel Grove we used to get regular snowstorms far more ferocious then today's offerings (Good old climate change) so motorists had snow chains in their boots, most would also carry a large packet of salt and a spade, the really prepared would also have a length of carpet or matting, all of it very handy self-help; no one bothers with that stuff these days, and yet they expect some mysterious 'them' to be ready to at least clear all the roads which they themselves want to access of snow, instantly.

Personally I support the principle of a holiday whenever it snows. It doesn't do it that often.

Yes it's happened again. America's weather is headed our way. I mean, it's all right for them, they've got a couple of really big countries over there, they can afford a bit of bad weather, but we're a titchy little nation and all their weather just plain swamps us.

Once again on the weather map we're on a line. The whole of the south and most of the west coast are now on red alert, the midlands and the mid-east coast are on an orange alert. We're on the line between them. Does that mean we get no weather at all or that we're going to get both of them? I think we should be told.

Of course we were intending to go shopping tomorrow afternoon which is right when they say the worst of the weather is going to hit, now we're not sure whether to stay right at home or to go anyway on the grounds that everyone else will be at home.

I guess my best bet is to wait and see if the roof slates that have shifted from the eathquake are now going to let the weather in. If they hold up we can go out and if they don't I guess we can get by on breakfast cereal, toast, and potatoes for a day.

Heck, if I'm spending the whole time bailing out I probably won't even notice.

Frugal: A search engine for fruit.

But enough of this merriment, there's a 200mph jet stream somewhere up there in the sky and it's dragging weather across us at a vast rate of knots, including the wind. OK, so the wind itself is not running at 200mph, or even 100, but something just... went somewhere behind the house. An almighty crack followed by something crashing a little further up the hill.

I'm just wondering if it's the new roof that I put on the shed/pavillion and have been meaning to reinforce all summer.

The problem was we didn't really have a summer.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Meanwhile 'they' have updated the predictions of flooding given the new weather patterns that they're expecting these global-warmed days. On the big map we're still not in a particularly dangerous area, but on a local level the housing estate opposite us and all the new building that they're committing on the marsh alongside us has resulted in us being 'upgraded' a little.

To put it in a nutshell, we should be applying for sandbags.

We're not alone. There's now a travelling roadshow selling anti-flooding produce touring the country. Fortunately we're still insured against it (Flooding, not the roadshow...) so when it hits us (The roadshow, not the flooding) we shall ignore it like the fools we are, and complain like hell when we do get flooded.

It's true. It was on the radio a few weeks ago. Britain is one of the most tornado-ridden countries in the world. We have more of those little suckers than anyone, including the entire USA.

The trick is, of course, that ours are piddly-wee little tornados which mostly disipate within seconds of touching down, and very rarely cause any kind of damage at all.

So, today dawned bright and sunny, and as usual my mother wanted to go out in it, and I, as usual, was really tired of driving around for no really good reason and wanted to stay at home playing computer games.

So out we went.

Driving down a little country road my mum suddenly said "Do you think that's a heat haze over there?" I opined that it it was a cloud, maybe early morning mist still to burn up over the hills.

We turned onto another road and she said "Is that rain up ahead?"

This time I was pretty certain. It was a cloud, a great big cloud, and it was just ahead of us but moving to the right.

The road turned right.

We drove a little further, the sun went in but it wasn't particularly dull. Suddenly there was a terific bang on the side of the car, and even though I know it's a stupid thing to do, I turn to look at that side of the car. "What the hell was that?" I enquired reasonably.

There was another bang, this time on the roof. I thought I'd hit something and looked into the rear view to see what it was. There was a motorcyclist some way in the rear struggling to remain on his machine. It was 'round about then that all hell broke loose.

Branches were flying all over the place, bits of broken tree were all over the road, water was hitting the windscreen like it was from one of God's buckets, and as I drove into a clearing something grabbed the steering wheel and tried to throw me off the road. Fortunately by then I'd slowed down somewhat, but like everyone else on the road, I didn't actually stop.

What is it about us that makes us try to soldier on? The obvious thing to do was to stop and let the weather blow over, but that idea entered my head for only about a microsecond before passing on its way again.

Fairly quickly things returned to normal and the sun came out again. The road we were on ended in a T-junction, and at the end of there was a crowd of men (And one woman standing on the other side of the road for some reason). They were telling everyone to go that way, because they couldn't go this way. I followed everyone else without bothering to ask why. About 30 seconds down the road a police car came rushing down in the opposite direction.

We discovered later that a falling tree had hit a car.

That was only minutes away from being us.

No, really. Why don't we just pull over somewhere safe and sit it out when the weather's bad?

After billowing in from the South for months now, the wind changed its mind today and blew across the back of our gardens from West to East, at which point I realised that I had blundered.

The roof on the shed at the bottom of the garden had caved in after one too many oiks from the houses on the other side tried to walk across it, so we replaced it with corrugated plastic. No one, we reasoned, would be dim enough to try and walk across that, and we were right. Well, one out of two ain't bad.

When it came to overlapping the corrugations we decided it didn't matter which way the overlap went. We'd started from over there so the overlap would naturally fall over there. Bad move. If I'd thought about it for more than half a nanosecond I'd have realised that when the wind blows across the backs of the gardens it always goes thataway. There's a hill in the way to prevent it from coming from the opposite direction. And as you've guessed I'd put the overlaps facing into the wind.

I first realised this when I saw one of the mid sections of the roof rising up into the wind, I charged out and put a couple of bricks on it. 'That'll hold it until I can get out and do a proper job' I thought, meaning 'That'll hold it until that damn wind goes down a bit and it's a little less goolie-shredding out there'. I went back in and realised that I'd rushed out leaving the toast toasting under the grill. It was now charcoal. I ate it anyway, just to teach myself a lesson. Oh well. One out of three ain't bad.

As I ate I glanced out of the window, just in time to see the mid section rearing up again. Back out like a bolt of lightning (Slow lightning, you may have heard of it) and before I knew it there I was wrestling with a furshlugginer chunk of corrugated plastic which was by now only held on by one stuborn screw, and seemed determinded to learn the shimmy in one easy lesson. At least it had stopped raining, or to be more precise the wind was blowing so hard that the rain couldn't reach ground.

Finally the wind died down a bit and I managed to tear up a little of the adjoining roof and slip the recalcitrant piece under it so that it was now overlapping the right way.

It was about this time that I noticed that the aforementioned neighbouring peice of roof was also only held on by a couple of screws. Down the ladder once more, where's that piece of wood I had lying around? I found it resting against the shed where I would swear on a stack of Bibles I hadn't left it and hoisted it onto the roof to hold the lot down, but still it kept defiantly trying to rear up, so - I'm back down the ladder again and collecting some more bricks to lay them across the plank. That did it, but the far end of the roof was now starting to flap a little where it overlapped the shed, and I knew it wasn't going to hold much longer if my past record was anything to go by. Down the ladder again, find another plank, more bricks... And finally it held out until the wind dropped.

Meanwhile I suddenly remembered that I'd put the binbags out the night before and rushed out to the front expecting them to be blown all over the road. But they weren't, the only thing missing was the paper, glass, and tin recycling box. There was one resting against a car about 50 yards up the hill on the wrong side of the road, I went to look, yup, that's the one, so there I was carrying it back down the road and I noticed a light flashing. It was a street light. The protective cover had blown off and was swinging crazily about in the breeze. 'Whoops,' I thought. 'Better get inside and 'phone the council before that thing does some damage or hurts someone'. I'd reached the house when I suddenly realised that it was my vehicle parked under that light. I turned to look back up the road just in time to see the cover break free with a final grand pirouette and land on my roofrack, bounce off it, hit my wingmirror, and finally let the pavement break its fall.

Oh well. One out of four ain't bad.