How do the Swedes do it?

Survive that is?

Yes, it's that time of year again when the dread words are echoed by the Met Office.

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

Now you would expect such grave tones to be taken for howling gales tearing trees from their roots, torrential rain causing flash floods or surging tides washing away low lying villages near the coast.

Nope, it's a light dusting of snow. In North Shields this morning there was - I'll be generous - a centimetre of snow. You know the sort that kind of clings to the middle of a paving stone so that it might constitute 'lying' is you blurred your eyes. Not enough to make a decent snowball. It now constitutes the total and utter breakdown of civilisation as we know it. Metro services are put on restricted timetables, peoples abilities to drive on perfectly clear roads stop dead and children are mummified in their cold weather clothes like it was a dry-run for 'The Day After Tomorrow'. The newspapers don't help with one of them claiming that the entire country would close down if there was 6 inches of snow.

How do the Swedes do it? Indeed, throw in the Russians and Norwegians and Canadians and even the good people of New York? In fact anywhere that has a reasonably snowy winter? Surely they must just hibernate for the winter, never venturing from their boltholes in case some meteorlogical catastrophe should befall them?

Well no, they just get on with it don't they. I remember a friend from Prince Edward Isle in Canada saying that until the snow drifts were six feet deep it didn't constitute a proper winter. We would simply all die if that happened here. What we have now is not 'severe weather' - it is something slightly different from the normal grey, moist, overcast tripe that we have for 95% of our year.

Personally I blame Micheal Fish. Ever since he assured the populace with:

"Earlier on today apparently a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well don't worry if you're watching, there isn't."

Ever since then the Met Office have been so shit scared that someone, somewhere might be possibly offended or inconvenienced by them underestimating the 'severity' of the weather, that EVERY change in weather is labelled as a possible nightmare writ large upon the Earth.

A guildmate on WoW asked me last week whether the Brits held the Scandanavian races with any contempt based on how the Vikings raped and pillaged them. I answered no, but I'm going to revise that to yes. Why? Because you damned well didn't teach us how to deal with SNOW!!!!

Bah!

Neil