Fuck off snow.

I love living in Glasgow, but I am aware that some of the time it is not an ideal city to live in. When you add weather which is not uncommon to Minsk into the equation, however, it gets a lot more complicated.

Scotland, since the beginning of November, has been snowed in. As I have already said I live in Glasgow, but I am originally from Fort William (the home of Ben Nevis and not much else) which is a further 100 miles north. At the peak of last winter (which was bloody cold as well) it peaked at -17C. Which isn’t ideal, I’m sure you will agree.

It has not been as bad as that (yet), but after the “blizzard” which struck the city on Monday, Glasgow just collapsed. Not literally of course, don’t worry Primark is still here, but the transport infrastructure crumbled. Buses stopped. Trains stopped. Motorways were at a standstill. Even the Glasgow underground was suspended. This still confuses me; I mean, the subway stations are under the ground, surely? Glasgow to Edinburgh is a journey which usually takes forty-five minutes. Yesterday it took thirteen hours.

Broadsheets mostly ignored the weather, disregarding Scottish conditions being “pure Baltic” as news. Instead, The Times appeared to be more interested in someone on the radio saying the word “cunt” on air (it’s ok to say it, by the way. The more we use it the less offensive and more mainstream it will become. Come on, practice saying it now. Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!). There’s also a cricket match taking place on the other side of the world to be paying attention on – a match so far away that they can only cover events from two days previously because of the time difference.

The red-tops, however, had a field-day with the weather; the Daily Record headlined with “Road to Snowhere” (see what they did there?). The Sun, on the other hand, were far more dramatic with “Snow Apocalypse!”. That’s right. An apocalypse.

There is reason to complain: after all, we should be use to weather like this – we are Scottish, remember – and surely the maintenance of public transport is what I spend council tax on?

Ok, I am a student, making the last bit a lie. But if I did pay council tax (which I don’t) I would be furious (which I am not) because I would not have been able to get home (which I did). Infact, the only impact the adverse weather has had on me (apart from making me house-bound on my 20th birthday on Monday) has been the postponing of my exams, two of which were due to be today. Hence the reason I am writing this instead of an essay about 19th Irish immigration to Britain.

One last thing about Glasgow being twinned with Juneau in terms of climate; like any other “crisis” like when the World Cup was stolen in 1966, usually a folk hero is created. In 1966 it was a dog called Pickles who found the trophy; the equivalent here is a man called David Newall. Newall is the Secretary of Court at Glasgow University who is responsible for the postponing of exams for a further month. Due to this he now has an appreciation society on Facebook which has (at the time of writing) 235 fans. As one of those fans, I can only say God bless you David Newall, you beautiful man.