All white now

I know I use the Daily Mail as a touchstone for a lot of my rage and anger, but the fact remains that it's a nasty, bitter and reactionary rag that pines for an imagined lost golden age in which everybody was nice to each other, and had white faces, and nothing bad ever happened. As I went for a walk through the park and up to Alexandra Palace today the thought struck me that Mail readers must fucking love snow.

Just think about it: hundreds of people out walking and playing in the deep white powdery stuff, experiencing a kind of shared cameraderie that was otherwise lost the day National Service ended. All those kids who would normally be out menacing right-thinking folk and being up to no good, now channelling their energies into building whacking great snowmen, trading in their guns for snowballs and hotwired cars for sledges. And those who don't have sledges improvise, making do with plastic bags and bits of cardboard - brilliantly, I even saw someone tackling the impromptu Ally Pally Cresta Run on a For Sale sign.

Not only that, the whole public transport network is brought to its knees by the snow, giving Mail types the perfect opportunity to complain about this bloody government not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery, etc. Even then, people make do and find strange succour in a shared battle against such adversity. My brother had to fly out to the States today, and despite the total lack of buses, limited tube service and his original flight being cancelled, he got a taxi to Finsbury Park and made another flight.

He also related the tale of a Swedish guy he knew who used to laugh at how our transport system collapses at the first sign of snow, and then one day there was torrential rain in Scandinavia and all their transport conked out too. Bottom line is, we've not had snow like this for 18 years. It would be crazy to spend millions on preventative measures that would likely only be needed every two decades. Other countries have this weather annually, and they've adapted to it. At the end of the day, we manage - just like we always do, despite this country going to the dogs, it weren't like this in my day, bring back the birch, and so forth.