SNOWBOUND AND THEN FLOODBOUND

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30064, 23 February 1963, Page 8

SNOWBOUND AND THEN FLOODBOUND

Continuities Of English Life Recalled [Specially written for “The Press" by Professor N. C. PHILLIPS] LONDON, February 3. MCNOWBOUND we are, and floodbound we ° shall soon be.” So wrote Earl Temple to the Countess of Chatham on January 26, 1776. Reading this in the Public Record Office almost exactly 187 years later, I could not help reflecting once again on the continuities of English life.

In that winter long ago, Temple was writing from his opulent mansion at Stowe, which now house* a public school; and the snail beer of defective plumbing was as far from hie mind as late train* and power cuts. In that winter, too, the Americans were about to detach themselves from British rule and a true-born French King was remotely preparing to come to their aid. Th* French did not then question that England was a part of Europe, and in extending a helping band to Benjamin Franklin they had not the slightest fear of the American presence there. Principalities and powers wax and wane. Some national self-delusion* change. But the English winter remains, and its chief victim* continue to delude themselves that it is bearable without special exertion*. The most normal thing about this Siberian winter is the national insistence that it i* quite exceptional

For acme time past we have been morbidly dwelling on the statistics of our martyrdom. When the temperature fell on December 22, it became essential rather than prudent to wear an overcoat about London Those who took a turn in the streets or on the common to digest their Christmas dinners returned gratefully to their firesides with stinging faces When the snow began to feather down the next night, it was natural to regret that a work-day rather than Christmas had chosen to be white At first the snow was pretty and full of possibilities for fun. Children from New Zealand, bred on the literature of a strange hemisphere, discovered with surprise that icicles do indeed hang by the wall. And if milk was not seen to come frozen home in pail, no less convincing was the milk bottle beside the door with Ms tin-foil cap thrust up an Inch by a solid white column Many Records Broken

Softening into slush or hardening into ice, snow that was first ornamental became a nuisance and finally, as the days lengthened into weeks, tedious and baneful. It was now a factor in life, if not a prime enemy. When the week-end of January 25-26 produced the promised thaw and eaves dripped, our spirits rose with the thermometer: but with the new week both slumped. The beastliness of January, we learned on February 1, broke many records: and those who had already conceded that the cold spell of 1947 had been surpassed for intensity now speculated whether it would be exceeded In length Not the least gruelling of the winter’s trials has been the strict veracity of the weather forecasters. To those hoping for hope they have been merciless Niggardly of their promises and bountiful of their menaces, they have been provokingly accurate and attentive to their duty The preface of a snow warning is now the common form of 8.8. C forecasts, and the television expert, gesturing before his weather map, is cheerfully lugubrious. Tonight, though unable to foresee relief, the weather men offer temperatures somewhat above freezing-point tomorrow as a concession to the weakness of the flesh.

Jocularity In Hardship And how. amidst all this, stand* the English character? Most obvious is the customary jocularity in hardship. The author of a fourth leader in “The Times." keeping his Top People within his sights liken* every slope in these hilly southern suburbs, to a Create Run A newsaper of humbler but wider circulation carries a cartoon depicting two ordinary men at a bus stop, their noses barely above snow level but extracting consolation from the thought that “at least this mean* a shorter summer" A grave Sunday journal, h’s corporate tongue in it* cheek solemn!? solicit* the future from Mr Cecil Tibbett, of Terrington St Clement. Norfolk. who has sprung to fame by predicting the present bout of bitterness as early as September; but all he has to offer is death from the heat next summer, water rationing by June, drought by July, with the “brewery boy* making a fortune’’ We may now await the reaction of the Stock Exchange.

Discomforts Of Travel

There are. again responses to the discomforts of travel The outspread copy of “The Times." once the palladium of bourgeois privacy, is as

impracticable in the crowded carriage* of a curtailed railway service as would be the shield of the Sutton Hoo ship burial It is. indeed, a privilege to find room for both feet on the floor of some carriages, to have merely one foot on the floor (so I have heard it said) i* uncomtfortable. but to be uplifted by the pres* of bodies an inch or so nearer to heaven is

not entirely displeasing—for a short distance. Since the English are a sypmathetic, if not effusive, people, the battle to win an exit at one's destined station is invariably won Young men in duffle coats leap obligingly on to your home platform to make way, and then return to the inner fug, slamming the carriage door behind them.

The motorist is a figure for pity or contempt—pity if he must drive, contempt if he chooses to. Within five minutes his windscreen is blind with muddy water; his car, groomed and caressed into beauty in its garage, is soon a dishevelled ragamuffin among vehicles. The fast-driving Londoner slows to a crawl on glassy surfaces or makes unfamiliar detours. For six hours yesterday, engines roared and wheels spun beneath our windows, always with the same eventual result—a discreet retirement downhill to a road junction and a change of route It has become part of the service of motoring commentators to advise on how to escape froth sudden blizzards without disaster, or how to avoid the corrosion of the chromium bric-a-brac or the underbellies of cars from the salt sprinkled on roads by municipal edict to melt the toe. Escapism In such hard times, escapism is the most pardonable of the vices. There is the elemental, directly physlcl escape offered fast a price) by the coffee bar or (sometimes also at a price)' by the bookshop or the sale of men's wear. The waitingrooms of suburban railway stations, which one had imagined were peopled only in the imagination of the more banal novelists, now have their regular patrons. At Victoria station, one witnessed the very English spectacle of a tattered old man, far gone in years and decrepitude, being gently conducted out of the warm cafeteria by a sympathetic bobby, told off, no doubt, to remove non-paying guests from overcrowded tables. And perhaps bodily comfort has been an aim of some of those who throng the National Gallery and the British Museum, where too many people try to see too many things. Those who every year like to "get away from it all” have this year more than ever to get away from. While a ghostly sun shows itself now and then to smile wanly on the snow, the newspapers drag out, week after week, articles and supplements on the seductions of holiday travel. The names of Maderia, Corfu, Barcelona and Cattolica warm the heart, even if the cold causes doubt as to the possession of feet; the office of the . tourist agency, bedizened with shapely ladies sporting in bikinis on golden sands, with castled Drachenfels or simply with the Acropolis, is like a magnet Ip the street-bred, sunstarved Briton; and from publishers flows in gushing torrents the literature of travel ever glossier, more elegant and more knowing. In August the shop giri from Bermondsey will meet the clerk from Hendon in one of those hotels that stretch like a gigantic ribbon down Italy’s Adriatic cost, and the talk will not be of winter A few days ago, the Automobile Association announced that motorists' bookings on croes-Channel ferries foe the summer were 43 per cent higher than at the same time last year Football Pools

Meanwhile, It is desirable to escape, at least in' spirit, here and now The most original contribution to this good cause comes from the promoters of the football pools. Thwarted by six weeks of postponed matches and an unprecedented backlog of hundreds of unplayei fixtures, they have evolved an elaborate make-believe to allow the Englishman to enjoy his weekly flutter and. of course, to keep the wheels of big business turning. Though not a match be played, for the purpose of the pools there can be a complete set of results. To produce them is the task of a panel of experts, headed yesterday by none other than that former “nippy inside-

right” Sir Alan Herbert. The results—34 home wins, 10 away wins and 10 draws—may well have caused some annoyance to the suppositious vanquished. Still, it can hardly be denied that if civilisatk® is the progressive elimination at chance in favour of reason, the innovation is a civilising influence. Nor would this have been England unless some radio comedian bad not already described, with due circumstantial detail the give-and-take of one of these imaginary matches. The Football Association, worried about lost “gates,” is to prolong the season until after the middle of May, though ait night, so that the men in flannels—plain

cricketers ail, neither players nor gentlemen—may retain command of the early summer days. This is as it should be; it would be a pity if the possibility of a thousand runs in May were to pass to another game.

Effect On Schools Not only has the big football programme been wrecked. Schools, which set high store by manly exercise, have had to improvise within doors or confer some unexpected leisure on their pupils. At Dulwich, the blue goal-posts stand forlornly in the untrodden snow of the many Rugby fields; and the outdoor torments which a New Zealand headmaster might substitute for games foregone are not inflicted here. The heroes of the freeze-up, like most heroes, have not been vocal: the women who have gouged carrots out of frozen soil with their bare hands, that Covent Garden might be served; the postmen who continue to walk every icy inch to the front door to ensure that Her Majesty’s mails are delivered beyond a peradventure; the railwaymen prising apart frozen points under arc lamps; the repair gangs called out to find and repair sagging or broken electric cables; the policemen on point duty in the draughty corridor of Fleet street. Those whose business has been “as usual,” if more unpleasant than usual, are taken for granted and expect to be. And, if there have been heroes, have there also been villains’ The question arises inevitably, and perhaps more urgently now that the meteorologists foretell a return of more severe winters.

lit has been suggested that St. George should make way, as the national saint, for Ethelred the Unready. But the economics of preparedness are complex and arguable, and, in the midst of even more pressing political and economic distractions, it is easy to defer expenditure on precautions against recurrence of such a winter of discontent. As Mr Macmillan reminded his huge audience a few nights ago the British flourish in adversity. It may be, after all, that they prefer the glory of “taking it” to the convenience of a remedy. “Snowbound we are, and floodbound we shall soon be." Let the wind change, and we shall soon be girding ourselves to take it again, this time from the rising waters.