There's an old joke that goes "How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans!". I think the big fella is up there having a chuckle right now having heard the human race witter on about climate change for years now. So much so, he's decided to send us this winter from hell (Mmm, wouldn't that be warm actually?) to teach us all a lesson.
Since sometime in early December the temperature here has been well below freezing and the thought of picking up a metal spanner in an uninsulated garage has even the most determined petrolhead reaching for the duvet cover. Actually though, to be fair, although it has been cold with temps often below minus 20 and highs of minus two feeling balmy, it’s actually the amount of snow that’s driving us all nuts. I was thinking to myself this morning when I went out to the car, when was the last time I came to the car in the morning and I didn’t need a brush to clear the fresh snow that had fallen on it? I was thinking the same when I came out of the office again this evening to be met with a fresh screen full of the white stuff. It’s been a while and snow no longer feels like a daily occurrence, more like an hourly one. This weekend I had an entirely new experience though, one, which despite all my experience of Scandinavia I hadn’t previously enjoyed. I hear that insurance companies are running for cover (Oh boy, sorry about that) at the moment and point out that we are under record levels of snow, levels of snow our roofs may not have been designed to cope with: You know what comes next – yep, if your roof caves in under the weight you’ll be on your own sonny. I did for a while wonder what the insurance company would say if I attempted to claim for injuries sustained falling off said roof while trying to clear the snow from it, but figured they’d just quote some bylaw about harnesses and safety ropes and stuff and once again I would be on my own. Great. Thus I clambered onto our roof which has to be over 230 square meters, armed with my snow shovel thing and started clearing the snow, which was pretty much evenly covered in compacted snow 69cm deep. That’s a lot of snow. That’s so much snow that I was able to step off the roof onto the pile of snow now lying on the ground…….to discover I could no longer see the front door! Oh happy days. I slept rather well on Saturday night.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this winter has been our failure to deal with it. Whilst Finland has not been reduced to a complete standstill in the way certain sceptred isles might be whenever a flake of crystallized water falls on it, it certainly hasn’t acquitted itself as well as usual. Helsinki in particular, enduring depths of snow that makes the Laplanders jealous (come and take it – it’s all yours!), has simply run out of places to put the stuff. Trudging around some areas of Helsinki is a real trial as the city's resources seem to be struggling to cope. Many of the roads are poorly cleared and some of the pavements simply aren’t cleared at all, making the life of the pedestrian a real grind. Assuming the intrepid foot soldier makes it to the corner of the street he or she then has to play the game of hide and seek as the piles of snow left adjacent to crossing places is enough to hide a class of toddlers in dayglo jackets behind – ask me how I know…. So recently the press carried notices about how the police in the area would be watching out for illegal use of mobile phones and people not wearing seat belts, whereas any sane assessment of our current situation would arrive at the conclusion that creating enormous piles of snow on pavements, adjacent to pedestrian crossings might not be the smartest way of avoiding traffic to human contact.
Moving about by train doesn’t seem to be the smartest option either as they’ve been hit pretty badly by the weather. I remember on a business trip to Finland, many years ago, standing at the station in awe as a commuter train emerged through the blizzard, bang on time and whisked me to my destination precisely on schedule in a manner that exemplified normality. These days it seems to be a different story altogether. What went wrong? My own theory is that we’ve brainwashed ourselves into thinking that climate change is making things warmer every year and thus the winter in Southern Finland will resemble something from much further south. Hence we needn’t specify our trains for such dire weather as we used to have – ooops! Wrong! Likewise moving about by car has been quite tricky this winter too, the extreme cold and I guess the higher than average humidity (I haven’t checked the stats!) has made the roads particularly slippy this season.
The good news of course that these extended periods of slippyness have provided more than adequate opportunities to test out one’s winter tyres and to find out how they work. My extensive testing has now proven that the studded tyres I have on my car work best when used reasonably aggressively. Moderate braking and you can get the ABS to kick in, too harsh and you get the same effect, but a good firm stab, which results in the swift but smooth transfer of mass onto the front wheels ensures you hear the studs digging in and doing their stuff. Lifewise cornering, tiptoe round the corner and you have the odd moment – turn in with a smidge more commitment and the body rolls, the tyres get some weight over them and you sail round the corner like you’re on rails.
Which is all fine and dandy of course, but I’d rather be on a nice warm set of sticky tyres in the Se7en thanks. So, cheers God, we’ve seen the funny side, can we get on with Spring now? There’s a good chap