Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
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AT THE THIRD FALL OF SNOW
Word of more heavy snowfall in Mayo this afternoon. At this point I believe the ice outside our house could technically be classified as glacier. But to be honest, if I were a kid, I reckon I’d have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, sure, sliding down hillsides in empty fertilizer bags is one of life’s richest pleasures. And, I suppose, there was some minor sentimental value attached to that whole White Christmas thing. But from a hardnosed perspective – and I was a pretty hardnosed kid – the timing here could hardly be worse. You get two weeks off school for Christmas no matter what the weather is like. If this cold front had happened to arrive either a month later, or a month sooner, we’d have gotten, what, a good two or three straight weeks off school on top of your Christmas holidays.
That would be about five weeks off school – except with snow and snowball fights and daily acts of goodhumoured hooliganism thrown in for good measure. As Milhouse van Houten once exclaimed, not only would you not not be learning, you’d be forgetting stuff you used to know!
As someone who hated school with the pathological intensity that I did as a boy, that would have been manna from heaven.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Eoin, you realise this is nothing compared to what we get three or four months of the year in Minnesota?
January 6th, 2010 at 3:30 am
I was talking to a Canadian and an Australian guy once. The Canadian said that his school used to close if it got to minus 40. The Australian said that his school used to close if it got to plus 40. I said that sometimes we didn’t have to go out at break if it was raining hard.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Excuse the typo in Global.
January 6th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
@ chris, thanks for the explanation. Eoin, great stuff as usual, really enjoy reading your stuff.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Cheers Chris, had never quite been clear on that myself. And pub logic… well, that’s definitely my level.
January 6th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
@ Lisa – you have been very bemused if you’d seen Dublin today. About two to three inches of snow fell and entire city ground to a halt. Dublin Bus stopped running so by late afternoon hundreds and hundreds of officers streaming down quays on foot.
Kind of reminded me of footage of 9/11.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Soon, soon I will return to lead my people through the ice and snow!
In the meantime it is hard not to be stymied by how paralysed the whole country appears to have become. In fairness, though, winter driving isn’t the easiest. I’m not exactly enthused about it myself AND I have winter tyres AND 4WD.