Rain dance pays off for Barnet council

Daniel Thomas, the Barnet Cabinet Member with responsibility for Environment and Transport, must have been relieved this morning as the rain cleared some of the snow. His rain dance must have paid off, and just as well - Barnet council didn't have much else of a strategy going for them, as the borough's grit dropped to just three days' supply.

For all that the thaw has set in, I think it is still too early to abandon wellingtons when venturing out, however. With my tendency to dress like a Land Girl, the last few weeks have not troubled me, but going into central London has been rather embarassing, mingling with the suits. I hope they can make allowances for the fact that we have travelled in from an outlying borough, and forgive the rich, country smells we bring with us.

Make your own grit - recipe

Amid news that Barnet council is that close to running out of grit completely, I have been scouring the internet for recipes to make your own grit. This is the best so far (Phil's blog is good, as well, if you are heavily into search technology and other techy matters).

Onto the ice road

One of my guilty televisual pleasures is History channel's "Ice Road Truckers", shown in the UK on Five. I am not alone in this, since the programme has now entered its third season. In "New Season Ice Road Truckers", the truckers leave Canada to try their luck on the Dalton Highway in Alaska.

The Highway is an ice road that runs from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, near the Arctic Ocean and the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The mostly very large truckers must haul their heavy loads along treacherous, winding and dipping ice roads, across mountains where avalanches can hit at any time, through blizzards and white-outs, and then across the frozen Arctic Ocean itself. (Is your pulse racing by now? Mine is.)

The tagline for the series "A job to die for" is not a good one - if those guys and girls aren't in a union they are mugs. And the new series is shot with too much jumping about - or perhaps I need a new lens prescription. Those caveats aside, I would recommend you to take a look.

It puts our own current snowy misery into perspective. Lying in bed at night hearing the gritting lorries plying the main roads of Barnet (not the side roads - by order of the council) I'm grateful to everyone whose job it is to deliver things or visit people in this cold. Myself, I am venturing out to Edgware this afternoon. I may be gone for some time.