Bored Slippy

Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe (yes, that is his name) has decreed that our schools will remain closed until next Thursday. This is partly because of burst pipes, knackered heating systems, and the fact that many of our schools are in prefabs, which you couldn't possibly expect salaried members of the teachers' union, sorry, the precious children to use in this weather. Also, nobody can get to school because the roads and paths are all too slidey. Buses can't run, and nobody can walk anywhere without being afraid that they're going to fall over.

In a not unrelated development, the senior civil servant who has been appointed as our Bad Weather Czar (whose name I currently cannot find on Google) was on the radio this morning defending the fact that the Republic of Ireland's National Roads Authority buys the same amount of grit every year as does Northern Ireland's roads authority, despite the fact that NI has a quarter the road mileage that we have. He said that the government's priority was to ensure that "primary national routes" were kept clear.

Well that's all well and good for the people who live on "primary national routes" (which is almost nobody, except the elves who live in IKEA), but what about the rest of us mugs who live in glass-road housing estates and at the ends of little boreens halfway up hills? We can all just go and shite, can we?

Everyone's bored with this now. The weather isn't even all that bad. It's just that even a tiny fall of snow can break a crappy infrastructure.

And everywhere is sold out of Yaktrax. This winter is stupid. Roll on spring. When I will be going to London and Stockholm, assuming the ice age hasn't begun. If it has, I'm going to Rio.