Talking about the weather...

When we arrived in Edinburgh, it was dark every day from about 4 pm to 8 am, so we travelled in the dark. Richard seemed to find his way pretty quickly (by dint of spending hours poring over maps,) and besides, we have a Sat-Nav/GPS, so we couldn't get too lost. The sunrise to sunset period has lengthened by about four minutes each day, so life has improved, but everything looks a little different when it is light, so we had to find our way again.  Then, last week, it snowed and snowed and snowed. Everything looks different and we are having to find our way all over again. After a year or so, we should know our way around pretty well in all atmospheric and light conditions.

Actually, it has been snowing and snowing and snowing ever since we arrived, but the snow used to melt off each day so the net result was a prevailing sogginess with patches of  snow and ice in the shade. This past week it has been cold, as in consistently below freezing. The snow has not melted off, but has accumulated, oh, six or eight inches or even a foot in parts of the city and its environs. And much of Scotland (to say nothing of the rest of the UK and much of Europe) has been paralyzed as a result. Schools and airports have been closed, and the powers that be have requested/strongly suggested that if you don't have to travel, stay at home. Now just in case those of you who live in the Rocky Mountain area of the Good ol' US of A are inclined to sneer, and talk about how easily we cope with feet of snow back home, this is true. We cope by virtue of  snowplows, lots of snowplows; snow-shovels, one or more in every home, and a few snowblowers in every neighborhood; and also off-street parking available to many/most of us.

Here the entire country (Scotland) has fewer snowplows than the Wasatch front. (I invented that last snippet of information but it feels about right).  Even if they did have more, the residential streets are mostly narrow and the gap between the cars parked on each side is less than the width of the average snowplow. The main routes and bus-routes are cleared, either by plows or by lots and lots of cars squishing the snow out of the way.

One of the more charming habits of the British is the way they name things. What we in Provo call plows they call gritters here, because they have a plough in front and spray salt and grit out the back. Transport for Scotland involved local schools in coming up with names for each gritter. So we have Sir Grits-a-lot, Grittie McVittie, Sir Salter Scott, Ready Spready Go and several other whimsical names. You can track where the gritters are on a live map during the storm. However, regardless of their names none of them come up Spring Gardens and and nobody is clearing our parking area for us.

So we sit. Richard bought a snow shovel from the local supermarket and we made it in to the mission office on Thursday, travelling very slowly and late in the morning. On Friday we couldn't get out of our parking lot.  Richard went outside with the newly acquired snow shovel and helped a couple of neighbors to shovel themselves out, breaking the snow shovel in the process. So there we were, stuck as can be, only after a while Richard thought of our tiny little dustpan, and started shovelling our car out with that. He got plenty of exercise, and by Saturday we were able (very slowly and carefully) to leave the parking lot and go gallivanting.

We started off by going to the office for an hour or two on Saturday, Richard has some month-end reports that were (over)-due, but there wasn't much else we could do that we had not already done online on Friday. The post had not been delivered since Wednesday, and until it comes there is little more to do. The missionaries have all been grounded, especially their cars, and so there have been no car crashes for several days, except for one of the senior missionaries who hit the sidewalk and blew out a tyre.  Richard deals with all that sort of thing, and there was thankfully very little to deal with. I deal with sick missionaries, but seeing as most of them are staying indoors and that is exactly what their coughs and colds most need, there is not all that much for them to consult me about. If it weren't for it killing people and shutting down the country and the work of the mission, we should have weather like this more often.

So we drove to an interesting looking garden-shop and shopping center called Dobbies World. We have no idea what, if any link it has to Harry Potter. Well, to be precise, I don't know. Richard looked it up and offered to tell me, but warned me that I would be disappointed so I said no. Let me keep my attachment to a certain little house-elf.

You may be wondering about our driving about when all the mission cars had been grounded. Senior missionaries are on a semi-permanent cusp - does this rule apply to me, or does it not? The Missionary Handbook is not especially helpful, btw. All it says is that not all the rules apply to seniors, but it fails to be any more specific than that. Mostly we suppose we are expected to use good judgement. It would be nice if the younger missionaries could just use the same principle. Of course, the quantity of good judgement in one's life is not always directly proportional to one's age.

Saturday afternoon we went grocery shopping. We didn't need all that much stuff, which was a good thing as the supermarkets are out of milk and bread (and flour - a lot of people must be eating pancakes) and have very little in the way of fresh stuff. The delivery trucks have been unable to travel, so the stores are not getting restocked. We just hope all the young missionaries have been obedient to the reminder they received earlier this winter to keep a week's supply of tinned food on hand.
Sunday, our ward's meetings were cancelled because of the weather. I think we mentioned before that our chapel parking lot has a long and steep driveway, so unless it is completely cleared it is scary and genuinely dangerous, so we decided to attend Edinburgh Ward, but so many roads were closed and we were going to be so late we decided to go visit our shut-in instead and have sacrament with her. We were glad we did, as it started snowing heavily again while we were visiting her, and we were happy to head straight home afterwards. We might not have been able to see her had we not gone early.



One final weather related thought. Here's a picture of a nearby street. These are all the cars owned by the people in the flats alongside. the interesting thing is that from the lack of tracks in the snow alongside the cars they have not moved in the last four days. It appears that many, many people own a car, but they only use them occasionally. Not using them in the local traffic conditions does make sense and I for one am grateful not to have even more vehicles on the road.

We have had lots of learning experiences with this bout of snow and are snuggly warm, with enough of everything. We are getting where we need to go. We are now going to make some Aero drinking chocolate and watch a happy movie.

And that, folks, is the weather report for the past week.