Tebay Services.

There was a little snow overnight, though nothing to worry about, but I did check all the traffic reports and weather forecasts before we set out. The tedious parts of the journey were caused by road works, you know the sort of things: lanes coned off for several miles at a stretch, speed limits in force for the safety of the workmen and no workmen or any sign that there had every had been any - or that there were ever likely to be. The authorities then wonder why traffic continues to pass road works at the national speed limit as though they didn’t care about the safety of the workmen. When I was a little boy at school, we were forever being read tales from Aesop’s Fables which included the one about the shepherd boy who cried “Wolf.”
 
Similarly, there were signs all the way up the motorway saying, and I paraphrase, “Beware of the gritting lorries.” We eventually met one after 200 miles, by which time we had left the motorway. It didn’t matter, the roads were clear of snow though there was a dusting on the grass at the Tebay service station where the view to the south was rather nice; now, if only that duck would move a few feet to the left.
 
We arrived home to find that all the reasons why we had made the effort to complete the journey early had been cancelled because people were scared that they wouldn’t be able to get home afterwards. There was a lot of fuss pending the arrival of “The Beast From the East” and, by modern standards, it was rather extreme; some of us, who remember snows of ’47 and ’63, or the bitter cold of ’82, were not quite so fazed. There was also the winter of 2010 when I had a dental appointment; at the time of making it I was told that I would have to wait several weeks before I could be seen but then I kept receiving phone calls asking if they could bring it forward; the last one was to ask how long it would take me to get there. Half an hour later, having had the check-up, I was told that I might as well stay for the treatment rather than make another appointment as they had nothing else to do.