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Monday 20th 39F, dark grey overcast. Still almost dark at 8.00am. Another grey day is forecast. A cold wind under a ribbed sky. A narrow strip of wave cloud stretched from horizon to horizon. Sadly it never came close enough for my camera to capture it effectively.
Danish farmers turned up at the minister's farming talk with 300 of their huge tractors to protest the latest climate rules. There is a last ditch attempt to stop run-off from the fields causing complete oxygen depletion in Danish waterways. The farmers want to be able to spread even more pig's diarrhoea and fertilizer into the streams, rivers and coastal waters.
The previous government of the "Farmers Rule Party" relaxed the rules. This led to a massive increase in run-off. Exactly as predicted by the experts, of course. The farmers are saying that their massively overcrowded and sickly, indoor pigs will starve without more food being grown. The arguments about farming go round and round like crop rotations. Give an inch. Take a mile. Adjust to the new mile and call that the new standard. Only to demand another mile disguised as an inch.
I had to smile at the massive snowfall in Canada. What did they do? They started digging out their deeply buried cars so they could drive on the snow-blocked roads. Where did they put all that snow? On the pavement? Or on the road?
We had 40cm/ 16" of snow, plus drifting, in a single, overnight fall, some years back. It took us days to dig out a 100 meter length of drive using builders shovels and working alone. Just so that we could drive to the village to buy some food.
Walking along the cleared, main road would have been absolutely lethal! There were high banks along each side from the snow ploughs going repeatedly back and forth. So there would be no escape for pedestrians wading through the deep, salty puddles between the [illegally speeding] traffic. Nobody around here slows down just for a bit of snow and ice. Just count how many fall off the road onto the verge! No pure bred Dane has independently discovered tyre spray yet. So it can't officially exist under Jante's Law.
Walking along the cleared, main road would have been absolutely lethal! There were high banks along each side from the snow ploughs going repeatedly back and forth. So there would be no escape for pedestrians wading through the deep, salty puddles between the [illegally speeding] traffic. Nobody around here slows down just for a bit of snow and ice. Just count how many fall off the road onto the verge! No pure bred Dane has independently discovered tyre spray yet. So it can't officially exist under Jante's Law.
As soon as we had cleared the drive, our pathologically lazy, young neighbour drove down to his shed to collect some beer. He hadn't lifted a finger to help. Despite the law stating he was equally responsible, with the other neighbour, for snow clearing along their own own boundaries. Fat chance!
By law, we needn't have done anything! [Except starve.] We didn't know the rules back then and they wouldn't have helped us one iota if we had. Who would we complain to? The council? They would have searched their files to see if there was anything they could complain about, to us! Been there. Done that.
Rural community spirit? Don't make me laugh! Only later did we discover lightweight, combined snow shovels and scrapers would have made much lighter work of it. We could have moved the whole lot into a huge pile right outside their houses at the far end. Or even blocked access to his beer storage shed back at our end. Ah, the wisdom of perfect hindsight!
Statistically, snow clearing kills a lot of unfit people with strokes and heart attacks. It's lucky we are such fit pensioners! Even in my 70s I'd still be able to do it all over again. Just more quickly using the correct tools. It took four to five months for that snow to finally disappear the next spring. It's years now since we had to clear the drive of snow. It's an ill climate which doesn't do somebody good.
Statistically, snow clearing kills a lot of unfit people with strokes and heart attacks. It's lucky we are such fit pensioners! Even in my 70s I'd still be able to do it all over again. Just more quickly using the correct tools. It took four to five months for that snow to finally disappear the next spring. It's years now since we had to clear the drive of snow. It's an ill climate which doesn't do somebody good.
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