mr heelaz feeling for snow

The snow engulfed Kilcullen a week ago.

It wasn't much by European standards.

But for us it seemed like a most epic blizzard.

Then the blizzard cleared and we were left with beautiful white vistas as far as the eye could see.

It is a nuisance of course.

At least a dozen of my neighbours have had falls or car crashes or truck crashes or some nefarious admixture of all three.

Because the snow brings such hardship, I feel a tad guilty about loving it so much.

But there is poetry here.

A certain timelessness.

My town looks not so different from how it might have looked a hundred years ago.

People wrapped up like woollen snowmen are trudging down the middle of the road. What vehicles there are crawl by at a snail's pace.

Everyone seems friendlier.

Rosy cheeked householders are greeting each other jovially over garden fences in the cold winter air.

People have time to talk.

Kilcullen suddenly seems a much friendlier place.

The barriers have come down.

This is the way it should always be.

Meanwhile the children of Ireland have gone collectively nuts.

The snow means that certain social conventions regarding assault with snowy weapons have been laid aside.

I might as well be walking around with a target on my head and a large sign on my back reading "Snowball me."

There are some interesting political lessons to be learned too.

Government authorities have floundered in their attempts to keep the roads clear.

But the farmers of South Kildare who actually work for a living and needed to ensure their cows' milk could be collected by trucks from the dairy, simply took out their tractors and cleared all the accessways to their farms.

The more motivated shopkeepers on main street did likewise, shovelling the pavements in front of their premises and staying open throughout the bleakest days.

The motorways and primary roads for which our government agencies insisted on retaining responsibility, remained perilous and largely impassable.

Some of the farmers mucked in voluntarily to pull lorries up hills and keep the road network functioning.

One Irish government agency got a bit miffed about this and actually forbid farmers to voluntarily clear roads without completing a Health And Safety course.

I kid you not.

We are terribly addicted to the old entitlements and benefits and inflated salaries and crass interventions and nanny State handouts of the presumptuous unctious bumptious culture of corrupt jobsworth incompetence that is passing away.

Thankfully the faith, self reliance, warmth, compassion, spirit, and glorious down to earth humanity of ordinary Irish people is still with us.

Pure poetry.

This is what will see us through all the blizzards that are to come.