[Image by Tim Ackroyd]
If you’re stuck indoors this weekend, fed up of the cold and snow, the New Scientist has a fascinating article up that puts the country’s latest inconvenience into some perspective:
1709: The year that Europe froze
[…]
On the night of 5 January, the temperature fell dramatically and kept on falling. On 10 January, Derham logged -12 °C, the lowest temperature he had ever measured. In France, the temperature dipped lower still. In Paris, it sank to -15 °C on 14 January and stayed there for 11 days. After a brief thaw at the end of that month the cold returned with a vengeance and stayed until mid-March.
[…]
Fish froze in the rivers, game lay down in the fields and died, and small birds perished by the million. The loss of tender herbs and exotic fruit trees was no surprise, but even hardy native oaks and ash trees succumbed. The loss of the wheat crop was “a general calamity”. England’s troubles were trifling, however, compared to the suffering across the English Channel.
[…]
There was worse to come. Everywhere, fruit, nut and olive trees died. The winter wheat crop was destroyed. When spring finally arrived, the cold was replaced by worsening food shortages. In Paris, many survived only because the authorities, fearing an uprising, forced the rich to provide soup kitchens. With no grain to make bread, some country people made “flour” by grinding ferns, bulking out their loaves with nettles and thistles. By the summer, there were reports of starving people in the fields “eating grass like sheep”. Before the year was out more than a million had died from cold or starvation.
Now that’s what I call weather.
Reluctant as I am to agree with the Loathsome Hoon on anything at all, I do think those delicate flowers who’re complaining because they have to get out and dig their own driveways need to get a bit of gumption, a shovel, and start digging.
On the other hand, I do understand that the snow and the days of enforced idleness (not to mention the childcare chaos caused by stoppages and closures) are yet more burdens to be borne by a population weighed down by worry about their jobs and whether they can afford to pay the heating bill or the mortgage. People are understandably boilingly angry at the government for any number of malfeasances and disasters, but feel powerless to do anything about it. They need a target for rage.
Hence the recent massive increase in BBC complaints, the kerfuffle over Carol Thatcher and now the whinging about the weather. All that anxiety and anger has to blow off at something or it’ll explode.
Howver it’s been barely a week of cold and snow; nobody’s starving, as yet, no significant numbers have died from cold, most people have heating, lighting, food and power. Given those advantages I’m sure we can cope with a bit of snow. They did in 1709, and they had none of those things.
