Snow brings out appalling English wimpism

It was obvious things were bad at home on Monday morning, since CNN interrupted their wall to wall coverage of the World Economic Summit at Davos to show shots of plucky Londoners trudging their way through about half a foot of snow in Regent Street. An excited commentator spoke about one of the world's great shopping and financial centres grinding to a halt in the worst winter weather for decades.
Gordon Brown, glowering as ever, was pictured standing with the Chinese premier outside Number Ten.
"Yes, folks, there is snow in Downing Street," said the CNN man, as if announcing that snow had been discovered on the moon.
There were no buses, trains or tubes, and the airports were closed. Most people were not going to work because they had no means of doing so.
At Zurich airport, the Dunkirk spirit prevailed - bearing in mid, always, of course Churchill's caveat that Dunkirk, although a great rescue, should not be considered a deliverance..
Hordes of Brits stared gloomily at internet links on their mobile phones attempting to work out ways of getting home. The destination boards were a sea of red cancellations. All London airports were closed, but there was at least a glimmer of hope with Birmingham remaining open.
"This should not be happening," stormed one angry businessman to no one in particular. "Heathrow is one of the largest airports in the world. It is totally unacceptable that it can be closed by a bit of snow".
But no one was listening, apart, perhaps, the woman at the check-in counter.
And, again, that slight smirk of satisfaction at the plight of the stupid English fools.
Amazingly, we took off on time and were informed that the flight to Birmingham would take only one hour and 25 minutes due to strong tailwinds and, no doubt, to Swiss efficiency.
Inevitably, the good luck could not last. In mid flight from Zurich, Birmingham Airport was closed and we were diverted to Manchester.
That was when British snow-mania really kicked in. An hour and a half we waited in the plane on the tarmac after landing for an airport bus to take us to the terminal. Manchester Airport, it seemed, had been brought virtually to standstill by the large number of planes diverted from other airports.
Surreal scenes followed. The plane we had flown on was being refuelled, it was clearly travelling on elsewhere, but we would not be travelling with it.
Cabin crew insisted everyone remain seated while the refuelling took place - "It is the regulations".
And, bizarrely, seat belts must be undone in case of "the sparks" - "It is the regulations".
Finally, after a two-hour coach trip down the M6, I arrived at Birmingham some six hours late just in time to dig the car out of a foot or so of snow.
No surprise today, then, to learn that almost every school in England is closed, even though most main roads are gritted and trains and buses are running. It is, apparently, too icy to run the risk of children falling over in the playground.
Some of us are old enough to remember the winter of 1962/3 when most of central England was covered in snow and ice from Boxing Day to the end of February. How often were the schools closed then? Not a single day was lost, despite living in rural south Oxfordshire where the village school was a two mile walk away through snow drifts six feet deep.
It all sounds a bit Dickensian, and I suppose it was. But believe me, if any head teacher had suggested in 1963 that his school must close for health and safety reasons, he'd have been laughed out of court.
And in the unlikely event that the chairman of the governors had agreed to close, the school would have been shut for a very long time indeed.