IF you’d been out of the country for the first week or so of March and, on your return, someone had told you that we’d had a load of snow, you’d probably have told them to pull the other one. Same with the ‘Mini Beast’ a couple of weeks later. I can’t remember so much snow disappearing so quickly. For those like me, for whom weather is a bit of a mystery, it was quite bizarre.

Perhaps I should take a few lessons from my old mate Keith who lives in Upavon. We used to play for the same cricket team and he was full of country wisdom such as if snow remained on the hills for so many days after the last then it was waiting around for some more to join it. He also used to predict a summer’s rainfall by saying “oak before the ash, we’re in for a splash; ash before the oak, we’re in for a soak.” But since I wouldn’t know an ash tree if it bit me (an unlikely event, I admit), that’s never been a lot of use to me.

For a couple of days, it was clear that lorries would struggle to make deliveries to our shops and supermarkets. Most people reacted with a shrug of the shoulders and decided to make do with what they had in their homes. Most, but not all. When I first heard the forecast for the first Beast, I just calmly headed to the local supermarket for a few essentials. Once I’d sensibly loaded my trolley with the a hundredweight of Maris Pipers, four dozen cans of beans, 36 chickens, 20 boxes of cornflakes, 18 gallons of bottled water, a gross of loo rolls and a few other essentials, I headed to the tills. Imagine my shock and outrage to find massive queues of pathetic panic buyers! If the Good Lady Wife hadn’t fired a couple of warning shots into the ceiling to disperse the crowd then we might still be there now.

Once home, I had a quick gander at Facebook. I soon wished I hadn’t bothered. There was post after post about this ‘pathetic’ country grinding to a halt because of ‘a few flakes of snow’, often with the inevitable (and somewhat dull) comparisons with how they handle this sort of thing in Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, etc. Well, they have to be geared up for snow otherwise they’d be shut down for half the year! We have a few days every now and then. To my mind, it’s better that we take it on the chin every so often rather than spend a fortune on kit to deal with the worst. Sure, we need grit to keep the main roads open but, as it’s largely salt, it dissolves if it’s not used. I also shudder to think at the outcry if Wiltshire Council were to have bits of kit sitting idly by, only used for a couple of days every other year.

Let’s not forget that not everything ground to a halt. The emergency services carried on doing what they do; often a bit more, due to people who hadn’t heeded their warnings.

There were also local businesses that kept on supplying their customers, right on their doorsteps. One such was Plank’s Dairies. I would guess that other milkmen (no gender discrimination intended) did the same across the county. I doff my cap to all of them. And speaking of Plank’s, they really are a local success story.

Every year, the milk delivery person is predicted to become extinct. Yet they keep on. Perhaps it’s because milk tastes better out of glass. Maybe it’s also because of environmental issues. As people have become more aware of plastic waste, Plank’s have announced that they’re delivering 1,000 bottles of milk a week more than at the end of 2017! I think that’s marvellous.