Is tired...

[sammywol]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... huhwhuzzat!? ... I'm doing that a lot today. BB has a bad cough and I have a revival of the tummy bug and thus and therefore nights have been very broken. At least the grim and awful exhausted depression of Monday and Tuesday night has receded even though the back wall of the house seems to be leaking and the gas bill

Comments

[enigmaticblues]

Glad to hear that some things are being sorted, anyway. I think that the snow and ice has hit everyone hard, but it's worse in areas where it's not the norm.

Hope you get some proper rest soon!

[sammywol]

Proper rest would be good, although I am getting a lot more than you are so should no complain.

The snow and ice (and before that the floods) have been a bit of a pain and we have escaped the worst of it, oh yes! But really it is the now to be expected cock ups and buck passing on the part of government (central and local) that gets one down.

[a_d_medievalist]

eep! I think the video probably should have stopped at one slow-mo, with additional commentary on how dangerous it is.

in the meantime, these aren't foolproof, but they help.

Hope you and BB feel better soon!

[sammywol]

'These' are Kewl! i don't think the video is all RTE editing, although they did use the footage a good few times before the internet furore kicked up and they realised that it looked, to say the least, a shade heartless.

[curiouswombat]

I think you need to retire to your bath, with a nice glass of wine, for a rest at regular intervals.

i am certain that that poor bloke was a lowly RTE staffer I'm sure you're right.

Scarborough council simply took sand off the beach for their pavements - grip and salt in one go. Seemed a good idea to me, I'm surprised more seaside towns didn't do the same thing.

[sammywol]

Some seaside sand apparently gums up the machinery real good, as Wicklow County Council found out.

[ramurphy]

Not, you know, to be a naysayer, but having lived for half a century in Alaska, I'm here to tell you that sand all by itself, while not actually melting ice, does indeed ameliorate its awfulness by creating traction on the ice. I don't understand why they did not use sand and or gravel. And as curiouswombat says - there's beach sand which has the benefit of a certain amount of salt already in. They've been filling sandbags from the beaches to use as dams for the flooding, so it seems as if it'd be a very small mental step indeed to give it a go.

[alaimacerc]

I assume that sand is the thing to use when there's so much snow, or the temperature is so low, that applying salt stands no chance of actually clearing it anyway. Applied to a tiny-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things amount of only-just-below-zero snow, in an environment where no-one bothers making any other preparation (like snow tyres, tyre chains, etc), and isn't very used to dealing with it, it isn't going to make the punters happy. Personally, I'd have been glad of some on some footpaths.

I was a little slack-jawed at some council jobsworth saying they were waiting for imported "white salt" as "domestic" (island of Ireland) supplies of brown salty grit "didn't give as good a spread". Not exactly a bold spirit of improvisation. "Brown grit" is commonly used in the UK -- dunno whether it's because it's cheaper, or because of the traction considerations.

[sammywol]

well they were lying too as the head of the salt mine - biggest one in Europe for brown salt is on the damn island - was quite patient in explaining to lots of radio interviewers that they were saving some for irish use but were damn well going to supply their regular customers first on the grounds that they had already ordered and paid for the supply and did so every year. Top customer = Scotland! So that brown grit you ere singing the praises of was the VERY thing the council gy was pretending he wouldn't give his suit pants for.

[alaimacerc]

It's food exports during an Gorta Mór all over again! Or something.

You mean I may have been treading on some of that very grit a couple of weeks ago? Small world.

I shall go work on my Ode to Brown Grit s'more. (So far I have that it's salty, gritty, and well, brown.)

[keswindhover]

The salt mine in Northern Ireland is one of only two in the whole British Isles, so I'm glad they kept to their contracts. And I have a spectacular red shiny knee to attest to the fact that ice is slippery.

I haven't heard any stories about our councils spreading agricultural chemicals instead of salt, though. That one seems to be a little local difficulty, all of Kildare's own.