Life in the freezer

Published on Saturday 9 January 2010 18:02

THE rough path to the open-cast colliery is obscured by the thick blanket of snow which has cloaked the hills above the former mining villages of Plains and Caldercruix in Lanarkshire. Icicles 2ft long hang from the roofs of nearby houses, waterfalls have turned to ice mid-flow, and the thermometer stands resolutely at -10C.

But none of this stops Willie Gault from making his daily trip to Darngavil to collect sacks of coal for families who still rely on the fossil fuel for heating. As other people batten down the hatches, venturing out only to buy essentials like bread and milk, Gault trudges determinedly on, pushing his bicycle-cum-coal carrier through the Arctic landscape before picking up chunks of coal with his bare hands. Then, with the sun bouncing off the snow, sending shards of light in every direction, he heaves his sack on his back and heads for home, sweat pouring down his face. "I was laid off a year-and-a-half ago because of the recession and I don't like to be idle," he says. "I'm getting this coal for a couple with young children who have no chance of getting up here themselves."

Gault's determination to do his bit is a shining example of the kind of response politicians believe we should all have to the extreme weather conditions that have gripped the country for the past three weeks. As anger mounted across the country about local authorities' inaction – about roads and pavements which have gone ungritted and rubbish which has gone uncollected – First Minister Alex Salmond last week asked ordinary people to take more responsibility for their own welfare and the welfare of others.

Under fire for alleged complacency about the weather conditions, which have severely disrupted transport networks and closed hundreds of schools, Salmond, who lives in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, said: "I have had to dig out my car from the driveway like everyone else, but that is to be expected. These are the worst weather conditions we've had for 30 years. I would urge people to engage in self-help so that they have access to their driveways and pavements. They should do the same for their neighbours who might not be able to help themselves."

Ask the people of Plains and Caldercruix – which lie off the A89 between Glasgow and Edinburgh – about community spirit in the face of the current weather and they are initially negative.

And certainly there is not a great deal of evidence of proactive intervention of the likes of Willie Gault: many elderly residents' paths are still packed with snow and there is no mention of people taking hot food to anyone other than their own families. Outside the local shop in Caldercruix, a bunch of teenagers' answer to the cold snap appears to be to drink and swear a lot. "Ask the jakies out there about community spirit," a woman says. But scratch below the surface and you find that though – like anywhere – people's first priority is to keep themselves safe, they are more than willing to help out if they see someone in trouble.

"I had a knee replacement recently and I really can't walk anywhere," says pensioner Marjorie Brady, who lives on a street in Plains, which is virtually impassable, despite an empty bottle of salt which lies discarded on the pavement. "My daughter's been fantastic – she has taken me out to the shops when I really needed to get out. If it wasn't for her I'd be completely isolated," she says.

But then she remembers how, in the early days of the snow, when she was still trying to get out and about, she had been taking her granddaughter to school, when a stranger spotted her struggling and stopped to give her a lift. And then a mother at the school brought her all the way home.

Neighbour Stewart Hunter, 65, tells how he is doing the washing of another family whose pipes have frozen, while a pensioner in Springfield – on the periphery of nearby Airdrie – grumbles about the lack of any gritting, but goes on to describe how she returned from the Christmas dance to find someone had cleared the steps to her house.

Elsewhere there has been much talk about "true grit"; of communities pulling together; of the spirit of the Blitz being rekindled. And – though some may see this as a major exercise in buck-passing – there is little doubt that across Britain the current weather crisis has sparked a few acts of great resourcefulness and heroism among ordinary people.

Take NHS radiographer Peter Cartwright. He walked 18 miles to get to work – leaving at 5:30am, cadging a couple of lifts from passers-by, and taking the tube for the final leg of his journey to St Guy's Hospital in London. In Cheshire, too, people in remote communities proved their resilience by dragging their groceries several miles back from the shops on sledges.

Admittedly, as with every crisis, there have been people ready to exploit other people's difficulties. Several cars were stolen in Essex after they were left with the keys in their ignitions as drivers tried to defrost them, while in East Renfrewshire, a two-tonne grit bin was taken from a roadside (although it would have needed a lorry to shift it), and in Cumbria a man is being investigated for stealing grit and then trying to sell it to his neighbours.

But there have also been those small, mundane, everyday acts of altruism: whether it's pushing strangers' cars out of snow drifts, taking a neighbour's children to school, buying groceries for those who can't get to the shops or looking in on vulnerable pensioners, people seem to be becoming a little less blinkered and insular.

As we are forced to adapt to the Big Chill, our lifestyles are being subtly changed. Although inventions such as central heating and the internet cushion us from the worst excesses of the extreme weather, we are being forced back into our own communities, with many of us forsaking supermarkets for our nearest grocery and drinking in our local pubs.

When we do get to bigger stores, our shopping habits are changing, too: where the January sales would once have seen us snapping up high-end designer clothing, we are now splashing out on more practical items such as slippers, thermal underwear, hot water bottles, snow chains and comfort foods. At the Caldercruix Community Centre, which runs a pensioners' lunch club, there is a feeling that obstacles to daily life, such as traffic delays and cancellations, which would once have sparked irritation, are being accepted with a degree of equanimity as people bow to the inevitable.

Although a man was taken off a plane after getting angry over a flight delay at Durham Tees Valley Airport, in other parts of the country, stranded drivers made the best of their ordeal by building snowmen on the central reservations of motorways. Cheshire father Rick Hardman responded to the fact his street had been transformed into an ice rink by skating on it. The cold weather seems to be bringing out people's creativity too, with a dalek, a dinosaur and a giant igloo among the more spectacular snow sculptures appearing across the country.

Caldercruix Community Centre project development officer Ruth Taggart's own street took on a party atmosphere as neighbours banded together to clear it. "When the first snow came, just before Christmas, we came home from a shopping trip and found we couldn't park in our cul-de-sac so three or four families – the adults, their sons and their friends – all came out to clear it. We had music going, and juice to drink, and there was lots of laughing. At one point, the boys were all competing to knock off the dangerous icicles with snowballs. Normally we just come in from work and go straight into our houses, so it made a change to spend some time outdoors with everyone."

Such scenes of camaraderie, of course, do not take away from the hardship experienced by the older, frailer members of our communities who can't drive and are effectively housebound. Although buses have been running in Plains and Caldercruix, many old people are too scared to risk walking along a few feet of pavement to the bus stop, and of sitting waiting in freezing conditions when they get there. In a flat in Springfield, octogenarian Margaret Gracie is caring for her 109-year-old mother Marion Richardson, who has been unwell since she fell out of bed just before Christmas. The pair are depending on Mrs Gracie's daughter to help them through the winter.

A few of those without families, however, are relying on the ice-cream van making it down their street for vital provisions including washing powder and washing-up liquid, which would be much cheaper in shops. At the Beverly Parks housing estate on the outskirts of Plains, the Tobin family is also finding life tough. They have no lights at night and their roads and pavements have barely been gritted, even though their ten-year-old son Declan has an artificial leg and finds it almost impossible to walk in the icy conditions.

George, a joiner, has been unable to work, as it has proved impossible to move his van. Instead he has been ferrying his wife Yvonne to her part-time job as an office worker, helping with the school and nursery run and keeping a check on his mother who recently suffered a stroke and lives alone. Yet, despite this, the family remains resolutely cheerful. "We have been getting to the shop in Airdrie from time to time, but we still feel as if we've hardly seen anyone. We've been making our own bread a lot, as much for something to do as because we need it, and we've spent a lot of time pushing other people's cars out of the street when they get stuck."

If these Lanarkshire communities are anything to go by, there is no lack of "true grit" in Scotland, even if the other kind of grit is in short supply. In the face of hardship, people are genuinely aggrieved by what they perceive as a lack of planning and inaction by the government and local authorities, with rumblings about withholding council tax gaining momentum among the most disgruntled. But, for the most part, people are also pulling together and getting on with their daily lives. Which is just as well. Because with temperatures reaching a low of -22.3 at Altnaharra on Thursday night, no thaw in sight, transport networks still in chaos, warnings of gas shortages and predictions that this will be the worst winter since 1947, it seems we are going to need all the resolve we can muster.