The Irate Irishwoman – will the Big feckin’ Freeze give us a break?

Proof that functioning airports and snow aren't mutually exclusive. Sheremtyevo airport, Moskovskaya Orblast, Russia. Photo credit: Viktor Radziun

Remember our Angry Russian? We’ve found an Irate Irishwoman to rant in his absence. First up: British airports’ inability to deal with the UK snow.

“Sorry, all domestic flights are cancelled.” Domestic? My flight is not domestic, you imperialist puppet! Ireland is a foreign country. We may be just as useless at dealing with snow but we are independent.

Or at least we nominally have political independence if not fiscal independence. Ahem. This rant is not about the EU/IMF bailout. It’s about the bloody snow and the scale of the chaos that has ensued.

The Angry Russian escaped the country so since he’s not here to rant in an appropriate manner it fell upon me, a luckless First Pinter and exasperated Irish girl, to express my frustration at the inability of a pre-warned transportation system to adequately prepare itself.

We knew it was going to snow. We knew from last year that the system cannot cope with this weather, but have they managed to improve at all? No.

Heathrow airport was like a warzone today. Encampments of refugee-like travellers and harassed staff harassing customers. I didn’t even bother trying to get an answer about whether I would get a refund for my cancelled flight.

As a ‘foreigner’ who isn’t really that foreign at all – we’re not far away enough and we were colonised for a long time before we retaliated by colonising back – I’m luckier than most. I should be able to get home on Tuesday. Unlike everyone else it seems; a frantic family member just called to say that Heathrow will not have a full schedule of flights until after Christmas.

That leaves me to the last resort: Rail and sail. Not appealing because it means spending eight hours in transit but I’ll survive if it means I get home for Christmas. I’ll be with a band of other victims of Heathrow’s inability to prepare.

I’ve stocked up on playing cards and drink and hopefully we won’t sober up to find ourselves stranded somewhere in rural Wales. Wales is not somewhere I want to spend time with a hangover. Or even without one.

Others are not so lucky. Another member of The First Pint team made it to Heathrow at 6am on Sunday to find that his flight to Columbia was cancelled. There are no rail and sail tickets for Bogota.

Snow causing disruption to transport networks isn’t news in the UK. It’s been a major story of the most inanely repetitive type for several years now. More salt, more train line de-icers, more ploughs (or even some ploughs) are familiar calls.

Most of the country has ground to a halt. Retailers are weeping over their Christmas takings but most of all thousands of people have been stranded on the cusp of the UK’s biggest holiday season. This is horrible for all the people stuck for two days – and possibly longer in Heathrow – and for their families hoping to see them. Why couldn’t this be avoided? How many times does this have to happen before the ‘we’re not used to weather like this’ excuse wears out?