Snowbama

As Britain awoke to the stunning snowscapes of Monday morning, the nation could not make its mind up whether it was on the set of a huge Richard Curtis film, congratulating itself on its social cohesion and snowball-throwing geniality — or whether we were all suddenly locked in a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which no amenities worked, no schools were open, the roads were hauntingly empty, and a phalanx of plague-ridden zombies was probably just round the corner. Half of the British mind wanted to make merry; the other half acted as if a natural disaster had occurred on a par with Hurricane Katrina.

Mostly, the former instinct prevailed and liberated schoolchildren skipped around those public parks that remained open, building Snowbamas in slightly glutinous celebration of our modern liberal society. Much fun was had by many, and that is obviously a cause for celebration. But our collective response was also a glimpse into the state of the national psyche in early 2009, as Britain looks ahead to extraordinarily difficult times, economic uncertainty and (alas) widespread hardship.

The problem was not the revelry but the resignation: the alacrity with which so many people simply accepted that the obstacles to getting into work or keeping schools open or running at least a skeleton operation in the office were simply insurmountable, and that the best thing to do was to shrug our shoulders and frolic. Whether the final cost to the British economy of Monday’s shut-down is £1 billion or £500 million, the true pricetag is psychological: the decision to pull a national sickie was taken too easily, without hesitation or a smidgeon of shame.

Sentimentality vied with the language of catastrophe. In a classic example of double-think, the very same people who insisted that the snowfall was a unique disaster in the annals of human experience also screamed that the authorities should be ready for such meteorological events as a matter of course.