Free Municipal Skating Rink Opens in Charlbury!

Mon 21 Dec 2009, 16:22

All joking aside for a bit, here's what actually happened:

I went out for a walk yesterday afternoon. Yes, it was cold and the pavements of Dancers Hill looked slippery but I assumed that other parts of the town would have been salted. At the outset, I take full responsibility for my actions and accept that I could have stayed indoors if I had had any qualms about the weather. I was sensibly dressed: woolly hat, warm gloves, fleece, jeans, thick socks and walking shoes with Vibram soles (supposedly suitable for climbing mountains, etc.).

So I slipped and slithered my way down to Cornbury Park. Pavements weren't too bad except for Church Street and Park Street, parts of which were very dicey. Lost my balance once or twice but managed to stay upright. Road leading to Cornbury was horrible, particularly the bridge over the Evenlode: I teetered along the gutter, made a lunge for the bridge itself when I felt my feet going and, despite said bridge being covered in ice, managed to avoid a tumble.

Nice walk to Finstock and back, mostly on footpaths/crisp frozen fields. Tiptoed over ice sheet on approach road to Cornbury again. Decided to return home via Hixet Wood and Woodfield Drive so as to avoid Church Street. Woodfield Drive dodgy but again I stayed upright. Crossed Dancers Hill to gain pavement leading down to my house. Less than 400 m from my abode, crashed to ground on sheet of ice.

I joked about it earlier but my hip is quite badly bruised and I struggled to sleep last night because of the pain. However, as Jon said, I am fit and youngish so I accept that no-one is likely to care. However, at the same time that I was sliding around on Dancers Hill, I also saw a family with several small children, a middle-aged woman and two other children trying to traverse the slope, all experiencing various degrees of difficulty.

But here's the really worrying part. About an hour after I fell over, I drew the curtains upstairs. As I watched, an elderly woman (about 75-80 years old at a guess) was walking up Dancers Hill on the icy road. She was wearing flat-soled shoes, not walking shoes or boots, and carrying a stick (crampons and an ice axe would have been more appropriate!). I have to confess I couldn't watch: I drew the curtains and walked away from the window. I didn't hear an ambulance so I can only assume she managed the ascent without falling over. If she had slipped as I did, she would almost certainly have spent Christmas and New Year in hospital (I have edited publications on osteoporosis and know how prevalent it is in women of that age).

To answer Hamish's point, I was less than 50 m from a grit bin when I hit the ground. Someone (not me) had sprinkled some grit on the road/pavement but, not being experts presumably, they had missed some bits.

If the Council wishes to institute a self-service gritting operation in Charlbury (which I would be opposed to incidentally, as I don't think it should be the job of private citizens) then they should at least have the decency to inform residents of this fact. A letter to every house in the town would seem to be in order, preferably tied around a child's plastic spade, telling residents that if they want the pavements gritted then they must do it themselves. Failing this, at the very least an announcement should be made in the winter issue of the Chronicle or posted in the "News" section of this website.

There is a knack to spreading grit apparently - I saw it demonstrated on the TV news last winter. One needs a large shovel and the correct wrist action! Trained personnel who do this sort of thing all the time are surely better equipped to spread grit than old dears or people like me who don't own a shovel and play cricket not squash so don't have the requisite degree of physical dexterity or wristiness!

The earlier comments about who is responsible for gritting in Charlbury are very revealing. It is a combination of the Town Council, WODC and OCC apparently. Is it any surprise therefore that some roads and pavements slip through the net? Everything these days is devolved and subcontracted, the aim being that when anything goes wrong, no-one can find out who is responsible and no-one admits any blame. How about a National Gritting Authority, responsible for all gritting operations nationwide? It could have a freephone helpline and one could phone up, quote a postcode that had not been gritted and a team could come out and do the necessary salting. It won't happen of course, not least of all because my idea will be interpreted as letting in Socialism through the backdoor, but it must be better than the current lousy piecemeal effort which leaves roads and pavements covered with lethal sheets of ice and jeopardizes people's health.

Rather than a petition Roger, I suggest that we all refuse to pay the Town Council precept of our Council Tax next year - that might have the desired effect!

It is less than a fortnight until 2010. According to predictions in the 1960s/1970s, we should all by now be living in futuristic cities in the sky, whizzing around in jetpacks, eating food in pill form and wearing silver foil clothing. Instead, we are living in a rural backwater of a Third World country where no-one can be bothered to sprinkle a small quantity of an inexpensive raw material (it's rock salt for gawd's sake, not enriched plutonium!) on the ground in winter. I find it all sad and utterly pathetic. But enough said. I'm off to rub some ibuproden gel into my throbbing hip!