Some thoughts

[fivemack]

• Snow is a damp clumpy substance that lies on top of harder ground. Shovels are good at moving such substances. Might it not be sensible to try moving snow with shovels rather than by shuffling over it with innumerable pairs of feet


• A garden spade has a gently curved bottom. This is excellent for many earth-related reasons, but when shovelling snow with a spade one swiftly discovers why the shovel also exists


• When shovelling snow with a spade, one must go back to go over the icy lines created at the edge of the curved bit of spade


• There is nobody so invisible as a man with a spade


• It takes about ten minutes to clear a square metre of snow. Shovelling slushy snow for forty minutes makes you sweat


• If you clear a nice path a foot wide through the car-park, most people will walk on the slushy snow around it

Comments

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

# If you clear a nice path a foot wide through the car-park, most people will walk on the slushy snow around it

I walk on the bit that looks like snow rather than the bit that looks like black ice. Unless I know that it's just like that because it's been cleared.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

US powder snow can be cleared very fast with a shovel, but wet British snow quickly becomes ice underneath, and I'm sure the fear of black ice keeps people off your path.

People may be wary of clearing snow as it allegedly opens them to liability cases, so I would only do it if it were a council bye-law.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Clearing the ice with the spade is the fun part, the spalling is very satisfying

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

If you also sprinkle salt on the path, people will know it isn't black ice. With any luck.

There is nobody so invisible as a man with a spade

Ha! I am trying to train myself to notice people shovelling snow and to thank them for doing it. It is surprisingly hard to remember.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I was very pleased to discover that, on Monday and Tuesday mornings, the path hadn't turned into black ice, and was actually being used.