We were stuck on the big bridge over the River Tay at Perth with just Bert for company and it felt as though we were encased in a glacial coffin.
Bert wasn’t a passenger, of course, but Storm Bert was banging on our car doors – trying everything to claw them open and get in.
We were headed deep into England to help my extremely frail mother-in-law celebrate her 92nd birthday in a care home.
I thought we were going to beat the storm until we collided head-on with it at Perth and everything ground to a halt on the bridge.
Normally I’d be delighted to pause on this magnificent construction, a key piece in the Scottish roads network which links the north-east with Edinburgh.
A feat of engineering
The elevated view from high up above the Tay is usually stunning; a feat of engineering only bettered when the Queensferry crossing came along.
My wife and I couldn’t see anything right now, not much further than the end of our noses in all directions due to blizzard white-out.
The temperature was around freezing, the snow “deep and crisp and even”, and suddenly it felt like a menacing white blanket.
By now the traffic jam stretched back many miles and Lord knows how many hundreds of us were trapped.
It’s potentially dangerous for all sorts of reasons.
Especially with so many many vulnerable older and younger people inevitably caught up in it and at risk while sitting stationary in these possibly fatal conditions.
Stay at home, you idiots
I’ll say it now because I know you are aching to.
Why on earth did you take such silly risks? Stay at home, you idiots.
It’s a good point.
But sometimes people are just committed to doing something essential and feel obliged to see it through whatever.
For some in the Highlands and rural north-east travel is always a challenge anyway.
The police and other authorities batter everyone with their “stay at home” message at such times; sensible, but not a realistic option for many.
On our journey south from Aberdeen it was so busy it seemed as though half of Scotland was on the roads.
Pursuing their journeys as enthusiastically as someone on their way to collect lottery winnings.
Plenty of commercial traffic – lorries and parcel-delivery companies – and private family groups with somewhere to be.
We didn’t want to let anyone down
We had another reason to reach our destination: a relative was flying in from Spain.
I don’t know if that is a good enough excuse, but we didn’t want to let anyone down – and we weren’t sure how many birthdays she had left.
As often happens in these situations an apparently immovable jam began to melt away as an accident was cleared up ahead and we all crawled on in single file after a 45-minute delay.
We nodded in appreciation towards a bearded policeman at the roadside swathed in protective clothing and a hood.
He looked like someone in that old familiar picture of Scott of the Antarctic.
I know the police can be annoying, but we owed him our heartfelt appreciation for getting everyone going again.
As we passed countless rural cottages and small communities, we could sense they were wrapping themselves up warm from the icy onslaught.
Or maybe not; lack of winter fuel payments snatched from older residents by the Labour Government are probably starting to bite and cause sleepless nights.
We’ll see the human toll as winter progresses.
Chancellor Reeves was crudely disingenuous by turning a blind eye to so many old people above the pension-credit threshold still struggling badly with energy bills; “eat or heat” and so on.
If Reeves cut the enormous amount of bureaucratic waste the government leaves in its wake that might cover a rather large financial black hole.
Like the duplicate letters my wife and I received from the UK Government a week or two ago informing us that winter fuel payments in Scotland were being replaced by “a new Scottish Government pension-age winter heating payment”.
A display of social conscience which embarrasses Reeves
But nothing new because it was matching Reeves’ savage restrictions at that stage.
Now John Swinney has upped the stakes by approving a plan to reinstate a new version of universal winter-fuel payments in Scotland.
We must applaud a display of social conscience which embarrasses Reeves.
Its reintroduction will also coincide with the run-in to the 2026 Holyrood elections – Starmer has to be careful it doesn’t pull the carpet from under Anas Sarwar.
Who knows how much our unnecessary letters were costing; we’d all known about this Starmer manifesto double-cross for months.
Not surprisingly, I noted that this cold and distant postal communication to Scottish pensioners had come all the way from the Department for Work and Pensions at “Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton”.
They must be just as clueless about how winter affects the north and north-east of Scotland as Reeves.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal
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