We heard it first from wee Sean Batty on the STV news. There was going to be a storm.  In particular there was a storm warning over the whole of Scotland, but Code Red over central Scotland. Code Red means that there will be winds of over 80mph, and that there is a very clear danger of structural damage to buildings - not to mention any people around them.

Cheesetown is in Central Scotland.

Throughout Tuesday the Met Office and Metcheck and the real weather forecaster, the one with the English accent on the BBC confirmed that Sean was not winding us up; central Scotland was in for a storm of epic proportions on Thursday.
Sigh... why haven't I emigrated yet?

Trouble is, although our weather forecasters could agree what code red meant, no one in charge could seem to agree what this meant we should do.

Half of Cheesetown assumed that police warnings to stay off the roads after 3pm, meant they should stay at home all day.  The schools announced they were closing at noon.  Network Rail was cancelling trains faster than the information boards could signal the news. But my office was OPEN. 

The Institutes's adverse weather policy can be summed up as "Go home in the full knowledge that we disapprove and might not pay you later".This policy was self evidently not working. The Institute might have had a full house of staff, but no one was workingThe Great Snow Disaster of last year is still fresh in our collective memory.  We all know people who spent the night in cars in the snow, or six hours getting home in snowstorms (me).

Fool me once.... We were keeping an eye on updates from the Met Office and Scot Rail, we were texting friends and family to check they were OK and could pick the kids up from school, we were complaining about our uncaring employer; one thing the staff at the EERIE were definitely not doing was working.
At 11am Senior Management gave up.
We could go home as long as we took work with us and worked from home.

And so it was that Code Red for me meant I got to sit for two hours in a bus out of Edinburgh and reflect that any severe weather seems to result in me sitting for hours in a traffic jamout through Corstorphine. This is not how Code Red storms are shown in movies.



Oh yeah.. and today it snowed!