It was caused, the meteorologists announced, by a high-pressure cell that was stationary over Iceland and had thus allowed the arctic weather to sweep south and over the entire United Kingdom with a substantial blanket of snow and ice, especially black ice. It was further reported that the winter was the coldest winter for twenty years, and it came at a price. There was an endless stream of walking wounded who inundated the accident and emergency departments of the country’s hospitals, mainly suffering from fractures caused by slipping while walking on the unseen ice or from slow impact car accidents, but accidents that were sufficiently serious to cause non-fatal injuries. All of which had to be treated. There were also the inevitable fatalities, some very tragic, like the young man found floating in the pool of a water fountain dressed only in a tee shirt and denim jeans, who had died of drowning brought on by hypothermia and alcohol excess. Other incidents had an amusing quality, such as the one wherein two youths had driven their car far along the surface of an iced-over canal until, inevitably, they had encountered a patch of thinner ice and their car had plunged into three feet of water.
