Peter Webster I have taken the liberty of writing the way l have because it seemed like less of a liberty than passing off my very vague impressions as Dad's actual memories of the course of events. Dad was worried about this story, he confided to me when he finally rang to enlist my help, a few days after the story was actually due in. He was uneasy about the fact that he was only one of several people there, and so he was telling a story that was not exclusively his. More pressingly, he was anxious about putting the story into the right words. The word Dad used most in telling the story seemed to be 'vehicle'.
Vehicles abound in the story.
Here there and everywhere there is a vehicle, usually bogged in the snow or otherwise disabled by the treacherous conditions. There is a point where the Civil Defence report waxes almost lyrical about the layercake of 'snow. You would never get that kind of detail out of Dad, not without firing an unremitting stream of leading questions at him. To him, it would suffice to say that conditions were poor, and he would hope that you would have the common sense to work out what poor conditions were. To compound matters, Mum had been making gloomy predictions that the story would not stretch to the requisite 300 words.