Sunday night and all day Monday it was snowing in London, and most of southeast England. We had about 6 inches all told, with temperatures below freezing most of Sunday night and Monday. According to the Met Office, this was the worst snowstorm in 18 years here in England.
Now, in Marblehead, or New York, or Chicago, such a snowfall would be a piddling hiccup in the life of those who live there. The snowplows would be out, the sanders would be sanding, and everyone would (mostly) get to work. But here in London? No chance!
Here’s our back garden on Monday.
Note the lavender bush on the lower left-hand corner. “What lavender bush?” you ask? It’s there, just under the snow.
In the upper middle of the picture, there is a small space between a large bush and our fence. That’s where we saw the urban fox on Sunday, sheltering under the bush and then climbing over the fence into the alley next to the church.
HWMBO was delighted at the storm–it’s the largest snowfall he’s ever seen. He did feel a bit guilty at staying home from work.
I am of two minds about all this. On the one hand, lots of people get the day off from work–HWMBO certainly did. The schools were closed, public transport pretty much packed up except for the two Underground lines that are just that: entirely underground (Victoria and Waterloo and City lines, if you must know…), the buses not running, and lots of children throwing snowballs. On the other hand, I have a bad cold, I didn’t want to venture out because of the danger of falling down, we were running out of milk, bread, and dinner makings, and I had enough of snow in the United States.
In addition, the public bodies responsible for keeping the roads clear were and are not prepared for such a heavy snowfall. Plows (or ploughs)? Where would we put the snow? (Just pile it beside the road and dig out the crossings, that’s where!) Gritters (=US sanders)? We may run out of grit if this keeps up. My landlord (a housing association) has not, up until Tuesday noon, bothered to grit or plow the parking lot outside the building. It will be a skating rink tonight when the water freezes.
So what should they do? As Ken Livingstone (former Mayor of London) said, the buses continued to run even during the Blitz in the Second World War. Why should a little snowfall stop them? Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London, recommended that everyone walk or bike to work (apparently Boris, a famous biker, did just that). Have a bit of fun. To be fair, he did suspend the congestion charge yesterday, for those hardy few who made it in. The fact of the matter is that as this happens only once every 15 to 20 years, there is no mileage in having crews ready around the clock all winter every winter, just in case it happens again. So the Mayor is blaming the boroughs, the boroughs are blaming the Mayor and Westminster, the Brown administration is in hiding, and estimates are that