snow day!
Having said I wasn't going to write any new posts, I can't resist posting about the snow that shut London down on Monday.
There's been quite a lot of sarcasm about London's inability to cope with a bit of snow, the same way there always is whenever there's any kind of extreme weather, be it snow or heatwaves or whatever. Of course, compared to places in North America, or Scandinavia etc. London's inevitable shut-down in the face of extreme weather must seem very pathetic indeed. What you have to understand though, is that places which experience heavy snowfall in winter or high temperatures in summer tend to have coping mechanisms built right into the infrastructure. Building those kinds of contingencies - snow ploughs, air conditioning units etc. - cost public money, and if you don't experience them every year, why pay out the money on it when that money could go on resurfacing the roads?
If you only experience those weather extremes once in a blue moon, it's going to come as a shock on the rare occasions that they occur. So when a city experiences the kind of weather they only see once every 15 years or so - or even only once every five years or so - that city is going to shut down in a panic. So, please stop pointing your fingers and laughing at us, okay? (It's all right if we're laughing at ourselves but outsiders laughing at us just grates on the nerves and causes offence.)
That being said, I had a great time on Monday. Whenever it snows I'm always reminded how lucky I am to live so close to Hampstead Heath (though I don't make nearly enough use of it when it's not covered in snow, bad me). When I left the house at midday it was still snowing, and had been going hard enough to cover any evidence that anyone else had even left the house, giving me this gorgeous, virgin vision as I left my front door (the prints you can see at the bottom were left by a neighbourhood fox):
Up on the Heath, it was quite busy but not as horrendously overcrowded as it has been when it snowed before, although the top of Parliament Hill was very busy, and very noisy (and very litter-strewn, which is not so nice).
I think the fact that it was still snowing meant people were staying indoors, so I had plenty of virgin snowdrifts to claim as my own. I am such a kid when it comes to pure white snow - every time I see a clean new patch, I have to walk across it to make sure I am the first to do so. Typical destructive human that I am. True, but it also means that I find myself in quiet, secluded areas that no one else has ventured into, which is glorious.
Usually, even on Hampstead Heath, it's hard to completely blot out any sound of nearby humanity as there is always someone walking their dog, or talking on their phone, or helicopters going over, or cars on a nearby road. On a snowy day, much of that peripheral noise isn't there, or is at least muffled by the snow, and you can get a real sense of peace that is usually impossible to find in central London. There were several moments when I had entire fields to myself, and I alternated between stopping for a while, just to breathe in the clean air and enjoy the placid quiet, and jumping like a loon into high drifts of snow, just because I could.
The trouble with jumping into snow, or even just yomping through it for a couple of hours, is that the moisture will slowly work its way up your legs, making you look a bit like you've wet yourself even when you haven't. Some of it was pretty deep. But wet jeans seems like a small price to pay for all the quiet moments.
