Last week it snowed, and everybody freaked out. London pretty much shut down; Colin's parents, who were staying in London at the time, reported that they couldn't get any food, the buses and the tube shut down, and all the shows in the West End canceled. Well, it was the biggest snowfall in 18 years, all five inches of it. Colin walked in to town on Monday and came back shaking his head: our bank was closed, and the sign in the window said: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to open the bank today." Given the current financial meltdown here, Colin said he thought maybe the bank had run out of money. But he looked around and nobody was rioting. Just a few inches of snow, and a few kids throwing snowballs.There's a general sense of having survived a traumatic event, like living through the blitz. The normally emotionally reserved British got all emotive about things, too, especially on the radio. The local BBC radio station turned into a massive self-help exercise, with the announcers pleading with people to "tell us your story." How were they all managing? Where were the trouble spots? Had they gotten to work? We deeply needed to know.
No one owns a snow shovel in this town. In fact, I took an informal survey of my British friends and none of them had ever even seen a snow shovel for sale - anywhere. I had to describe it: "It's a shovel with a wide squared edge, used for shoveling large amounts of snow. No, not a garden shovel. These have a flat edge. No, not a spade, much larger, with a flat edge. No, not a trowel. You want to pick up the snow with it, not weed with it." You get the picture. The end result of the snow shovel shortage was that all the side walks became slushy and then froze, becoming absolutely impossible to navigate, especially when holding a 3 year olds' mittened hand. Especially when your 3 year old thinks sliding on the ice is really what walking is all about. We did manage to get Eliot to and from nursery without any major mishaps, just slogged through the slush and slid through the icey bits, and put our boots under the radiator to dry out when we got home. We were both wishing we had wellies!
What's interesting though is that people just accept this mess of slush and ice. None of the walks are cleared and so people will have to walk on ice for weeks, but instead of doing anything about it people just carry on. The circumstances are just beyond their control, I guess. On my way to yoga class last Tuesday night, I almost fell a couple of times on some black ice along the sidewalk behind the church. When I left my class an hour later, I decided to walk on the crunchy snow so as not to fall. Ahead of me, 3 British women walked single file, carefully placing each foot on the ice-covered walk. Crunch, Crunch, Crunch! I walked confidently by, stepping on the snow covered lawn. As I passed them one of them said, "Why didn't we think of that?" And I said (and thought later I really shouldn't have), "Because you are all well trained British women and when the signs say 'Keep off the Grass' it's hard to change."
