London: The Descent into Chaos

Little did I realise as I watched lazy snowflakes fall last night that I'd wake to utter confusion this Monday morning.

Southeast England woke up to a winter wonderland. The grey and black concrete landscape was utterly transformed. Palm trees and aloe plants sagged dejectedly in gardens, shivering uncontrollably.

Since trains are known to stop running because of falling leaves, it was unsurprising to learn that most train traffic had been suspended. Almost every Underground line was suspended or delayed, roads were icy death traps.

Transport for London actually took all its buses off the road. That's right. No buses. To most North Americans, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but here it's catastrophic. If public transport shuts down, that's it. No one can go anywhere.

Mother Nature is the greatest terrorist of all, you might say, if you were in a cheeky mood.

No buses means walking to work if you can, sleeping in if you can't. I fall into the former category, so I layered up and headed out the door.

Plows don't exist here (except at the airport) so the sidewalks were snowpacked ice filled with two kinds of people slipping around.

Type one: The Angry Londoner.
Identified by the cursing under the breath, inappropriate footwear, and evil glares, this type is best avoided at all costs. Even if it means wading through the slushy gutter and veering into panicked traffic.

Type two: The Ecstatic Child.
Identified by the inappropriate clothing (and a complete disregard for the weather), these types are the ones building snowmen in the park and on the sidewalk, lobbing snowballs at road signs and Angry Londoners, and greeting passersby with a grin. Ages range from one to one hundred.

As I tromped my way along merrily south to work, the snow "people" progressed. To the right is a typical child creation in Newington Green.

Someone please give her a carrot, if you walk by on the way home this evening.

On the plus side, it scared the hell out of the mass of pigeons that usually infest the Green.

The begging snowchef on the top of the page, to contrast, is an ironic Shoreditch snowman. Everything in this section of London is ironic, but this is actually tame by Shoreditch standards. The snowman that truly exemplifies the attitude of this little hypocritical pocket is:

A dirty, lopsided sphere lying in the gutter. Perfect.