London’s Snow Day

Panic! Chaos! Disorientation! London is encased in an unidentified cold white substance!

The met office had been threatening us with heavy snowfall for months, and only yesterday did their grave predictions taken on a sinister physical shape of frozen white flakes. News channels had been at it all morning: horrific weather conditions hit the capital! Public transport had been halted. All but the most margin-conscious stores were shut. Roads were full of drivers with bulging eyes gripping into their steering wheels with enough intensity to leave bloody indents.

Here, it would be appropriate to casually point out that there are quite a few countries up north which routinely get more than twice that amount of precipitation every single winter, and neither transport links nor public sanity seem to vanish as a result. Neither does anybody use the occasion to shake an angry-looking mitten to the skies and proclaim congealed rain as infallible evidence for global warming, humanity’s callousness and therefore the impending annihilation of our beloved planet in the next 48 hours.

Why hasn’t a single media source mentioned how unbelievably beautiful the capital became overnight? Surely in a nation where makeover shows rate a smidgen below the 6 o’clock news, this would be a worthy point of discussion? Perhaps we’ve simply become immune to positivity. As a child, the first winter’s snow was the second most glorious morning of the entire year (the first being birthdays). The dreary city – grey, slushy and depressing – would suddenly be transformed into a magical fairytale of virginal purity and awed silence.

With the cheery holiday period all but over (Valentine’s Day is not an actual holiday, merely a device for boosting the economy and eating at the souls of weepy singletons), snow is bar none the best escape from the habitual drudgery of going to work and pinching pennies. Googlemap your nearest park, wrap up nice and warm and head off for several hours of unapologetically childish fun. The snow is still at perfect consistency for packing, and very few things in life hold the same satisfaction as the look of confusion and outrage of a loved one smacked in the face with a snowball.

There are, of course, snowmen. Do not get sucked into the conventional three-balls-carrot-and-pipe (sexual allusion not intended) template. For those unfamiliar with the epic Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, a ‘calvin hobbes snowmen’ image search is strongly recommended for inspiration. For the less artistically inclined, there is the more labour-intensive, but far more satisfying, option of a snow fort. Round up equal measures of male and female friends (or, for C++ programmers, male and male) and have an old-fashioned, completely unapologetic, boys vs. girls snow war.

So stop fretting about your frozen carburettor, enjoy the gorgeous views and make the most of all this global warming stuff. Cup of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows particularly recommended in the evening.