Sunday, February 8, 2009

London in the Snow



If you ask the average person from Australia what they think the weather in London is like, they’ll tell you it’s cold, miserable and not that sunny. Well, that’s mostly right, apart from the cold bit. Compared to other places at a similar latitude, London is actually pretty warm. So warm, that it hardly ever snows. When a few random snowflakes do fall, it’s a cause for excitement. The snow never lasts very long and it rarely settles on the ground. After a few hours, it’s all gone and London returns to its usual drab wintery grey. That’s what makes this week’s weather something very special.


A few weeks back, we had a high pressure system sitting over the North Sea that was pumping freezing cold air from deepest Siberia into my garden. It was a novelty. Puddles in the street froze and the bird bath in my garden turned into one solid block of ice. Like I said, weather this cold is pretty unusual. I had the heating cranked up all day and night just to stay warm. After a few days, it passed and the thermometer gradually crept back to a normal level. That was it, we all thought. Winter was over. Time to start looking for the bulbs to start popping up and spring would be just around the corner.

Then the snow started falling. Then falling some more. Then falling and falling and falling and never seemed to want to stop. I was sitting in my study on the phone to my Dad when the first snowflakes started to fall. That’s the weird thing about having family on the other side of the planet. He was complaining about how stinking hot the weather was in Ballina. They were going through a heat wave. 35 plus degrees Celcius. Not pleasant. By the time I was off the phone, the few stray snowflakes had decided to get together and have a little party. They continued to get bigger and heavier until the whole garden was covered in a nice white sheen.

I went out to do a bit of shopping and by the time I came home, the whole garden was covered in about 1cm or so of snow. How cool. I instantly turned into a crazy snow obsessed antipodean and rushed about scraping enough snow together to make a feeble little snowman. It came up to just below my knee and was a lot of fun. I remember the first time I saw snow in London, I ran outside and giggled a lot. That was pretty feeble snow, I recall. It was mostly rain. No wonder the locals thought I was deranged. This snow never lasts, so I went off to bed dreaming of the sun back home.

When I got up the next morning, I had the fright of my life. I could no longer see me teeny tiny snowman. Usually it would have melted overnight. This morning, however, I couldn’t see my snowman, because he was covered, with SNOW. According to the meteorologists, about 25cm of snow had fallen overnight in the space of three hours. If that had fallen as rain, it would have been a tropical monsoon. Falling as snow, it turned all of London into one enormous ski field. It was the heaviest snow London had seen in twenty years. Awesome!

I started to get dressed for work, cursing my luck. The biggest snow fall in twenty years happens on a Monday. I’d have to wander off to work, get busy and look forlornly out the window at all the snow, locked away in my work prison, deprived of fun. Bugger!

Luck was on my side, however. I checked to see how my regular tube line was running, only to find that it wasn’t. Most of the tube lines were suspended and the few that were running weren’t going very fast. I then checked the trains. They were stuffed as well. Looks like there was no way I was going to work today. How cool. For an Australian growing up by the beach, the thought of being snowed in was pretty awesome. I was snowed in and I was loving it!
I dragged out my ski jacket, ski gloves and ski pants from the very back of my cupboard and got busy making the world’s largest snowman. Well, a quite large snowman. It was fracking awesome. Duncan was the master snowman builder, being Scottish and all. We soon had a snowman up to our chests, complete with scary teeth and demonic eyes. Very cool! I gave him that antipodean touch by equipping him with a pair of thongs (flip-flops for your foreign types).
Many years ago, the last time there was a big dump of snow in London, I was away on holidays somewhere. When I came back, some friends showed me some amazing photos that they had taken in the snow. I was very envious that I had missed it. That was about five years ago, so I was pretty keen to seize the day and take some of my own photos.

I rugged up in my ski gear and took the one tube line that was running into Kensington Gardens. What would normally have been a fifteen minute trip on the Central Line took close to forty-five. It was rammed, hot and sweaty, but well worth the effort. I came out of the Queensway tube station and entered a winter wonderland.

Kensington Gardens was covered in thick powdery snow up past your ankles. For other wintery places, this would not be any great cause for excitement. In London though, it was causing spontaneous celebrations. Dotted over the park were a huge number of snowmen. They were sprouting up everywhere. Surrounding them were huge groups of happy, smiling people. It was snowing, everyone had the day off and it wasn’t too cold. Everyone was in a state of euphoria. London can be a pretty miserable place at times, but today everyone was in happy mode. I giggled like a little school girl and leaped around in the snow, my trusty gumboots keeping my feet dry as I kicked up big clouds of snow.

I’ve been to Kensington Gardens hundreds of times, as I used to live just around the corner. I’d never seen so many happy people or so much snow before, though. Just in front of Kensington Palace, the sight of the sea of flowers after Princess Diana’s funeral, kids were screaming in delight as they tobogganed down the small hill. Everywhere I looked it was smiley faces and increasingly large snowmen. I took a huge number of happy snaps and just couldn’t stop smiling. It was a very special day.

Afterwards, I completed the tour and wandered across Hyde Park and over to the Australian War Memorial. It felt a little funny wiping away the layer of snow to expose the coat of arms. The kangaroo and the emu still look determined, but I could tell they were secretly feeling the cold.

By the time I’d walked past Buckingham Palace (Betty wasn’t home), St. James’s park and Trafalgar Square, I was a bit knackered. My gum boots had started to chafe in some very nasty places. I was cold, I was sore, but I was still smiling like a lunatic.

Finally, after a fresh torrent of snow started to fall in Westminster, I took some pics of Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and then retreated to the warmth of the tube for the trip home. It had been an amazing experience to see my city decked out in the winter finery. People often complain that February is miserable in London. Add a little snow though and it is transformed. I don’t think I’d like it to snow like this every week, but once every twenty years suits me fine.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha -- some of your old collegues were just "sametiming" and wondering whether you still posted. Lovely to see you are! The snow scenes are just beautiful, and heaerd a good time was had by most. Was going to mail you guys my spare snow shovel. Cheers, Leigh

Anonymous said...

Hi Dean. Good to see that you were similarly held-up by the snow. We were all smiling like mad people as well! Are you still at Cambridge Uni, or have you moved on?

Cheers, Dominic

Anonymous said...

Hurray, Nosy Wombat is back after MIA for 1 full year. \(*@*)/. Cheers, Gabriel

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