online:5 february 2009 modified: 5 february 2009 2 february 2009 arctic scene from a window
a rare snowfall in London
...i woke early this morning to find London under 10 to 15 cm of snow ... and another 10 cm or so is predicted for this afternoon and evening...
...now (at 13:15) that second snowfall has started... this is unusual in London... most winters are snow free... or if there is snow it melts by about noon...
...but this is very different... enough to provoke a 'severe weather warning' and to cause all the buses to stay in their garages, some trains to stay in sidings, and only a few cars to move about, schools to be closed, and people advised to keep warm and not to go out unless they have to...
...i looked on my fridge and saw enough food for a week (i depend on the buses to reach supermarkets)... and then i turned to enjoying the changed landscape...
...i found my old mountain walking boots (bought in the USA in 1974 amidst a far greater snowstorm than this) and prepared for walking in snowy woodland between snowfalls... but as soon as i got outside i saw that I would have to to sweep the snow from the access balcony to my flat... and this took all my energy so i then rested for a while and watched the scene from my window: a white lawn and white trees encircled by parked cars most of which are not going anywhere today and each car is half hidden under thick snow... very few cars are moving on the main road beyond the lawn and a few people are throwing snowballs and making snowmen and acting with far more liveliness and friendliness than usual in this suburb where few of us ever talk to our neighbours...
16:20... i slept in the afternoon and see that the people who were playing in the snow have gone... and left four snowmen... while i watched earlier there were half a dozen adults, teenagers and small children moving and posturing on their feet and also sitting and lying in the snow and photographing each other... as if what they do is a movie... which indeed our lives are becoming, with the advent of digital cameras and video cameras in so many hands as well as in reality tv and in so many places for security and traffic safety and navigation... (it is said that there are more security cameras in Britain than elsewhere)...
...i've just seen the second bus of the day... on the radio there has been criticism of the decision to confine most of them to garages... and, as i write that, a radio voice says 60 buses are now running... and another voice said that today there have been 300 ambulance phone calls per hour instead of the usual 150... some airports are closed and at others flights are cancelled... and temperatures overnight are expected to be below freezing...
...stepping back from this excitement (which breaks down the unfriendliness of a city, as did the wartime world i remember as a teenager) i realise that this snow landscape resembles that of the moon, or a planet, more than that of a warm part of the earth... so to migrate to life on other planets may be no more unnatural than the migration of early humans to arctic or near arctic regions of the earth... and perhaps such 'unnaturalness' may provoke a whole metaculture such as protestantism, and the work ethic, as well as the very different tribal cultures of the far north and of the explorers of the antarctic continent... some of which may be sources of industrialism?
...now I see the third bus go by (with few people) but almost no cars on the main road that is usually full of rush hour traffic at this time of day...
...and four people are now throwing snowballs in the dusk lit up by street lighting...
...these changes are so welcome to me for they make evident a flexibility in people that industrial and economic pressures tend to conceal or to deny...
...one small boy (who has been throwing snowballs by himself) is now lying in the snow and even rolling in it... something which in the snowier days of my childhood no one would think of doing (perhaps because clothes were were expensive or because one could not risk getting wet and cold while living in poorly heated houses without central heating?)
...and now the snowscape is becoming even more beautiful in the presence of yellow sodium streetlights and the white headlights and red signal lights of the few passing cars...
...i was going to spend today editing and sending off daffodil 73 but this sudden change of landscape has altered everything... for the better in my case!
news items:
an ambulance worker walked 15 kilometres to his workplace this morning and a 76-year-old security manager walked about 6... is the work ethic still operative?
late evening
there is now no wind and almost no sound as the snow freezes (or thaws?) in the streetlight... almost no traffic on this road and no cars arriving or leaving... in the silence i am reading Hugh Brody's book about the people and cultures of the far north or of rain forests and deserts... and in which i noted the following:
...the central preoccupation of hunter gatherer economic and spiritual systems is the maintenance of the natural world as it is ... the assumption ... that the place where a people lives is ideal: therefore change is for the worse...
...i'm a little shocked to learn that of pre-industrial society as it certainly isn't true of modern life... does it imply that, if the status quo ever becomes ideal, our dichotomies, and perhaps social troubles, may be over... what a possibility!
Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden, Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World, Faber and Faber, London 2001, page 117.
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