London: Snow.

After nearly 20 years of silence, with foreigners sniggering at our winters, it came tumbling down by the bucketload.

You’ll have to forgive us, but London’s gone quite berserk. It’s not our fault. The last 2 years have been a complete anomaly to our recent weathering history. London just doesn’t get snow anymore. Huge, government snow plows do not await us each winter, nor do we haul out the snow tyres for Christmas. From their frozen, icy terrain, Americans have recently snorted in derision and harrumphed at our chaos, remarking, ” Now they’re getting a taste of what we have to deal with every year and look at them, they can’t even handle it! They’re out of control!” Well, perhaps we are in the middle of a badly managed catastrophe, yes. But we’re having fun. As unprecedented snow falls for the second year running, YouTube and the BBC have immortalized the London response to the chilly white stuff blanketing the city. And boy are we having a right laugh with it or what!

It’s no secret to anyone that the British are eccentric. Some of the greater strains of this eccentricity are found at concentrate levels in London. We’re quirky about our tastes in music, art, entertainment and pretty much everything we consume. But like any other geek on the planet, we don’t always have the best social skills as far as making new friends. This is not least because London has one of the most isolationist societies by daylight. If you can get a Londoner to look up from his/her newspaper for longer than 20 seconds, you’ve achieved the impossible. When tourists are asked about their opinion of Londoners, two of the most frequently used words to describe us are “rude” and “cold”. We seem self-involved to others, which is really, only partially the truth. Half of that is down to the national awkwardness of finding anything to talk to a stranger about. So rather than look the fool, the protectionist attitude Londoners would rather take, is that it’s easier and less stressful to simply ignore everyone.

But then one day, London woke up and the snow had stopped everything. Nobody could get to work. Nobody could get to school. Suddenly we realised we’d been absolved of these responsibilities. All you could do was stay in and look at the snow. Most British 18 year olds have never seen snow fall like this on their own doorstep. They were dazzled. And secretly, so were all the adults; last time any 30-something seen anything like this was 20 years ago when we were all about 10-11 years old. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that rather than sit indoors, taking it all very seriously and being a miserable gooseberry, thousands have flocked to the streets to rediscover their youth and…play.

I don’t overlook that there are hundreds of frustrated people unable to get to work, meet deadlines and keep the city running. Thanks to poor planning, the councils having taken no precaution to line the streets with salt the night before the snowfall. But if you’ve ever seen small children meet for the first time and play, you’re probably aware that fun is infectious. In a city of self-isolating individuals, starved daily of making conversation with strangers, waking up one day and making hundreds of new friends thanks to abnormal weather is like a dream. The excitement is bound to look rather strange to the outside world: hundreds of people united in an effort to build a giant snowball on Hampstead Heath; giggling people building snowmen in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and on the streets of Soho; bus drivers having snowball fights and lying down in the road to make snow angels.

Perhaps these scenes seem frivolous; unheard of on Wall Street, outside Sears Tower or downtown Minnesota. But London hasn’t seen anything like it in years. I say to those who turn up their nose at us: lay off  Londoners and let them have their snow!

All those in favour raise a snowball and say aye! )) I’m off to build an honorary snowman. Toodle-oo!

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