Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The day London turned white...

In London, the weather forecast is usually pretty dull-mild weather, rain and the odd spot of heatwave in the summer months.
Londoners are known to be pessimistic folk so when it was forecasted London would be hit by snow -no one quite believed it. We're used to anti-climax-and the forecasters often over-exaggerated the forecast anyway.

Despite the weather warnings, everyone in London did get caught out in the snow a couple of weeks ago. It happened from Sunday evening onwards-snowflakes started coming down steadily but most people thought it would probably stop in the next hour and the snow wouldn't lie...
But the snow kept coming down...and went on ...and on....and on....throughout the whole night.

I had spent that Sunday with No.53 crew so by evening time it was snowing too heavily to get back home so I ended up spending the night at their place.By midnight, the snow was already a few inches deep.
It was a strange feeling playing snow that night in the middle of the road. The inner child in me just wanted to start building a snowman and playing snowball fights with my friends. It reminded me of the snow we used to get in the 90s when I was growing up in Bearsden, Glasgow :)

The next morning, I walked back home as it was still snowing. Usually, Monday mornings are associated with words like "hectic", "rush","monday blues" but that Monday was somehow different.

Paddington was covered in white and there was hardly no one around. A few people were struggling to walk through the snow on their way to the station only to find that the stations were closed but most people had just decided to stay in for the day. I found it peaceful walking back home and people actually acknowledged each other in the streets talking about the snow-if u've been in London before you would know that its very rare where strangers would just go and talk to you in the middle of the streets in London without thinking you have some dangerous motive in mind.

I did try to go to work in the morning but by the time I reached Baker St station , Jubilee line was closed so rather than getting p****ed off with waiting for the next train to come along I decided to head back home.

The rest of the day was spent taking pics round my area and heading to Hyde Park to meet my friends. The No.53 crew did a great job of building the tallest snowman in the park that day-I wish I had been able to join them in the process but I was struggling with the so called 'penguin walk' trying to get to the park along the icy pavements. I managed to reach on time when the picture session was taking place.

In the news, some people were complaining about the lack of London's transport system who were unable to cope with what the rest of the World would say a 'lil bit of snow. But I think for most Londoners that day-we were just happy to have the day off to have the snow experience and momentarily forget about the doom and gloom of the recession that is facing the UK at the moment. From my point of view, I think the next day most people were rejuvenated than anything else from the snow experience to go to work and face the challenges of the day.

The weather has continued to be unpredictable but nothing could compare the snow we had that day...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

bestnyer...lame tak masuk blog wati..

Wati said...

:) ur always welcome to visit. Missing y'all!