My plane flew into Heathrow yesterday morning after a warm week in Greece – wearing short sleeves, walking along the pretty blue seafront with mountains stretching out behind us, eating tender goat meat and olives outside of a restaurant at night with no coat. You can imagine the chills running down my spine when I stepped outside in the London winter. Snow even! So to keep my head in the sun for one more day, here’s a photo captured by Ian Brumpton – a walk in the little London sun.
On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, W and I took a long walk down South Bank and Bankside to soak up the sun.
Instead of walking along the pavement, we went down onto the strip of sand and rocks that is as close to a beach as you find in London. Here are a few pics from our walk:
I nearly stepped on this little guy who got caught up in the rocks when the tide went out without him.
I love the way this is hidden until the tide goes out. I never knew it was there until this weekend.
Ah, no stones here!
We walked slowly, stones shifting under our feet, stopping to look at bits of rubbish washed up on shore – cable ties, wet pieces of clothing, bottles and cans and ragged abandoned tires.
A bit of history in the form of a brick.
This, for some reason, reminds me of a different European city, and a lazy day floating on the river.
Despite the washed-out hues of wet rock and sand, there were still vibrant colours to find.
West Ken Snow by Buckeroo Kid from the Flickr pool. (She was the London Art Spot feature last Sunday. Here’s a link if you missed her awesome London pics!)
Maybe it’s because I come from snow-y Buffalo, New York where people break out one of four ice scrapers from the back seat and drive around with their 4-wheel drive tyres in blizzards without a second thought that I find this so amusing. In Buffalo, this amount of snow is absolutely laughable.
These headlines conjure up a much worse picture in my head than the pretty image in Kathy’s picture above.
Telegraph: “Britain’s deep freeze: icy weather brings worst snow for 50 years”
Guardian: “Grit supplies reaching critically low level as icy weather continues”
Metro: “Panic buying as heavy snow hits”
Evening Standard: “230,000 pupils get day off; more closures feared”
The Sun: “UK has 8 days of gas left”
Some of the best headlines came yesterday – about elderly people buying second-hand books to burn because they are cheaper than firewood. All the grocery shops are running out of products because frantic people are stocking up.
When I woke up this morning, I could still see grass poking through a thin layer of the white stuff. It was pretty. It was out-of-the-ordinary for London. But it wasn’t exactly life-threatening.
The way Londoners react to this weather fascinates me to no end. Everyone seems more friendly, smiling at strangers, except for the morning commute when travel chaos ensues and you’re smashed into a carriage with a stranger’s hair in your mouth. Kids run about, sticking their tongues out for flakes. People carry umbrellas (umbrellas??). Although, I suppose that’s the natural reaction to precipitation in these parts…You can’t have a conversation without the word “snow” and multiple exclamation points.
And then there’s the complete idiots. For example, I was on my lunch break for half hour yesterday. When I left, there was a dog tied to a railing – a black dog with long scraggly sopping wet hair, sitting in a puddle, covered in snow, visibly shivering with these big sad eyes. When I returned, he was still there, lying down in the puddle, a salt-and-pepper speckled mound. I don’t even like dogs, but I wanted to give the poor thing a blanket. Seriously.
Anyway, I’m sure in some parts outside of London, it might be a bit more “severe”, but the world’s not ending (except maybe for that dog if someone didn’t rescue it by now), the media hype is hysterical and… umbrellas?
It’s just a bit of snow.
In my backyard…
Little London Observationist 