What a difference a day makes
Came home on the weekend to have a belated Australia Day BBQ.
It wasn’t particularly warm but it was sunny enough to burn a dozen chipolatas and a few chicken thighs soaked in Teriyaki. Sainsburys had a special on prawns so we stuck some on kebab skewers and threw them on the barbie as well.
Then the snow came. Heaviest in 18 years according to the Beeb. And I’d left the BBQ out. There’s a picture of it below.
London came to a standstill. The trains and buses stopped working. And out here in the ‘burbs the streets are still snowed in.
The Brits are beating themselves up over it of course. Moscow deals with snowstorms every day they say. One dump of the ‘wrong’ kind of snow and one of the biggest cities in the world stops functioning.
But you know what? It was brilliant. Absolutely amazing. People talked to each other on the streets. Impromptu snowball fights erupted. Snowmen were built. Everyone was having fun. And because none of the roads had been cleared it was quiet – in a really peaceful, soothing kind of way.
Stuart Jeffries wrote a really nice piece in The Guardian that eloquently describes what it was like. It made me wish it snowed like this at least one or two days every year.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to figure out how to de-ice my BBQ. Waitangi Day is just around the corner. Doesn’t really mean much to me, but hey, any excuse to throw another prawn on the barbie!
The Blog!
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
That Stuart Jeffries article is fantastic. It is so refreshing to read something so upbeat in these troubled times.
I’m really pleased you got to spend some time with Daisy and try to teach her the ways of the BBQ!
All the best
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Yes, what a lovely article.
A world away from entirely snow-free Inverness, where I am, though!
Your BBQ picture is wonderful, it looks like a pram with all that snow on it! Belated happy Oz Day.
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
You missed a good BBQ in sunny Hackney last week, pity you were travelling, you would have made it 3 Aussies.
We had 30 people in our tiny little flat eating Anzac bikkies, lamingtons and pavlova. Much drink was consumed and I made a fatal error, I only made the right amount of food for the number of people, I really prefer to cook enough to have leftovers 4 days later.
You will be invited to some more but the next big one is a summer Christmas on July 11.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
[...] By Simon Varwell It was heart-warming to read this article by Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian (via Peter Moore) about life in London under the blanket of snow that virtually shut the city down [...]