The weather outside is frightful...

I normally wouldn’t have two posts back to back, I’m too lazy for that, but this is burning me up inside. London has weathered more difficulties than perhaps any other city on Earth. It is a survivor amongst survivors, one of the pillars of urban human civilization. London has been around long enough to watch the Romans, Vikings, Saxons and Ottomans come and go. It has seen the Christian Church turn from one, unified body into the vast and disparate branches of faith it is today. It has lived through one of the worst fires in human history, sixteen outbreaks of the Plague (amongst other horrible poxes and assorted epidemics), far worse recessions than we currently have, years of back-breaking, stomach-warping rationing, civil wars that make inner city Compton look tame, they were shellacked into rubble by the German Luftwaffe and have probably spent more years at war than America has existed for at all. Any one of these could very legitimately have brought an end to London’s run as a center of international commerce and society. Far lesser woes have brought other cities irrecoverably to their knees. The one thing, I’m sure beyond any shadow of a doubt, that would destroy London is a single, good dump of snow. One stray New England blizzard would permanently wipe London off the face of the Earth. These people DO NOT know how to deal with snow. They react to snow the same way I expect an 8 year old in the middle of the Sahara Desert would, an even mix of fear, awe and a burning desire to go play in the stuff. Or maybe a more apt example would be of a turtle, since at the first crystal flake they check their stores of water and hole up for at least 24 hours. And we’re not talking about a lot of snow. This is the inconsiderate kind of snow that would just frustrate me as a kid, since it would not be enough to play in or get out of school for. But for them, schools close, works out, shops close and public transportation calls an unofficial strike. There are people trying to ski down Primrose Park Hill, the “snow” nothing more than a slushy mix of melted water and mud. Part of the problem is that the country has run out of salt. This is true. Evidently some months ago the British government, staring into the black hole that represents the country’s funds, decided to take a chance and not replenish the nation’s store of salt, testing their luck and hoping they wouldn’t have a white Christmas. Oops. Now they’re having one of the coldest, snowiest winters in recent memory. And there they are, stuck with only enough salt to give one good coating to London’s busiest streets. That might have been enough to get by after the first snowfall, but they have been left helpless to watch the past two mercilessly drown their city, turning every street and sidewalk into a kind of semi-liquid, muddy ice-rink. It’s funny actually, because you’re damn near guaranteed to see one girl wearing boots fall on her ass per day. And according to the BBC (I’m not sure, but it appears to me that they only have one channel?) people have started burning books. Books, evidently, cost less per lb than coal. So old people across the country-side have been snapping up every second hand book they can find and tossing them in the furnace. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere: something about books keeping you warm better than coal? I dunno. Whatevs. I like to see small bookshops make a little money for once. The sky is ominously grey right now. I gotta go check and make sure my water pipes haven’t frozen and I have my requisite 24 bottles of H2O.