Ooh Look! Snow!
Well, here I am in New York, where earlier this week, The Heaviest Snowfall Since Records Began(tm) crashed down overnight and Brought The City To A Standstill(tm). I present this news in the style of the UK tabloids (who report on this kind of thing every year back home when about a centimetre of snow falls over the course of a week), specifically with a view to drawing a comparison to what happened here.
Three days after a fall of some two feet, Manhattan is operating to every intent as usual, and for all I know has been doing so since Tuesday. The streets are cleared, the buses and trains are running, people are working, shopping, jogging, and probably rollerblading in Central Park, and dare I say it, the world hasn't come to an end.
Picture that happening in the UK and I'd suggest you're picturing some bizarre parallel world. One where we don't all spiral into a tabloid-fuelled paralysis of 'wrong type of snow'-ism. At home people would be taking days off work because it's too hard to get in (for a week), old people would be starving in their inaccessible homes (we would be assured by The Sun), and the economy would be plunged into freefall as economists worked out "the true cost of the lost hours".
Once upon a time, before even the commencement of my advanced years, the British were reknowned for stoicism, for 'making do', 'getting by' and what is fondly referred to as The Blitz Spirit.
All change.
February 17th, 2006 - 21:02
Octavia and I managed to catch a yellow (who knew where we wanted to go for the added bonus) on the Sunday morning when nothing had been cleared and buses were running but more sideways than anything… chances of that happening in London after a similar snow fall ?
February 20th, 2006 - 16:23
hmmm, that should’ve been a “yellow cab”
February 22nd, 2006 - 17:08
tbh I would be perfectly accepting of things grinding to a halt in the uk if we received two feet of snow like that. Let’s face it, that would be pretty bloody unusual.
It’s the fact that everything grinds to a halt with an inch that gets on my tits. Although I think most of that is actually caused by the fact that generally people aren’t used to any kind of adverse conditions, spin off the road and fuck things up in about two seconds flat.