Ice-capades

Only my elite martial arts skills (think Kung-Fu Panda, not Jackie Chan) kept me on my feet today as I discovered that wearing my nice Rockports yesterday gave me a false sense of how easy the snow/ice was to walk on. The hard reality that work shoes = skates was nearly rammed home by a spectacular near-FAIL on my way to the station which momentarily left me with one arm pointing down, one arm pointing up and left leg parallel to the ground before I gathered it all back in. I didn’t dare look at the people standing at the bus stop opposite as I knew that they’d be laughing, damn them, if not out loud then in their heads. I briefly toyed with the idea of eliminating all witnesses but decided that might bring problems of its own so decided that rapidly hurrying to the station without looking back was the best plan, which was happily confirmed when the train arrived on time and with heating ablaze.

I see Boris Johnson has taken some flak for his now-infamous “This is the right kind of snow, it’s just the wrong kind of quantities.” quote and some Guardian readers were getting worked up over his “massive skive” comment. I’m sure they’ll be a lot of finger-pointing, lots of “snow response” plans will be produced and no-one will remember the slightest thing about them in 18 years time when it happens again.

Hats off to the City of London gritters who were hard at work after the incident I referred to yesterday and cleared the area in no-time at all. In general the streets are in great shape, well at least they’re much better than suburbia.

Anyway, just in case the snow’s all gone by tomorrow here are some photos from Tuesday lunchtime as a reminder:

The Honourable Artillery Company

A selection from Finsbury Square