Eye-spy with my roving eye

As has been noted elsewhere on this site by the erudite and learned Andrew Kershman The Monument re-opens today at lunchtime. His article is an excellent read and if you’re looking for enlightenment regarding this important London landmark then you’d probably better nip over and read his, whilst noting that it lacks mention of one important thing.

The Monument now has a webcam. Read more

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:

City slickers and sliders

I love snow. I like the crunching noise it makes underfoot and the thwacking noise it makes on contact with the human body when in snowball form.

With day 2 of “Travel Chaos meets the City of London” squarely underway I finally made it into the office this morning and found an ambulance parked outside. The reason became obvious when I found my co-workers playing a game of “spot who’s going to fall on the ice at the zebra crossing“. They informed me that there were at least three people in the ambulance who’d fallen victim and two more went down while I watched. I did ask our building facilities people if we had any salt we could give them but all they had was “lo-salt” from the canteen which is great on a healthy lunch but little help in keeping your skull away from an icy pavement. Cue the arrival of a police car and we all gathered by the window to watch two of the City’s finest then spend the best part of an hour trying to clear away the ice with a shovel and a tire iron before another police car turned up with a bag of salt.

Back home neither of the A class roads near my house were gritted and there’s no sign of it happening in the City either so it leaves me wondering where all of the gritting lorries have gone!?!?

As a final slap on the red and rosy cheeks both of the meetings I was due to have today have been cancelled as the other attendees can’t make it. Pub it is then.