The London Snow experience

[ajva]

In my young Scottish days, it was a joke how England failed to cope with a few inches of snow. And yes, it is a joke.

But I bloody love it. :o)

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

No, I must confess - my post was purely frivolous and I don't really believe what I said here. Apologies - I was posting in snow euphoria but said what I did to try to dampen what I feared might be the annoyance of it for the people who don't share my snow joy. But still, I was being hypocritical, so sorry about that. In fact, I completely agree with you. In further fact, it irks me when people expect miracles from the gritting lorries, and the banal Blitz references are even more risible. I am definitely in the camp that believes that we should bow to the elements for the few days/weeks per decade when this happens rather than spend hundreds of millions on Canada-style snow preparation.

In point of fact, the grit is not just expensive and voluminous, it's also very environmentally unfriendly, being salt and therefore brutal to plantlife. Also, snowploughs are notoriously damaging to road surfaces.

So you see, er, sorry. You're quite right.

[adjectivegail]

Awww, it's okay - evidently I just couldn't hear your tone :-) We still have a bit of snow in our back garden (and an increasingly-lop-sided snowman with a dashing pot lid hat), and it still makes me smile.

I completely agree with your comments about salt --> environment and ploughs --> roads. I was rather surprised to find myself feeling pleased with Boris about this whole thing - I read quotes about, for example, taking the buses off the roads being the right thing to do because otherwise they become several tonne killing machines (or something similar). And that snow ploughs in London would just move the problems from the roads onto the pavements. Which I hadn't thought of but now that I have it's pretty obvious that it wouldn't be a good solution for a city like London.

Still can't believe Stef suggested closing the parks, though!!