At the Borough Market: "We have a market exactly like this in Boston, but it is just completely different."
On an ITV show: "Can you think of a word that rhymes with month?" "Of course. Gunth."
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Singin' in the rain...
...not so much!
Our magical mystery medical history tour definitely managed to piss off the weather gods. The first week it was scheduled, we had to cancel due to that record snowfall. Rescheduled to this past Monday, there was no snow--just wind-driven, nearly freezing, constant rain. I rarely complain about the weather, but Monday was ridiculous.
I was wet from the feet to my knees (from walking through puddles) and from the head to my knees from the rain (despite a capacious brolly)...wet met in the middle and went all the way through to the skin.
Students, who were just as wet, were troopers...at least until we lost a clump of them in Guy's Hospital after lunch, and had to wait (in that driving cold rain) for four buses before they caught up with us at the Liverpool St. station. By that time, the wind had been taken out of all of our sails, involved as it was in blowing umbrellas inside out. We did a perfunctory walk towards Brick Lane, ducked into Spitalfields Market (unrecognizeably gentrified to anyone who ever saw the market in its historic state, now a wasteland of twee and precious restaurants for the yuppies who are pushing the more rought and ready market and traditional immigrant groups out of the East End of London).
Morning was interesting, though, including a selective history of the City of London, with details about plagues and pestilences and public health. We did get to see the Hogarth mural and great hall at St. Bart's (hurray!) before heading to London Bridge and the Old Operating Theatre. That was very atmospheric, 32 steps up the tiniest circular stairway I've ever seen into the attic of a church, an area that had served historically as the surgical site for the historic hospital's women's wards next door. At the operating theatre, Orjon played the patient, Krista the dresser, and Naomi [who coincidentally is interning at King's College Hospital ER] played the surgeon. The primitive surgical tools (adapted from butchering items used at the historic Smithfield meat market just over the bridge), the basket of sawdust beneath the wooden operating table (with its saw cuts), and the quality of light in the theatre certainly leant a certain...well....gruesome authenticity...to the re-enactment of a leg amputation sans antiseptics or anaesthetics.
Of course, that tableau was very gender bending, since back in the day the patient in that operating theatre would most definitely have been a woman, and the dresser and surgeon would certainly have been men. Anyway, all of the rather titillating information of medical practices and accoutrement past interested me, and seemed to interest the students, too. It is an interesting little museum and luckily well preserved, though only because it was in the attic of a church [located there due to need for natural lights for surgeries]. We also found out about experiments in blood transfusions using quills as conduits and dogs as blood donors; bodysnatchers working to provide corpses for surgeons-in-training to dissect; that many of London's green squares were plague burial pits; and that survival rates for 19th century surgeries were so low that surgery patients typically had to prepay a despoit on potential funeral expenses, just in case. For the imaginative, the museum displays of forceps historically used to wrench newborns from their mothers, and the "stone cutting" tools used to relieve men of kidney/bladder stones would surely work as cautionary safeguards against pregnancy and Diet Coke!
Student journals indicate that they have been very observant and able to relate course concepts to health-related situations they've observed in London. I wonder if anyone will write about the health risks of being trotted around the city in the pouring rain, trying to learn more about health issues and the historic development of medical knowledge in London?
Next field trip: BBC Television Center on Monday morning, followed by Sicko, with the theme for the day how media shape perceptions and prejudices about social policies. Question for the day: Where/how/from whom did you learn what you knew so far (before studying more systematically in this class) about Social Security and the U.S. health care system, and their relative strengths/weaknesses compared to the UK? We make up the second half of our snow day on Monday too...so it will be another long "all Debi all day." My hunch is that, given recent luck relating weather and field trips, that it will be sunny all day Monday--given that we need to be indoors all day. Time will tell.
Our magical mystery medical history tour definitely managed to piss off the weather gods. The first week it was scheduled, we had to cancel due to that record snowfall. Rescheduled to this past Monday, there was no snow--just wind-driven, nearly freezing, constant rain. I rarely complain about the weather, but Monday was ridiculous.
I was wet from the feet to my knees (from walking through puddles) and from the head to my knees from the rain (despite a capacious brolly)...wet met in the middle and went all the way through to the skin.
Students, who were just as wet, were troopers...at least until we lost a clump of them in Guy's Hospital after lunch, and had to wait (in that driving cold rain) for four buses before they caught up with us at the Liverpool St. station. By that time, the wind had been taken out of all of our sails, involved as it was in blowing umbrellas inside out. We did a perfunctory walk towards Brick Lane, ducked into Spitalfields Market (unrecognizeably gentrified to anyone who ever saw the market in its historic state, now a wasteland of twee and precious restaurants for the yuppies who are pushing the more rought and ready market and traditional immigrant groups out of the East End of London).
Morning was interesting, though, including a selective history of the City of London, with details about plagues and pestilences and public health. We did get to see the Hogarth mural and great hall at St. Bart's (hurray!) before heading to London Bridge and the Old Operating Theatre. That was very atmospheric, 32 steps up the tiniest circular stairway I've ever seen into the attic of a church, an area that had served historically as the surgical site for the historic hospital's women's wards next door. At the operating theatre, Orjon played the patient, Krista the dresser, and Naomi [who coincidentally is interning at King's College Hospital ER] played the surgeon. The primitive surgical tools (adapted from butchering items used at the historic Smithfield meat market just over the bridge), the basket of sawdust beneath the wooden operating table (with its saw cuts), and the quality of light in the theatre certainly leant a certain...well....gruesome authenticity...to the re-enactment of a leg amputation sans antiseptics or anaesthetics.
Of course, that tableau was very gender bending, since back in the day the patient in that operating theatre would most definitely have been a woman, and the dresser and surgeon would certainly have been men. Anyway, all of the rather titillating information of medical practices and accoutrement past interested me, and seemed to interest the students, too. It is an interesting little museum and luckily well preserved, though only because it was in the attic of a church [located there due to need for natural lights for surgeries]. We also found out about experiments in blood transfusions using quills as conduits and dogs as blood donors; bodysnatchers working to provide corpses for surgeons-in-training to dissect; that many of London's green squares were plague burial pits; and that survival rates for 19th century surgeries were so low that surgery patients typically had to prepay a despoit on potential funeral expenses, just in case. For the imaginative, the museum displays of forceps historically used to wrench newborns from their mothers, and the "stone cutting" tools used to relieve men of kidney/bladder stones would surely work as cautionary safeguards against pregnancy and Diet Coke!
Student journals indicate that they have been very observant and able to relate course concepts to health-related situations they've observed in London. I wonder if anyone will write about the health risks of being trotted around the city in the pouring rain, trying to learn more about health issues and the historic development of medical knowledge in London?
Next field trip: BBC Television Center on Monday morning, followed by Sicko, with the theme for the day how media shape perceptions and prejudices about social policies. Question for the day: Where/how/from whom did you learn what you knew so far (before studying more systematically in this class) about Social Security and the U.S. health care system, and their relative strengths/weaknesses compared to the UK? We make up the second half of our snow day on Monday too...so it will be another long "all Debi all day." My hunch is that, given recent luck relating weather and field trips, that it will be sunny all day Monday--given that we need to be indoors all day. Time will tell.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Recession proof
According to The Times, the theatre industry may be one of the few that seems nearly recession proof. The West End posted record breaking box office receipts last year, and the theory goes that a night out at the theatre is the kind of escapism that goes up during bad times. Hmmm. Not sure, but if sold out shows in London are any indicator, there might be something to that.
"Sold out" doesn't necessarily mean "impossible to see a show." Paying full top price and a service charge to a ticket broker can get a seat (albeit, a really expensive one) for pretty much any show. However, there are other ways to get into theatres that are sold out. Queuing (the favorite outdoor sport in Britain) for day tickets (a few set aside each day for when the box office opens) and returns (from about an hour before a performance) give the determined a fighting chance, just no guarantee. Although it's a bit hit and miss (I've had better luck for evening performances than for afternoons), I've devised a strategy that has paid off for me (I'm 4 out of 4 for seeing sold out shows I want to go to). On a day with both matinee and evening performances, I first queue for matinee returns. If I have no luck, Plan B kicks in. I go to a nearby performance at a theatre I know has available last-minute tickets. Once that's over, I head back and queue for the same sold-out show's evening performance, hoping that box office people will remember and cut me a sympathetic break, or that standing in the cold for a couple of hours is its own reward. So far I've scored one sympathetic box office person and three persistent queuing victories.
So I've seen four "sold out" shows in as many weeks--Gethsemane at the Cottesloe (National Theatre), Loot at the Tricycle Theatre in Hampstead, War Horse at the Olivier (National Theatre) and then the icing on the cake last night--Donmar Warehouse's Twelfth Night http://www.donmarwestend.com/twelfth_night/?gclid=CPKNxq_szJgCFQyjQwodhSiWzw in the West End. Of course, the National Theatre takes a bit of the sport out of queuing, since you do it inside, sitting down, with a beverage of your choice since the bars are open. Not so for the other shows--that's outside in the bitter cold, the premier league of queuing (and a great way to meet interesting people).
Gethsemane (an up-to-the-minute political comedy) and Loot (a crime farce) were well acted, entertaining, and I enjoyed them...until their very last scenes. Although the situations were obviously different, both fizzled out rather than ending with a bang, those awkward kinds of drifty imprecise endings where the audience does not know whether to applaud until the curtain comes down. It bums me out when a show ends with a whimper (even though I don't mind a bit of ambiguity) since that last memory somehow overtakes part of the glow of otherwise great performances. In contrast, War Horse and Twelfth Night were brilliant throughout--gold medal payoffs for sportive queuing.
In fact, War Horse (an adaptation of a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo) was so stunning that when Tony and Matthew get here next week, they MUST queue up to try for tickets. When Mary Nell visits in April I want to see it again (it moves from the National to the West End). The puppetry for the life-size horses is so amazing that just a few minutes in, the audience is no longer aware that the horses aren't really horses. Uncanny how the puppeteers (three per puppet) captured not just their sounds and movements, but the very spirit of the horses. I saw War Horse on a night when MANY school groups were there...spellbound. I bet kids who've seen this play as one of their first live performances will be hooked, inspired to be theatre-goers for the rest of their lives. It was just that good.
But it is not all fun and leisure here in London. I'm getting some work done, revising a couple of R&R manuscripts (with Lynne and Stephanie), writing and reviewing (and course prep and grading). Tomorrow, for example, is a busy class day. We rescheduled (due to snow) the all day Blue Badge guided medical history tour of London (which I've occasionally lapsed into calling the magical mystery tour). We meet at St. Paul's tube for a walking tour of the Clerkenwell area (hoping to see the amazing Hogarth murals http://www.bartsandthelondon.nhs.uk/aboutus/hogarths_painting_at_barts.asp at Barts [aka St. Bartholomew's Hospital, founded in 1134]). After that, to Southwark by bus for a tour of the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garrett http://www.thegarret.org.uk/oot.htm and a cheap lunch at Guy's hospital cafeteria http://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/home.aspx. Then it's back to East London to tour neighborhoods of recent immigrancy/pending redevelopment for the 2012 summer Olympic Games, including local experts providing information about meeting the health care, public health, housing, and education challenges for the East End's low income and culturally diverse populations. I hope the students find it as interesting as I think it will be.
That sounds like a full enough day. But because students' internships run Tu-W-Th...we have our snow day makeup social policy lecture in South Kensington after the tour. A couple of students invited me to see Wicked with them--so many of us will head to the theatre to cap off a day spent in almost every conceivable part of central London.
I tease students that Monday's they are mine-- "all Debi, all day"--but tomorrow's exposure verges on the intolerable. Even I'll be tired of me by the end of that day!
"Sold out" doesn't necessarily mean "impossible to see a show." Paying full top price and a service charge to a ticket broker can get a seat (albeit, a really expensive one) for pretty much any show. However, there are other ways to get into theatres that are sold out. Queuing (the favorite outdoor sport in Britain) for day tickets (a few set aside each day for when the box office opens) and returns (from about an hour before a performance) give the determined a fighting chance, just no guarantee. Although it's a bit hit and miss (I've had better luck for evening performances than for afternoons), I've devised a strategy that has paid off for me (I'm 4 out of 4 for seeing sold out shows I want to go to). On a day with both matinee and evening performances, I first queue for matinee returns. If I have no luck, Plan B kicks in. I go to a nearby performance at a theatre I know has available last-minute tickets. Once that's over, I head back and queue for the same sold-out show's evening performance, hoping that box office people will remember and cut me a sympathetic break, or that standing in the cold for a couple of hours is its own reward. So far I've scored one sympathetic box office person and three persistent queuing victories.
So I've seen four "sold out" shows in as many weeks--Gethsemane at the Cottesloe (National Theatre), Loot at the Tricycle Theatre in Hampstead, War Horse at the Olivier (National Theatre) and then the icing on the cake last night--Donmar Warehouse's Twelfth Night http://www.donmarwestend.com/twelfth_night/?gclid=CPKNxq_szJgCFQyjQwodhSiWzw in the West End. Of course, the National Theatre takes a bit of the sport out of queuing, since you do it inside, sitting down, with a beverage of your choice since the bars are open. Not so for the other shows--that's outside in the bitter cold, the premier league of queuing (and a great way to meet interesting people).
Gethsemane (an up-to-the-minute political comedy) and Loot (a crime farce) were well acted, entertaining, and I enjoyed them...until their very last scenes. Although the situations were obviously different, both fizzled out rather than ending with a bang, those awkward kinds of drifty imprecise endings where the audience does not know whether to applaud until the curtain comes down. It bums me out when a show ends with a whimper (even though I don't mind a bit of ambiguity) since that last memory somehow overtakes part of the glow of otherwise great performances. In contrast, War Horse and Twelfth Night were brilliant throughout--gold medal payoffs for sportive queuing.
In fact, War Horse (an adaptation of a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo) was so stunning that when Tony and Matthew get here next week, they MUST queue up to try for tickets. When Mary Nell visits in April I want to see it again (it moves from the National to the West End). The puppetry for the life-size horses is so amazing that just a few minutes in, the audience is no longer aware that the horses aren't really horses. Uncanny how the puppeteers (three per puppet) captured not just their sounds and movements, but the very spirit of the horses. I saw War Horse on a night when MANY school groups were there...spellbound. I bet kids who've seen this play as one of their first live performances will be hooked, inspired to be theatre-goers for the rest of their lives. It was just that good.
But it is not all fun and leisure here in London. I'm getting some work done, revising a couple of R&R manuscripts (with Lynne and Stephanie), writing and reviewing (and course prep and grading). Tomorrow, for example, is a busy class day. We rescheduled (due to snow) the all day Blue Badge guided medical history tour of London (which I've occasionally lapsed into calling the magical mystery tour). We meet at St. Paul's tube for a walking tour of the Clerkenwell area (hoping to see the amazing Hogarth murals http://www.bartsandthelondon.nhs.uk/aboutus/hogarths_painting_at_barts.asp at Barts [aka St. Bartholomew's Hospital, founded in 1134]). After that, to Southwark by bus for a tour of the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garrett http://www.thegarret.org.uk/oot.htm and a cheap lunch at Guy's hospital cafeteria http://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/home.aspx. Then it's back to East London to tour neighborhoods of recent immigrancy/pending redevelopment for the 2012 summer Olympic Games, including local experts providing information about meeting the health care, public health, housing, and education challenges for the East End's low income and culturally diverse populations. I hope the students find it as interesting as I think it will be.
That sounds like a full enough day. But because students' internships run Tu-W-Th...we have our snow day makeup social policy lecture in South Kensington after the tour. A couple of students invited me to see Wicked with them--so many of us will head to the theatre to cap off a day spent in almost every conceivable part of central London.
I tease students that Monday's they are mine-- "all Debi, all day"--but tomorrow's exposure verges on the intolerable. Even I'll be tired of me by the end of that day!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Vader, Darth Vader, Deb Vader
I do feel a bit like my headset has melded with my skull. The downside of no face to face meetings is having to skype in--two long meetings today, another tomorrow. While I'm pretty sure I heard most of what my colleagues in Buffalo said, I'm not sure they always heard me. Just as well I suppose, makes for a shorter meeting. The combo of skype and speakerphone has apparently transformed my voice so that I sound like "Vader, Darth Vader, Jeff Vader...maybe Deb Vader? Would you like my autograph?" Eddie Izzard fans should re-watch his classic riff the Star Wars Canteen (I recommend the Lego version) while I look for my tray. I'd provide a link, but I'm sure I'd offend someone. Oh, the hell with it, here's the link, get a sense of humour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muaAZE0M3LU.
Surprise, in London where "it never snows" (according to me, last month--hey, I'm a sociologist, not a meteorologist), 3-5 cm of snow is forecast again tomorrow. That's the same forecast as last Sunday night. Snow, according to BBC, has become "bizarrely normal" whatever that means. Will we get snow? As much? I hope not. Pretty though it was, it will make getting around a pain and it's still hard enough on icy walkways. The gritting lorries may work overtime; but that's not much good (inside joke: MG calls them grimers, cracked me up, gritters without salt do little more than grime the roads). While there's plenty of grit, there's almost no salt. We're having a national salt emergency. I worry about students who are heading to Edinburgh by coach on a snowy weekend, in a country without road salt, where snowplows seem to live only at airports, and where garden spades masquerade as snow shovels.
Of course, there was nothing wrong with the roads today, but it was still tough getting around. Traditional black cab drivers blocked the Strand and Whitehall, effectively shutting down traffic to protest the prospect of minicabs being permitted to stop at taxi stands in Leicester Square. According to BBC, there's a protest every other day in London this past year--and probably many more than that since early January. There were daily protests against Israeli bombing in Gaza, protests by Tibetans during Chinese New Year and Premier Wen Jiabo's visit, protests over the use of non British EU workers on large UK construction sites as more redundancies are announced every day, environmentalists protesting the proposed 3rd runway at Heathrow (where they would have to buy another 25 snowplows that they don't share with anyone else, I suppose), and a permanent peace camp against Britain's involvement in Iraq, lodged in a traffic island near the Houses of Parliament. I think I'll visit there tomorrow.
On a completely different tangent, television here, Sarah and I agree, is often strange--particularly advertising. Our current favorite is the Cadbury eyebrow commercial, which doesn't seem to have much to do with chocolate bars, but is kind of mesmerizing. I hope you'll take a look, and see what you think and maybe explain its significance (if it has any). Have a look at http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/#/paddock/portrait, you'll see two kids in a picture frame, click to play the video. I don't get the point, but I love watching it! I guess maybe that's the point.
Weird, like a few other things here, that commercial. Fodder for future blogs. But just now, it's time for my penne alla arrabiatta.
Surprise, in London where "it never snows" (according to me, last month--hey, I'm a sociologist, not a meteorologist), 3-5 cm of snow is forecast again tomorrow. That's the same forecast as last Sunday night. Snow, according to BBC, has become "bizarrely normal" whatever that means. Will we get snow? As much? I hope not. Pretty though it was, it will make getting around a pain and it's still hard enough on icy walkways. The gritting lorries may work overtime; but that's not much good (inside joke: MG calls them grimers, cracked me up, gritters without salt do little more than grime the roads). While there's plenty of grit, there's almost no salt. We're having a national salt emergency. I worry about students who are heading to Edinburgh by coach on a snowy weekend, in a country without road salt, where snowplows seem to live only at airports, and where garden spades masquerade as snow shovels.
Of course, there was nothing wrong with the roads today, but it was still tough getting around. Traditional black cab drivers blocked the Strand and Whitehall, effectively shutting down traffic to protest the prospect of minicabs being permitted to stop at taxi stands in Leicester Square. According to BBC, there's a protest every other day in London this past year--and probably many more than that since early January. There were daily protests against Israeli bombing in Gaza, protests by Tibetans during Chinese New Year and Premier Wen Jiabo's visit, protests over the use of non British EU workers on large UK construction sites as more redundancies are announced every day, environmentalists protesting the proposed 3rd runway at Heathrow (where they would have to buy another 25 snowplows that they don't share with anyone else, I suppose), and a permanent peace camp against Britain's involvement in Iraq, lodged in a traffic island near the Houses of Parliament. I think I'll visit there tomorrow.
On a completely different tangent, television here, Sarah and I agree, is often strange--particularly advertising. Our current favorite is the Cadbury eyebrow commercial, which doesn't seem to have much to do with chocolate bars, but is kind of mesmerizing. I hope you'll take a look, and see what you think and maybe explain its significance (if it has any). Have a look at http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/#/paddock/portrait, you'll see two kids in a picture frame, click to play the video. I don't get the point, but I love watching it! I guess maybe that's the point.
Weird, like a few other things here, that commercial. Fodder for future blogs. But just now, it's time for my penne alla arrabiatta.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Snowhenge, snowpeople, snowed in
Notice the white roundish monoliths in the foreground of the Queen's House.A mystery for the ages...
What is their purpose? Are they religious artifacts or perhaps landmarks for aliens?
What obscure people selected the site? What tools did they use to place them? Is there a significance to the array? Wait...what's this? ....Geographic dysphoria?
No, these aren't Easter Island statues, they are Snowpeople. Note the rare sighting of their Druid creators alongside!
Join Sir David Attenborough tonight on Channel 4 to explore the mysteries of Snowhenge and Snowpeeps and the seldom seen behaviours of the winter fauna of a Royal Park.
In a more serious vein, the snow is definitely lingering. Roadways seem clear, but pavements (aka sidewalks) and stations are still treacherous with ice. I expect the casualty wards are overflowing with broken bones and sprains. Still, London transport and South Eastern trains are slowly relapsing into their usual levels of reliability, which will make getting around easier.
As for me, my long-standing plan was to be home in Buffalo from tonight through Sunday, which seemed doable since London snow problems are mostly sorted. But that was not to be. There's still a sizeable backlog of stranded passengers being cleared through Heathrow and (worse) a storm brewing on the east cost of the US. On the phone last night, Continental Air Lines customer service said "take your chances if you really want to do that " today. As they explained my chances:
1. I could get to Heathrow and check in, though the trans-Atlantic flight might be cancelled.
2. I might get the trans-Atlantic leg of the flight, but there was a high risk of being stranded in my connecting city of Newark, or diverted to god knows where.
3. I could rebook...on the next available flight...a Friday night arrival in Buffalo, combined with my original Sunday morning departure for London.
Since the main purpose of attending campus meetings on Thursday and Friday in Buffalo would be thwarted, I've opted to stay put in Greenwich and skype into my meetings. Continental must view as dire the problems the weather situation will cause their airline today and tomorrow--they're refunding my ENTIRE air fare (coming out of my own pocket, so especially wonderful)! Airlines NEVER give back all of our money any more, there are ALWAYS fees! Woohoo for me!
So I was reconciled that this trip was just not meant to happen, though I'm disappointed in others ways--not so much about missing meetings (which I'll be able to electronically attend, anyway) but rather failing to see friends, family and colleagues who, despite London's many charms, I miss a lot. Sure, I see and talk to them electronically too...but it's not the same. I was a bit homesick late last week, so the timing for the trip was (I thought) ideal. But my friend Mary Nell remarked that coming home for only a couple of days and then heading right back to London might actually inspire another bout of homesickness, post travel...so maybe it's just as well I'm stuck.
And let's be honest, there are certainly worse places to be stuck than London.
Newark comes to mind.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Walking in a winter wonderland
I can't help thinking in cliches; London is so beautiful (even if inconvenient) in the snow. Road travel is slowly getting back to normal, though the Tube and trains are another story...and, of course, I generally use Tube and trains (how could it be otherwise?).
Several pictures taken in Greenwich yesterday.
The first is the front of our house, 109 Maze Hill Road. If you look up on the roof you'll see a couple of skylights...Sarah and I work up there sometimes, but it can be a chilly place, for sure.
My room is the bow window upstairs, on the left. Akash often works in the upstairs room next to mine.
This photo is the garden, from taken
from dining room patio doors. See...cliches
ARE appropriate, it IS a winter wonderland.
Not only was the house beautiful, the Royal Park was breathtaking.
A few highlights from yesterday, and today.
The Pavillion Tea House in the upper part of the Royal Park.
Crowds of sledders/sliders at the big hill.
At the bottom you can just make out the
beautiful Queen's House (Inigo Jones),
flanked in the background by the twin domes
of (Christopher Wren's) Naval College, beyond
that, the Thames.
Detrius from yesterday's innovative snow sliding inventions.
Note the inner tube (lower left), grocery bag, plastic bread delivery tray (right), and plastic storage box. Some of everything.
You might think I composed this still life, but it's just what I found. The red shard sticking up from the trash bin is the remains of a plastic saucer.
The snow has packed down on the hills from thousands of sledders over two days and is now
icy...so the sliders are going further and much, much faster...posing a real menace to photo-snapping pedestrians.
The little ankle biter nearly killed me, then ran away when I tried to snap her picture. Brat.
Rounding this out, a winter scene including The Royal Observatory and Prime Meridian, Royal Park, Greenwich.
I wonder, would do we go out and play in the snow the way Londoners did if we had less of it? Would we store a sled or toboggan for 30 or 40 or 50 years, ready for the snowy day that was VERY slow to come? The Royal Park was full of parents and toddlers, schoolkids with an unexpected day off, lovers walking through the snow, old men and women leaning on sticks, taking in the fun. The other London parks were similarly crowded.
Overheard in Greenwich:
"There's as many people here today as a hot f****g summer Sunday afternoon."
"I had already got up and got my kilt on and then my nan came in and said, Lydia, no school today! Brilliant!"
There was an entire BBC segment today on how properly to remove snow from a car (paying attention to clearing the entire windscreen, roof, boot, and bonnet of the car). The set up was a comparison with drivers in Moscow (each reputed to have a shovel, long-handled snow scraper, and a handy supply of sand/salt in their vehicles), while Londoners are woefully under provisioned vis a vis getting snow off vehicles, and getting vehicles moving out of the snow. The advice came a day after most people had cleaned off their cars. It won't likely snow this much again for another twenty years. But like CNN, BBC has to fill a 24 hours news cycle...hence lessons in cleaning off snowy cars. That segment was easier to watch than the loop of tape of people falling down icy steps outside a tube station...person after person after person. If you were holding a camera and saw one person tumble down the stairs, wouldn't you station yourself at the top of the stairs to stop it happening again? Or would you really put up your tripod, hoping for another half a dozen prospects for broken wrists and ankles? Just wondering.
The public service motif of BBC reporting did not end there. There's also the poorly understood potential risks of wearing wellies (rubber Wellington boots) to drive that the viewing public has to consider. Apparently, with feet in wellies, you can't feel the gas and brake pedals. At least that's what the Beeb guy said. I wonder if that's because your feet would be mostly frozen, unless the wellie wearer used a variation of my London boots?
Cold weather ingenuity
Londoners are an intrepid bunch. Watch the next post for more pics of the Royal Park, where yesterday was very festive (as you can likely tell from the number of people in this photo).
There were some cross country skiers. I saw wooden sleds and toboggans that I KNOW were fifty or sixty years old, stored in attics and basements just for this kind of opportunity. Some kids had the standard plastic sleds and saucers (given to them by a malevolent Santa, seeing as how little snow London usually gets?)
But even more interesting than the antique sliding equipment and much more interesting than the run of the mill new stuff, was the sheer ingenuity of Londoners as they fashioned their own modern versions to slide down hills. Inventions I saw included:
- A plastic laundry basket, various plastic storage bins (bottoms, but especially lids!)
- Bread flats that bakers normally load up for other kinds of delivery
- Cardboard (boxes and flats)
- An inflatable (double or queen) bed
- Beach floats in various configurations
- Doggie pooper scoopers. Don't go ewwww--they looked new. They are a smallish square scoop, kind of like a plastic snow shovel with a very short handle. Bum goes on the scoop part, handle between legs, it works surprisingly well for sliders who want to keep their mode of transportation for another downhill run.
- "House for Sale" signs (laminated, apparently having superior sliding capacity). It's as if there are no longer any homes for sale in Greenwich, at least around the neighbourhoods bordering the Park.
- Recycle bins
- A tricycle, (un)steered by an adolescent. I'm pretty sure that hurt
- All kinds of snowboards and surfboards
- A shower curtain
The most ingenious/scary/odd was the really cute Asian couple who worked as a team to try to launch their vehicle from the top of the hill by the Observatory--a long and scary, steep and icy hill. He was sitting on what was almost definitely a short removeable laminated bookshelf. She had a rather substantial square metal pipe/pole (looked like it had been liberated from some scaffolding), which she was using to try to lever under the shelf to send him downhill. I had to turn away, as from a horrible accident. He was aimed pretty much directly at a toddler on a saucer. If she ever managed to make that bookshelf move, there were going to be injuries. I had visions of the unmanned bookshelf speeding downhill, taking people down in its path. I did not look over my shoulder as I walked away, fearing the grim spectacle of broken bones and blood. But I didn't hear any screams of pain, so maybe the shelf never launched.
I managed my own brand of ingenuity, creating my own version of London boots (after all, I told students, no need to pack any, it never really snows in Lond0n). I put on a pair of tights, plastic bags on each foot, a pair of nylon knee highs to keep the plastic in place, topped off by a pair of socks. Then a pair of shoes, it was actually very effective at keeping feet warm and dry, though I'm pretty sure I'll have to write off those shoes.
Oh...that just means I'll need to go shoe shopping. Darn it.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Snowy, snowy night
Who'd have guessed that Buffalo weather would find it's way here? Snow was eagerly forecast for several days, and I hoped for an inch or so, just enough to cover everything and create an aspect of London I'd never seen before. Several visits have provided sightings of the odd flake, here an there, but not "real" snow.
So I was delighted last night when we had beautiful series of flurries that lasted a couple of hours, culminating in a great clap of thunder--big flakes the size of 50p coins (everything is more expensive here, or I'd have said a quarter). I worried that it would be gone by the morning, so despite not having read the manual for my new camera, I snapped some photos by streetlight so I could record London snow before it melted.
The corner of our front yard.
The Maze Hill gate into the Royal Park, under the streetlight.
The garden.
Well, I can't get into the city to see that blanket of snow (no train, Tube or bus service), and I needn't have worried that it would be gone by morning. I hope to make it to central London tomorrow; today's only option was a four mile walk or the water taxi--but too much to see here in Greenwich and too cold, brrrrrr.
London buses, according to Ken Livingston (Labour, former Mayor) ran without fail for a hundred years (and he implied they'd have run if not for the Conservative Mayor)--buses ran through the Blitz and through blizzards, but today were unable to navigate the snowy streets of London and its 'burbs. About 20 percent of the British population stayed home from work. That's because most of the snowplows in England are at that construction site that has its own airport (Heathrow has 58 snowplows), but even there, they couldn't keep up. 600+ flights were cancelled today--no more room to put snow and planes.
What London does have is a fleet of "gritting lorries." I don't know why I find that term so funny, but every time I think about gritting lorries I smile. The gritting lorry passed our house several times, making Maze Hill passable for intrepid drivers--though few tried the uphill slog. Mostly, the streets are ungritted and snowy, only main ones are gritted and slushy. For once, I'm happy enough not to be behind the wheel of a car. BBC has commented throughout the day that because London is neither Moscow, nor Budapest, nor Canada (perhaps because the news reader doesn't know the names of any snowy Canadian cities), London couldn't be expected to handle this amount of snow. [Aside: There was not a single mention of Buffalo's propensity for snowiness.]
Heard today:
"Absolutely diabolical. No gritting on the road, no nothing...we're like a third world country."
Man-on-the-Street, providing colour commentary for BBC News, with no apparent sense of irony that the countries he thinks of as conventionally third world would be unlikely to need gritty roads, so much as roads in the first place.
"This is not the way the country should be run." Opposition politician commenting on snow removal (or lack thereof).
Stating the obvious:
ITV Reporter, querying an AA service provider in his tow truck on the way to rescue a motorist who spun-out in the snow: "So, what would you say was the main reason your crews were called out on the road today?" Taciturn AA service provider: "Snow." Likely answer to same question next week."Rain." Stupid questions are not the exclusive domain of American reporters.
BBC tonight:
"People should expect very difficult journeys tomorrow, as it is still snowing. The best advice is to avoid unnecessary travel and high ground." Gotta love the Beeb, what other news provider would suggest avoiding hilly spots?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)