SNOW!

Oh my we're having a cold winter. For those of you that haven't been living in 'Arctic Britain' for the last few months will do well to know that it has been the coldest winter since 1995. Ooh la la I hear you say. Yes, take pity on us for us Brits do find it hard to cope with any form of adverse weather. Take for example this Monday, February 2nd, which turned out to be a very surreal day indeed.

Having woken up early to a call of nature I happened to glimpse out the window. What greeted me was a spectacle of pure pristine white stuff blanketing the houses of Brighton. I switched on the radio to a media frenzied with reports of school closures, buses out of operation and all trains cancelled. This jolly seaside town had become well and truly cut off from the world.
It was upon this realisation that something odd happened to me. I, like many other millions in England, became 6 years old again. I ran around excitedly as text messages began to flood in - invitations to come out and play.
A little later, armed with what can only be described as a human-sized flying-saucer shaped dish, my companions and I trudged across Brighton receiving comments of admiration from passersby to our somewhat eccentric slay. We even stopped to let some children have a go, but they were less than impressed.
It was a day when people who weren't stuck on the M25 could take an impromptu break and really make contact with that inner-child, perhaps long locked away but never truly forgotten.

Of course, this being Britain, there were those who moaned. One particular gentleman on the radio told how London buses were kept going through the darkest days of the Blitz, but on this day bus drivers were seen engaging in snowball fights. People inevitaby harked back to that Blitz spirit and told of courageous people daring to leave their houses and venture into 8 inches of snow. What a glorious day therefore, when Britain once again triumphed in the face of adversity!

Of course, the truth is it didn't. In fact we quickly became an international laughing stock. A German news programme gave a dour but playful report on how Britain fell to its knees showing closed Tube stations and no doubt commenting on how peculiar it was that in Britain it seemed to snow underground as well . The Canadians thought it all downright hillarious-what strange people we are, a Polish friend exclaimed "You don't know what heavy snow is" and generally a lot of fun was had at our expense.

But do we care? I think not because for the most part I saw people really enjoying themselves on Monday. Children were in their element (I include myself and my friends in this because for the day, we were children.)
Much in the spirit of Mods and Rockers, snowball fights broke out across Brighton, but this time they were friendly. The noise of traffic died away and all that was to heard across the city was the noise of people having fun.
So that was a day when Britain stopped working, but hey, it was some much needed fun considering the un-fun times we're living in.