Categories: uncategorized
Date: 18 January 2007 22:11:55
Wimps!
All last night it was "Severe Weather Warnings" on the radio going on about how we were having the worst storm for years and years and years.
OK, it was a bit windy in London when I left for work in the morning. But only about what seems normal if you are used to living on the coast. Only one wheely bin in our street had been blown over - and they had just been emptied the same morning.
It was unnaturally warm for the time of year. I left the house equipped for bad weather, with a wooly jumper in my bag, and zippy sort of top and my big Barbour coat over my arm. And it never got cold enough to put the top on, never mind the coat I walked to the station and got on the train wearing my T-shirt. We haven't really had a cold day yet this winter. Not just no frost or snow, its never been near a frost, even at night. I've only actually felt cold once, and that was on Monday waiting on Plumpton station at sunset, for a train for Lewes and some decent beer after an afternoon at the races. And even then it wasn't cold enough to put my jumper on, even though I was wearing the coat.
And everybody is panicking. Worrying about trains and transport and crashes and so on. Well, if there is a serious storm its not here. The wind wasn't enough for the builders in the street I work in to stop using their cranes all day. In the evening I had the Reader's Course at the Cathedral. I walked to Euston station after dark in my T shirt again. Worked up a sweat even. Maybe that just shows how unfit I am. Got on the Northern Line, got to London Bridge early, caught the end of Evensong. There were people saying the main line station was closed because the roof has caved in or something. But I met people who'd got off trains there.
Did the course, left a bit early, home by 9.30 on the bus. Easier journey than normal. Only to find out that people had been worrying because it is supposed to be so dangerous out there in this Severe Weather. Wimps!
Got back home. Someone put the wheely bin back upright, but another one was leaning against a car. Not quite the destruction feared.
Its more like autumn than winter out there. Except that there are almost no flowers, even fewer than there were at Christmas. Not none though. As well as the ubiquitous annual mercury (ubiquitous in South East London that is, I never knew it before I came here) there is something of the chickweed or mouse-ear sort - maybe even Sagina, and can it be? - its hard to identify flowers a couple of millimetres across from a moving train. And catkins! Catkins! The first catkins of the spring in the second week of January! Just coming out of New Cross Station. Maybe some kind of willow - again the moving train problem. If I get a chance over the weekend I'll see if I can i.d. them.
Maybe I speak to soon, perhaps the forces of nature will be unleashed later tonight. I think I'll go and get some chips and see which way the wind blows.