London Snow

Ice Age Amateurs
(From the blog entry at 'England's Pleasant Pastures')

Perhaps with the exception of peoples of the south seas who have never seen a snowflake, it seems as if other members of the genus Homo are like Arctic wolves, howling at our expense.

Meanwhile, British Neanderthals hide in their caves as they did in Pleistocene times, 110,000--10,000 years ago.

With a summer of electioneering on the near horizon, print and TV grab the...
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Ice Age Amateurs
(From the blog entry at 'England's Pleasant Pastures')

Perhaps with the exception of peoples of the south seas who have never seen a snowflake, it seems as if other members of the genus Homo are like Arctic wolves, howling at our expense.

Meanwhile, British Neanderthals hide in their caves as they did in Pleistocene times, 110,000--10,000 years ago.

With a summer of electioneering on the near horizon, print and TV grab the opportunity to hype up the white stuff as a sort of silly season sport.

...

And just as weatherman Peter Cockcroft was warning of the imminent doom, Sainsburys' shelves resembled a corner shop whose residents have just learned of an invasion of Wellsian tripods. No eggs, Porridge nor potatoes and little bread was to be located.

I trudged over to Dulwich Village on icy pavements instead. A Southwark environmental team were convening opposite the warming glows of the bookshop to discuss how they would distribute the grit. An east European dragged his yellow wheelbarrow down Turney Road but managed just 100 yards before stopping, out of breath. The supervisor was now out of sight and he slumped against a London Plain for a smoke. I wondered how many more feet of paths the grit would reach for the benefit of homeward mums and commuters.

Our sceptered isle is apparently under attack from extreme meteorology and as if these were times of climactic catastrophe we think we are losing our sense of civilisation - like in The Road. When such a crisis looms and precipitation descends, so do media-invented metaphors and alliteration.

As for bloggers, they're on that gritting wagon too.

For the full text, go to this blog entry at England's Pleasant Pastures:
http://bit.ly/8rWrJ0
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