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weather snow event and britishness
Feb. 3rd, 2009 09:48 pmMy weather posts are usually of a sober, strictly descriptive nature. But yesterday! Snow! Happy-making! It actually stayed on the ground for nearly the whole day, and in the morning it was fluffy and smelled of ozone and everything was still, except for the reverberations of screeches of delight and laughter all up and down the streets as children (and adults!) ran around, throwing snow balls and building snow people.
It being England (hoho), the radio started reporting this as the 'snow event'. I love this diction! Snow event! I am now going to call everything an event: a 'rain event'; a 'heat event'; a 'slight drizzle event' -- yes! I am loving it!
The 'snow event' of course necessitated closure of nearly all --shire schools, closure of my university from 2 pm onwards (the foreign students stared at me in shock; "what is happening???"; possibly they thought it was some terrorist alert; but no: only the Snow Event!), closure of airport runways and London buses.
Today I discovered that there is one thing the English love: to complain about their own crapness. The media and my colleagues and random passers-by are positively wallowing in the perceived crapness of their nation's response to the Snow Event. Twice today I have heard "How did we ever win the war?" People are calling in to radio programmes; they rant and rave. The English are not tremendously good at feeling good about themselves (they were totally thrown by the Olympics and their medal success) but extremely good at moaning about their own rubbishness.
'Feeling good', by the way, is not the same as 'feeling smug'. The English are fairly good at 'feeling smug'.
The English are also exceedingly good at what I call 'the mucking in'. But yesterday's Snow Event was not nearly severe enough for the 'mucking in' to kick in (there were, after all, barely 5 inches of the stuff, if that). No, you need a blitz to get the 'mucking in' going. I first experienced the 'mucking in' when the university where I was teaching an OU summer course was flooded and everyone in the cafeteria/pub was stranded for several hours. Here, the 'crapness' was overridden by the 'mucking in': camaraderie, good spirits, going out of one's way to help, braving the vicissitudes of life, nature and running out of beer. It were fab!
Anyway, back to the snow: I decided even before the schools closed to keep the sons home because: what fun!! We had a snowball fight and then I went to work on my bike.
The best thing Evah written about England in the winter is Sylvia Plath's short story 'Snow Blitz', contained in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. It is absolutely brilliant, and screamingly funny.
It being England (hoho), the radio started reporting this as the 'snow event'. I love this diction! Snow event! I am now going to call everything an event: a 'rain event'; a 'heat event'; a 'slight drizzle event' -- yes! I am loving it!
The 'snow event' of course necessitated closure of nearly all --shire schools, closure of my university from 2 pm onwards (the foreign students stared at me in shock; "what is happening???"; possibly they thought it was some terrorist alert; but no: only the Snow Event!), closure of airport runways and London buses.
Today I discovered that there is one thing the English love: to complain about their own crapness. The media and my colleagues and random passers-by are positively wallowing in the perceived crapness of their nation's response to the Snow Event. Twice today I have heard "How did we ever win the war?" People are calling in to radio programmes; they rant and rave. The English are not tremendously good at feeling good about themselves (they were totally thrown by the Olympics and their medal success) but extremely good at moaning about their own rubbishness.
'Feeling good', by the way, is not the same as 'feeling smug'. The English are fairly good at 'feeling smug'.
The English are also exceedingly good at what I call 'the mucking in'. But yesterday's Snow Event was not nearly severe enough for the 'mucking in' to kick in (there were, after all, barely 5 inches of the stuff, if that). No, you need a blitz to get the 'mucking in' going. I first experienced the 'mucking in' when the university where I was teaching an OU summer course was flooded and everyone in the cafeteria/pub was stranded for several hours. Here, the 'crapness' was overridden by the 'mucking in': camaraderie, good spirits, going out of one's way to help, braving the vicissitudes of life, nature and running out of beer. It were fab!
Anyway, back to the snow: I decided even before the schools closed to keep the sons home because: what fun!! We had a snowball fight and then I went to work on my bike.
The best thing Evah written about England in the winter is Sylvia Plath's short story 'Snow Blitz', contained in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. It is absolutely brilliant, and screamingly funny.