How did you guys manage to get ahold of a good old-fashioned Canadian snowstorm? 
What that BBC article described is what we get four or five times each winter, even here in Southern Ontario, except that you are warmer. And it slows us down too, but then the next day everything is normal.
:: whisper whisper ::
I have just been informed by one of my minions that he was ‘aiming for Australia and missed’. Sorry.
:: icy pause ::
The minion in question has been terminated.
We spent the day making a snowman, sledding on tea-trays and bin-bags and having snowball fights, surrounded by hundreds of people doing the same. In Victoria Park there were snowmen every few feet, organised snowball fights, strangers smiling at each other, and a general atmosphere of uninhibited joy.
I’m glad we don’t bother spending tons of money on having measures in place that would prevent us from enjoying the only snowy day in London we’ve had for twenty years. A city full of happy people for a day is a much better outcome.
The only downer is people from snowy places acting all superior. Yes, London has difficulty handling this much snow. It does, however, handle several million commuters every day. Would your snowy areas be able to manage that if it happened unexpectedly for one day?
And Big Ben and Westminster look spectacular in the snow!
Go to “In pictures: winter weather” and enjoy.
We are supposed to get 8 inches here some time soon [insert dirty joke here].
The more I hear from fellow London dopers, the more I think I got a bum deal.
I was walking down the road about half five this evening, smoking a cigarette and a girl asked me for one. I said no, because I don’t give 'em out to anyone let alone those who don’t look old enough to buy their own, so she threw a snowball at me, into my handbag, leaving me to fish it out before all my stuff got ruined.
I hope she fell in to one of the stinking slush puddles.
The only person I saw smiling was a woman on skis - brilliant - as if she was trekking the Arctic. That did bring a hint of a smile to my lips.
Was up in Manchester for the weekend - hardly anything on the ground this morning. Knew things were amiss when I found out my planned train wasn’t running. Caught the next one which then started to run late after each station we stopped at. As I made my south the snow got thicker and thicker and I had trod through the slush getting to St Pancrass. Surprisingly enough First Capital Connect was up and running (normally a regular rainstorm knocks them out) and I made it home…It stopped snowing here (Herts) around 6pm. 80% of the stores never opened their doors and M&S closed at 5, forcing me to do my shopping at Tesco Express 
It seems the busses are running but I talked to boss-lady and will be working from home tomorrow
They keep saying “the worst snow in 18 years.”
Best snow, surely?
You shouldn’t have done that. That wasn’t your minion did that. That was me.
Illuminatiprimus provoked me, over in this thread.
Fuck it - I thought I could moon you with impunity but when I did so you gave me an unexpected day off work. Damn you!
Shakes fist in a very half hearted fashion
Why not? It’s how I used to get to school. And it was uphill. Both ways.
The video screenshot on this page is absolutely fantastic! Very Dickensian. Hell, I’d probably buy that picture.
On the plus side, now you Brits can finally get into those pittings about people who only clear off a small portion of their car windows!
From the amateur dictionary of George Kaplin, First edition.
a⋅dulthood [uh-duhlt, ad-uhlt]
–adjective
If that’s the case, I ain’t gonna grow up!
Yanno, really, anyone in Toronto has no business criticizing how anywhere else deals with snow…or are we going to have to bring up the fact that at least in London they didn’t call in the army? 
That pic with Big Ben is fantastic. If you click on reader’s pics–there is a delightful pic of a baby girl named Clara who is viewing her very first snow with wonder. Fantastic.
About six of us made it into the office yesterday (theoretically our press day), and around noon we said “screw it, it ain’t happening” and went to the pub for a few pints and to Green Park to build snowmen, in that order.
My favourite creation of the day (not ours, sadly, but that of another office-looking group!).
I should re-think my revenge for mooning me. Now I think I’m being mooned by most of the population of California, plus every school kid in places where they close schools for snow.
As an ex Londoner I’m actually a bit jealous.
Nevermind, I’ll just have to put up with the streaming sunshine and 19 degrees centigrade temperature. Ah, well.
My second day home from work, as the half-hourly trains promised by the Southeastern website this morning proved to be non-existent (seriously - the snow on the rails was pristine and someone had built a snowman on the platform. Do not tell me you are running a half-hourly service from this station.) I was going to take the bus in but my boss told me not to bother as virtually nobody else was in, and she emailed me some busywork to do at home instead.
I went for a walk earlier and the neighbourhood is littered with snowpeople (and a few snowcats). Fan-bloody-tastic.
Eh, it’s not the quantity, it’s the unexpectedness. People trying to blow us up, beer at £3 per pint, creaking-at-the-seams transport system, Faggots in Gravy on the menu, foxes stealing our shoes off the patio, these are all things that we deal with every day. Snow, not so much. How does Southern Ontario cope with a worst-in-20-years snow event? I bet it’s a clusterfuck.
There was a considerable amount of holiday spirit around yesterday, along with a great deal of grousing about how 3 flakes of snow cause everything to go to hell in a handbasket. I went to the train station to find that all services were suspended, so I had a chat with a nice bloke from Egypt who was loving the whole thing. “In my country we have nothing like this!!”.
Then I went home, taking a few photos on the way, and had a few beers while trying to keep up with work on my blackberry.
Most ironic was all the people coming back from their holidays skiing in the more frozen parts of Europe, only to find that either their flights were cancelled or that they were stranded at the airport because the whole transport system had collapsed.