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The one in which it snows...
Dec. 19th, 2010 12:29 amToday quite a lot of snow fell in a relatively short time. Predictably this meant that chaos has ensued. The airport is shut, people are stuck in enormous traffic jams and, horror of horrors, Brent Cross shopping centre closed at lunch time on one of the busiest days of the year. Fortunately for me I didn't have any daytime plans for today so when I woke up at 10.30ish and saw the blizzard conditions I did the sensible/cowardly thing and went back to bed. As the snow fell during the day while people were out and about it has made conditions outside particularly dangerous. The snow has already been trampled down by lots of peoples feet and it really slippery. I walked down to my parents' house at about 4.30pm and it was already quite a challenge staying upright. It's still very cold this evening so I imagine it will be pretty awful tomorrow once all the slush has turned to ice.
The first blizzard of the week arrived at around lunch time yesterday. I was shut away in a meeting room all morning and when I returned to he office everyone was standing by the windows watching the snow. It reminded me of when I was at school and the teachers would say 'haven't you ever seen snow before?!' and tell us to get on with our work. The snow didn't settle very much though. Today the new snowfall settled nicely on the frozen snow from yesterday. We have an Australian temp working with us at the moment. She had never seen snow falling before travelling to the UK so I think the last few weeks have been an interesting experience for her. We explained to her that until two or three years ago we hadn't had any serious snowfall in this area for twenty years. My parents have photos of me playing in the snow as a child but during the 90s and most of the 00s the snow rarely settled at all. I guess this is climate change in action.
Aside from the snow I've had a busy week. Tuesday was Christmas lunch in the canteen. We all went down together as an office and found ourselves thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing. I'm normally pretty easily pleased and I don't really think you can expect much from mass produced canteen food however the vegetables on offer were particularly horrifying. We couldn't figure out how it was possible to have uncooked and overcooked vegetables in the same portion. The portion sizes were also a bit strange. I managed to get loads of pigs in blankets but LB only got two. I also had enough parsnips to feed a small army but only a couple of slices of carrot. Oh well, it was a nice social experience I guess.
On Wednesday we went out for our office Christmas lunch at a very nice Indian restaurant in Richmond. It was also time to unwrap our legendary '£5 or less from a charity shop' secret santa gifts. I was the lucky recipient of a camoflage clock photo frame with a cat on a plastic disc as the second hand. Hmmmm. I had to put on my best poker face when the gift I gave was unwrapped as the person was sitting opposite me. The Charles and Diana wedding commemorative rubiks cube seemed to go down well though. The gift voted best of all though was two vinyl LPs - one of Wham! and one of Benny Hill. Genius! After lunch we retired to the pub opposite where I drank my way to my second hangover in less than a week. I was a well behaved drunk this time around though.
On Thursday afternoon our work Christmas choir gave its second and final performance in the public canteen. It was OK but we decided that our debut gig the week before had been better. We even had a complete collapse in 'Once in Royal David's City' where everyone got confused about which verse they were meant to be singing and we had to start again. I think we did pretty well for a choir which was largely made up of people who hadn't sung seriously for years and which had only had five rehearsals. We made over £300 for charity which we thought was a pretty good result.
In the evening I went to Questors Theatre in Ealing to see a production of Dublin Carol by Conor McPherson. It was festive in so far as it was set on Christmas Eve but was a rather depressing tale about a 60 something alcoholic funeral director who was having a really rubbish life. It was very well written and the acting was great but it was such a grim story and made life in modern day Ireland appear pretty awful. Also it was 90 minutes long without an interval which suited the intense style of the play but challenged my hungover reduced concentration span. The play was performed in the studio space and the audience was tiny. I think the potential audience had heard that the play was depressing and decided to go and see the kid-friendly production of 'Beauty and the Beast' which was being performed in the main theatre space at the same time.
On Friday I finally got around to posting my Christmas cards which I had been carrying around all week but had been so busy that I hadn't had time to pop in the shop at work to buy stamps. I really like this years Wallace and Grommit Christmas stamps and was glad that I managed to get hold of some.
This evening I went to the Mary Wallace Theatre in Twickenham to see Richmond Shakespeare Society perform 'Fallen Angels' by Noel Coward. Dad had a bit of trouble getting the car out of their road because of the deep snow, but once we got on to the main roads we were fine. The gritters had been out and there were hardly any other cars on the road. 'Fallen Angels' is a very funny, almost farcical play about two married women who discover that a mutual former lover from their single days is coming to visit. Some of Noel Coward's plays aren't 'laugh out loud' funny but this one certainly is. The scene in the second act in which the women get tipsy on champagne and drunkenly stagger around the flat having an arguement was played to perfection. I recognised some of the drunken incidents from my own experience. The costumes were also impressive. In the second act they wore 1920s evening dresses which were absolutely beautiful, I'd love to have the opportunity to wear them. The programme said that the play caused outrage when it was first written as it was seen to make a joke of adultary. I can totally understand why. All in all it was a nice, cheerful evening out after the misery of Thursday evening and a good thing to do to escape the snowy weather.
Tomorrow I should really try and finish off my Christmas shopping. I don't have anything for my sister or brother-in-law yet and time is running out. I just hope the trains and/or buses will be running so I can get somewhere reasonable.
The first blizzard of the week arrived at around lunch time yesterday. I was shut away in a meeting room all morning and when I returned to he office everyone was standing by the windows watching the snow. It reminded me of when I was at school and the teachers would say 'haven't you ever seen snow before?!' and tell us to get on with our work. The snow didn't settle very much though. Today the new snowfall settled nicely on the frozen snow from yesterday. We have an Australian temp working with us at the moment. She had never seen snow falling before travelling to the UK so I think the last few weeks have been an interesting experience for her. We explained to her that until two or three years ago we hadn't had any serious snowfall in this area for twenty years. My parents have photos of me playing in the snow as a child but during the 90s and most of the 00s the snow rarely settled at all. I guess this is climate change in action.
Aside from the snow I've had a busy week. Tuesday was Christmas lunch in the canteen. We all went down together as an office and found ourselves thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing. I'm normally pretty easily pleased and I don't really think you can expect much from mass produced canteen food however the vegetables on offer were particularly horrifying. We couldn't figure out how it was possible to have uncooked and overcooked vegetables in the same portion. The portion sizes were also a bit strange. I managed to get loads of pigs in blankets but LB only got two. I also had enough parsnips to feed a small army but only a couple of slices of carrot. Oh well, it was a nice social experience I guess.
On Wednesday we went out for our office Christmas lunch at a very nice Indian restaurant in Richmond. It was also time to unwrap our legendary '£5 or less from a charity shop' secret santa gifts. I was the lucky recipient of a camoflage clock photo frame with a cat on a plastic disc as the second hand. Hmmmm. I had to put on my best poker face when the gift I gave was unwrapped as the person was sitting opposite me. The Charles and Diana wedding commemorative rubiks cube seemed to go down well though. The gift voted best of all though was two vinyl LPs - one of Wham! and one of Benny Hill. Genius! After lunch we retired to the pub opposite where I drank my way to my second hangover in less than a week. I was a well behaved drunk this time around though.
On Thursday afternoon our work Christmas choir gave its second and final performance in the public canteen. It was OK but we decided that our debut gig the week before had been better. We even had a complete collapse in 'Once in Royal David's City' where everyone got confused about which verse they were meant to be singing and we had to start again. I think we did pretty well for a choir which was largely made up of people who hadn't sung seriously for years and which had only had five rehearsals. We made over £300 for charity which we thought was a pretty good result.
In the evening I went to Questors Theatre in Ealing to see a production of Dublin Carol by Conor McPherson. It was festive in so far as it was set on Christmas Eve but was a rather depressing tale about a 60 something alcoholic funeral director who was having a really rubbish life. It was very well written and the acting was great but it was such a grim story and made life in modern day Ireland appear pretty awful. Also it was 90 minutes long without an interval which suited the intense style of the play but challenged my hungover reduced concentration span. The play was performed in the studio space and the audience was tiny. I think the potential audience had heard that the play was depressing and decided to go and see the kid-friendly production of 'Beauty and the Beast' which was being performed in the main theatre space at the same time.
On Friday I finally got around to posting my Christmas cards which I had been carrying around all week but had been so busy that I hadn't had time to pop in the shop at work to buy stamps. I really like this years Wallace and Grommit Christmas stamps and was glad that I managed to get hold of some.
This evening I went to the Mary Wallace Theatre in Twickenham to see Richmond Shakespeare Society perform 'Fallen Angels' by Noel Coward. Dad had a bit of trouble getting the car out of their road because of the deep snow, but once we got on to the main roads we were fine. The gritters had been out and there were hardly any other cars on the road. 'Fallen Angels' is a very funny, almost farcical play about two married women who discover that a mutual former lover from their single days is coming to visit. Some of Noel Coward's plays aren't 'laugh out loud' funny but this one certainly is. The scene in the second act in which the women get tipsy on champagne and drunkenly stagger around the flat having an arguement was played to perfection. I recognised some of the drunken incidents from my own experience. The costumes were also impressive. In the second act they wore 1920s evening dresses which were absolutely beautiful, I'd love to have the opportunity to wear them. The programme said that the play caused outrage when it was first written as it was seen to make a joke of adultary. I can totally understand why. All in all it was a nice, cheerful evening out after the misery of Thursday evening and a good thing to do to escape the snowy weather.
Tomorrow I should really try and finish off my Christmas shopping. I don't have anything for my sister or brother-in-law yet and time is running out. I just hope the trains and/or buses will be running so I can get somewhere reasonable.
