Years of repressed emotion has been building up to this moment. The torture that we British face is simply excruciating. Today, it has been released.
It never snows in Britain, you see. And when it does snow, it never settles.
Which is a real pain, because if it doesn’t settle, we can’t complain that our transport system has come to a standstill. We can’t moan that the roads are slippery and covered with sleet. We can’t, in short, do what we the British do best.
Of course, when we British decide that there’s some moaning to be done, we aren’t the kind to do things by halves. Oh no. Armed with the most modern technology we have come out in force. The captains of complaint, arriving in the nick of time to show the rest of the world how it is done.
For most of the day, ‘#uksnow’ has been the number 1 trend (that is, the most used word or phrase) on Twitter – fighting off American rivals including ‘Super Bowl’ and ‘Punxsatawney Phil’ (February 2nd is Groundhog Day, remember?) to the top spot. A flash Snowball Fight, organised via Twitter, broke out in Trafalgar Square at 18:20 today. A man called Ben Marsh showed us the power of British ingenuity with an interactive map of where the snow was and how we felt about it. It’s been a truism that since Twitter came to these shores that the British, given 140 characters with which to impart whatever wisdom they like, use those 140 characters to talk about the weather – today, however, we have indeed excelled ourselves.
It hasn’t just been restricted to the nerds, either. The government have done their best to take part in the festivities. Facing uncertainty as to whether stalled public transport would be sufficient to spark the water-cooler complaints, the Department for Work & Pensions martyred themselves for the cause by giving the entire staff the afternoon off to ‘enjoy’ the snow (we all know, of course, that they did so by standing on train platforms and complaining that they couldn’t make it home anyway and somebody ought to do something about it). A courageous sacrifice for the greater good, allowing tens of thousands of Brits to mutter ‘typical’ under their breath. What would we do without them, I ask you.
Unfortunately, due to my complete mainstream-media-blindness (which began today, although I still haven’t got round to blogging about it), I have been unable to share in getting irritated with the poor state of the news coverage – though I can just imagine the turmoil that is being reported. The extreme weather warnings. The asking of how many pensioners will meet their doom at the hands of vicious snowmen (or something). The cries of desperation that ‘other countries seem to manage just fine, howcome Britain can’t cope with a bit of snow’. Maternal figures urging everybody to wrap up warm, drive carefully, and ‘be safe’. I’m sure it’s been classic, and in many ways I’m sorry to have missed it.
Today the British were allowed to rediscover our national character. We’ve had a tough time of it recently, we’ve been stuck in serious times and we’ve had genuine problems to worry about, genuine trials to face. Today, and just possibly tomorrow, we have finally been allowed by the powers of the universe to forget about the recession and engage in that most quintessentially British of pastimes: to complain about the weather. And we have done ourselves proud.
*PS* Incidentally, my little girl was extremely impressed – although I don’t have a picture of her snowman to hand…
