literally another aussie in london

Londn’s white hell

So you have seen the snow, now let me tell you about it.

It shuts London down.

Trains cancelled.

People locked in their homes.

Offices empty.

Indoor cricket not happening.

For a country that is always on the verge of snow, you would think there would be some sort of infrastructure when it happens.

No.

It happens so rarely, that they are caught unawares.

In general it just slows London down, but there was an interesting reaction from the Londonites.

They obviously thought it was an apocalypse.

The snow came down on sunday night, by monday lunchtime it was here to stay.

Monday afternoon i made my way down to the local super markettte, and i was not prepared for what i saw.

The shop looked like a badly decorated supermarket from a made for TV film about the aftermath of a nuclear war.

The front of the shop was covered in black muck and water. The place to dry your feet was soaking wet, and beginning to smell.

The trail of water went around the whole store. Past the empty bread area, near the semi skint fresh food (potatoes were there, nothing else), down around the usually ignored can area, infront of the ghost town of a meat section, and throughtout the store.

A store that was almost out of everything. In the wetness and black muck of the floor there was plastic wrappers and rubbish just floating. Cereal boxes were strewn on their side, the only toothpaste tube was left on the floor, and ladies sanitary goods had been roughly treated. The Milk section had been raped.

I had to act fast, but the shock of the situation made that hard. With bread, meat and milk out of the question, i went looking for Eggs, when i got there i was horrifed. 3 cartons of eggs were upright, but many had not made it. The upright cartons had seen better days, and each had eggs that did not survivve, but by teaming up the survivors i ha 12 eggs, of varying sizes, but all unbroken.

Then i got drinks, soft drinks and juice, and noodles, even though i don’t like them, and no one asked for them, noodles are truly apocalypse food. When I was there i spied a couple of packets of bacon that had fallen into another section, i took them, even the quality was dubious.

That lead me to the fake plastic cheese, i have always liked fake plastic cheese, so i took that, and then i remembered i needed toilet paper. I threw the fake plastic cheese in the basket and ran for the toiletries isle. When i got there, there was plenty of rolls, the dirty mouth breathers had not yet thought of this, so i grabbed a couple of rolls, but on the way to the checkout i noticed this was not toilet paper, it was kitchen roll.

The supermarket had already started to give people rough paper in this time of crisis, Snow in London, what fresh hell is this. Now even though i had no haemmaroids, the thought of this roughness grating at my asshole was too much, so I rushed back to the toiletries section, and what did i find, like a gift from the aliens, one four pack of the cheapest and pinkest toilet paper ever, hidden away, perhaps some had chosen the kitchen roll by mistake, but we would be wiping our asses like royalty.

Now all i needed was money, the ATM was out of order, so I carded it, i couldn’t leave my items and go looking for cash. I took my panic buys to two other ATMs, still no money. London was truly in panic mode.

On the way back the footpaths had turned to ice, for a strapping man of my balance with walking boots on it was no trouble. But for the old man, with the weird Russian woolen hat, plastic bags on his feet around his shoes, and pushing one of those old woman shopping trouble it was agony. He covered 10 feet in a minute, and I wished i could help him, but my hands were full og provisions to get me through.

Further down the road i saw a youngish guy fall over three times on the ice on my road (the iciest I have found in London), he just never learnt, and was trying to walk and hold onto a fence.

This was quite funny, and made me forget about how sad the old man looked.

February 4, 2009 - Posted by Jrod | living in london | snow, winter