A White Christmas?

22 December, 2023 Gibson Square 7 Comments

How fantastic it would be to wake up on Christmas morning, pull back the curtains and see the landscape covered by a thick layer of snow? Muffled sounds; hearing the crunch of car tyres as they drive by; the shriek of excited children; and a robin perched on your garden fork, Christmas card perfect.

We love snow on Christmas Day because it’s the one day of the year many of us don’t have to travel anywhere. We’re already where we need to be, the entire public transport network has already been shut down for the day and we couldn’t drive safely anywhere after last night’s bender.

Will there be a White Christmas this year? Well, no, sorry, there won’t, and with climate change, it’s not likely in the future.

A snowy Christmas Day in London is a rare event. Even rarer is a ‘proper’ White Christmas, rather than a single flake of snow falling on the Met Office roof will do for the definition that the bookies now use.

December’s always been a bit early in the winter for snow, we are more likely to see snow between January and March with snow or sleet falling an average of 3.9 days in December, compared to 5.3 days in January, 5.6 in February and 4.2 in March, and with the world having the hottest year on record this year, the entire 21st century looks like we’ll not see another White Christmas.

White Christmases were rather more common here during the ‘Little Ice Age’, back when the Thames used to regularly freeze over, but the last London Frost fair was held as long ago as 1814.

The most recent time London had a snowy holiday was in 2022, with 2021, 2020, and 2017 also being classed White Christmases.

But most of us think of a white Christmas as blankets of snow covering the UK – yet London hasn’t seen a truly white Christmas for 20 years. In the previous century, only ten Christmases in London have been white. That’d be 1916 (sleet), 1927 (snow, falling and lying), 1938 (sleet, but 15cm of snow lying on the ground), 1956 (snow), 1964 (snow), 1968 (sleet), 1970 (snow, falling and lying), 1976 (snow), 1996 (sleet) and 1999 (sleet). You may also remember a white 1963 and 1981, but that year doesn’t officially count because no snow fell actually on Christmas Day itself.

I remember the 1962-63, when a wintry outbreak brought snow on 12–13 December 1962, technically it didn’t snow on Christmas Day, but London had heavy snow late on 26–27 December, it wasn’t until the 6 March the first morning of the year without frost in Britain. Temperatures rose to 62.6 °F and the remaining snow disappeared.

London Underground in the snow: East Finchley station. View NW, towards Finchley Central and High Barnet/Mill Hill East, London Underground (Northern Line). Until 1939 this station had been on the LNER (ex-GNR) suburban section and goods trains (steam-hauled) were still working past here to Mill Hill East for the Gas Works until 10/62. This morning the ice had already been cleared and Tube trains were running by Ben Brooksbank (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

Thinking allowed

Pedicabs might meet their match

21 December, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

Amongst all the tradition and flummery, with Black Rod using his eponymous stick to hit a door and the new King making his first Gracious Address, between the promise to safeguard the future of football clubs and a commitment to tackle antisemitism, His Majesty uttered fifteen words that could be a relief for many Londoners: “A bill will be introduced to deal with the scourge of unlicensed pedicabs in London.”

This is not before time. Current laws governing pedicabs date back to the 1800s, but we’ve been down this road before, a similar announcement was made in the final Queen’s Speech last May, but the measure was kicked into the long grass before making any progress. but maybe Parliament will at last act to regulate these sometimes dangerous nuisance vehicles that plague the West End.

Puppydog tails

Johnson’s London Dictionary: O2 Arena

20 December, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

O2 ARENA (n.) Tent erected for the Millennia that lost a King’s ransom, that has transmogrified into the largest broadsheet for a purveyor of communications.

Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon

Puppydog tails

The List Season

19 December, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

It is that time of year when the media publish lists. You know the sort of thing: recommended books, best Christmas puddings, annual weather data and gongs to people you’ve never heard of. So I thought I’d list the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree donated by the people of Oslo.
Common name: Norway Spruce
Scientific name: Picea abies
Symbolism: Greek mythology devoted to Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the Moon
Common title: The Queen of the Forest
Height: 70ft
Age: 70 years
Sourced location: Nordmarka, a heavily forested area north of Oslo
Felled: Mid-November
How long we’ve received the tree: 76 years
Lights: 500 halogen bulbs
Lighting ceremony: Thursday 7th December
Number of branches: Well over 100, just guessing!
Needles: Pointy evergreen glossy dark green, less than 2 inches long
After Twelfth Night: The tree is taken down, and turned into mulch, which is then used in gardens around London
The story behind the tree: The tradition of cutting down a tree and putting it up in Oslo’s Universitetsplassen is a long-held tradition. So sacred is it, that even when Norway was occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, members of the Royal Norwegian Navy snuck back into their own country to cut down a tree each year, bringing it back to London for King Haakon in exile there. (now THAT is a Christmas film waiting to happen). Today, the tree symbolises not just what Britain did in the war, but also a respect for democracy, human rights, peace — and solidarity between the two countries and cities.

London in Quotations

London in Quotations: Neil Gaiman

Quote 18 December, 2023 Gibson Square 4 Comments

When he had first arrived, he had found London huge, odd, fundamentally incomprehensible, with only the Tube map, that elegant multicoloured topographical display of underground railway lines and stations, giving it any semblance of order. Gradually he realized that the Tube map was a handy fiction that made life easier but bore no resemblance to the reality of the shape of the city above. It was like belonging to a political party, he thought once, proudly, and then, having tried to explain the resemblance between the Tube map and politics, at a party, to a cluster of bewildered strangers, he had decided in the future to leave political comment to others.