Snow!

The Dublin post is coming, I promise. But to tide you over until then I'll tell you all briefly about the latest wintry turn in the "bloody English weather."

As you can probably guess from the title, it has snowed quite a bit in southern England over the last 24 hours. And by quite a bit I mean...about four to five inches. Being a native New Englander, that seems nothing to get your knickers twisted about (as they say). But that much snow all at once is apparently such a rarity here that no one knew quite what to do! Public transport was shut down, most of the shops in New Cross were shuttered, and Goldsmiths was closed.

I didn't have any lectures today, so that last one didn't affect me much. However, I was rather disappointed to find that the college library was also closed. I was hoping to use the computers there, since the internet was out in the halls from Sunday afternoon until a few hours ago and I was going through serious web withdrawal.

While I'm on the subject: although I missed my almost-nightly Skype session with Ian, having no internet for an extended period of time was a good wake up call. It made me realize not only how dependent I am on the internet, but also how much time I spend sitting in front of the computer surfing aimlessly. (OK, and checking Facebook.)

So last night, instead of parking ourselves at our laptops, my flatmates Steph and Moriah and I, plus Abhi, who lives downstairs, spent several hours in the kitchen together talking over dinner and a chocolate Cadbury cake roll while I simultaneously tended the oatmeal raisin cookies I was baking. Being from India, Abhi had never seen snow before so he was completely enthralled by the white flakes swirling outside. Steph was a bit surprised by the amount that had already accumulated on the cars and sidewalks, but Moriah (who, if you recall, is from New Jersey) and I were nonplussed. To us, this "storm" was hardly that.

When we washed up and called it a night, it was 11pm. I headed to my room and got ready for bed, since there was really nothing else to do. Then I read for about two and half hours before falling asleep. In fact, between yesterday and today I finished an entire book and am halfway through another; I completed the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet and am now working on another Holmes classic, The Sign of Four. So that's one good thing about not having the internet. The bad thing is that no academic reading got done!

I did do some work on my Anthropology of Art II fieldwork project today, though. During the break in which I ventured out to the library, I also took some pictures of snowy, snowy New Cross. Here's what all the commotion is about:

The view from my window.

Good ol' Dean House.

New Cross Road. I ran into Tina just yards from where I took this picture.

Shuttered shops across the street from the main building.

The main building. Closed and covered with snow.

It's sort of ironic that this storm came on the very day that Punxsatawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter for 2009. Think his forecast applies to England as well? We'll just have to wait and see!