Local headline spotted today en route home from work: Rush to empty bins before Christmas.
Is this a random edict from a council bored of having to defend the amount of grit and salt there is everywhere, relative to the amount of snow and ice? Or is it some kind of Scottish custom that I've never heard of before? 'D'you no ken tha' Santa will nae come t'yoor hoose if ye hav'nae emptied yoor bins, Hen?'
The worst of it is that I have loads of recycling, which is all supposed to go in a trio of bins up the road. But they haven't been emptied for what seems like weeks and bags of cans, plastic bottles and cardboard are piling up on the pavement next to them like a scene from a documentary about the Three Day Week.
If I add all my recyclables to this growing mountain, will it be enough to guarantee the arrival of presents, mulled wine, far too much cheese, the billionth play of Fairytale of New York on the radio, whatever Pixar film hasn't yet been on the telly and goodwill to all men?
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Friday 10 December 2010
Rage Against the Machines
So, a golden age of TV is nearing its end. If by 'golden age' you mean 'the state of the four channels available to me, because I haven't sorted out cable, being stuffed with reality shows populated by hateful idiots'. This is, of course, my favourite telly. Whilst it may be fun and educational to watch lovely David Attenborough telling you all about the evolution of Komodo Dragons or somesuch, and to have BBC costume dramas on a Sunday evening, with big bonnets and handsome men in breeches making you feel vaguely cultured, there is a particular joy to be gleaned from waging a twelve-week hate campaign against those who've chosen to stick their heads above the reality TV parapets.
This autumn, I have been spoiled rotten. There's been Strictly, the X-Factor, I'm a Celebrity AND The Apprentice! I've barely had enough hours in the week to fit them all in. I'm drowning in a sea of bile and internet gossip about all concerned. I'm keeping myself warm by stoking the fires of wrath generated by Katie Weasel, Stuart 'The Brand' Baggs, Gillian McKeith and the like. And the brilliant thing is that you're part of an instant community - every Monday sees most of the office chatting about X-Factor (a show which I generally avoid like the plague - it's just karaoke with bigger production values - but which this year has been off-the-scale bonkers). The Guardian does some fantastically funny liveblogs about all the shows bar I'm a Celeb (well, they might have done that too, but I could only take so much of Gillian in the end). And the MMMC and I have regular text battles when it comes to who we fancy on Strictly - he seems to have an alarming fondness for the professionals with fake boobs, whereas my heart belongs entirely to Matt Baker.
So, in terms of People to Hate, who's given it 150%, and who's been lacking in meal-winning stars?
The Apprentice - now an out-and-out comedy, with no pretence that it's in any way a reflection of business acumen or the current state of the business nation. The contestants spend all their time either inventing rubbish products (sausages made out of string, sawdust and minced-up CVs; strange things to enable you to read paperbacks on the beach - er, that's what your hands are for, surely?) or having to sell other people's rubbish products (dresses made of old ties; DVDs of kids pretending to ski or drive round Brands Hatch). The other available hours in the day are dedicated to spouting absolute crap in the board room and bitching about each other in the car when the teams split up to tackle different parts of the task.
This year's crew of eminent business brains (and Stuart) have been hateful numpties to a man (and woman) - although I have a sneaking fondness for Posh Chris the Investment Banker because I think he looks exactly like the director Chris Nolan, when I was at school with him. Also him telling Stuart to 'Fuck Orf' this week was hilarious and I applaud his restraint in not hitting him, when offered the chance.
Winner: Stuart, for this week's total cringe-fest in the boardroom, when he devolved into a simile/metaphor (my brain was so addled I've no idea which it was) about a field-full of ponies as an example of how much potential he had, which had me actually hiding behind a cushion and screaming, 'Oh God, STOP TALKING', but which LordSirAlun somehow fell for, causing Bambi-eyed Twiglet Person Liz to get the Fired Finger instead. I can only think that LSA has allowed Stuart to progress to the interview round because of its unlimited potential for pure comedy.
I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here - again, a show which I never usually watch because I think the idea of making people eat insects and be shoved into coffins with rats is inhumane and hateful, and the idea that it's peddled as prime-time entertainment shows how morally off-kilter we all are these days. But that was before Gillian McKeith decided to get involved. She was terrified of everything that moved, including her own shadow. She had no team spirit whatsoever. She was given to shrieking like a banshee and fake-fainting every time someone asked her to do more than tell them her name. She gave every impression of being a deranged witch, with no sense whatsoever of how massively irritating she was. 'You don't understand phobias!' she'd screech whenever one of the other contestants asked her why they weren't going to get anything to eat that night because she'd failed to even contemplate attempting another task.
There's only one question available here: why on earth would you go on this show if you're phobic of anything with more than two legs? Does your husband (who's, coincidentally, also your manager) want to cash in on your life insurance so badly that he'd actually finish you off on (semi-live) telly? It's a sneaky way of murdering someone, I'll grant you.
It gave rise to a brilliant comedy song, but I stopped watching almost as soon as I'd started, so Gillian did her best in the hate-stakes, but everyone else seemed OK. Especially eventual winner Stacey Solomon - you've got to love a girl who's just so cheerful all the time.
Strictly Come Dancing - generally speaking, other than finding Tess Daly dead behind the eyes, and wishing that they'd send Bruce Forsyth to a farm in Wales and get someone who's not a billion years old as co-presenter, there are few hate figures to be found on Strictly. Some of them aren't very good (hello, Peter Shilton), some of them stick around, inexplicably, for ages, whilst not really improving (hello, walking mahogany wardrobe Gavin Henson) and some of them seem like they're actually getting quite a lot out of it, so you root for them (Patsy Kensit for me this year). But this year started well for those of us who love to hate, with odious little creep Paul Daniels dancing with poor Ola, who won last year, so got punished this year. I hate Paul Daniels. I've always hated him. And him dressed in spangles wasn't going to change that. But luckily he was shoved off the Strictly floor, and has disappeared into obscurity once more.
Then, the megalith that was Ann Widdecombe became every reality TV producer's worst nightmare (or wet dream, depending on whether you're trying to uphold standards at the BBC, or you just want unlimited coverage for your show across all media outlets). She refused to try; her routines revolved around moving her arms by twenty degrees max, and being hauled around the floor by a rictus-wearing Anton du Beke (perhaps being punished for requesting a payrise this series or something?) She saw off dancers who were pretty good, and trying hard, who really wanted to stay. She refused, once the joke wore thin after week three to quit (like John Sergeant) and seemed to believe that she was hilarious. I got so worked up with hating her, and everyone who was voting for her, that I nearly blew a gasket.
Please, next year, can we not have a 'comedy' contestant on Strictly? Because it's really painful to watch, and you can't underestimate the viewing public's idiocy when it comes to voting for people like that to stay in.
Talking of which, the X-Factor has beaten all-comers this year with its Top Ten of hateable freakazoids. In no particular order, there's been:
One Direction - Justin Bieber clones who can't carry a tune around in a bucket, poor lambs. They will probably be ludicrously successful, despite having no USP whatsoever. I await the 'drink and drug shame' stories, whilst also feeling rather sad for them. Let's hope a couple of them manage to earn a bit through a two-year stint in Les Miserables.
Mary Byrne - a woman who believes that bellowing every single song somehow makes it better. Is in no way 'relevant', as Simon would say. She doesn't even have terrible hair and a tragic backstory like Susan Boyle (who can actually sing). She will probably be fine for the next five years, 'singing' on cruise ships and will front a collection of chiffon-sleeved black tent dresses for 'the more mature lady' in the back pages of You magazine.
Cher Lloyd - a girl who looks as though she'd first bully you out of your lunch money, then steal your boyfriend for good measure. Grow yourself some eyebrows and eat a pie, love. Then stop rapping because it hurts my ears. The judges, for some reason, adore Cher and seem to think she is edgy and a pop sensation. I remain bemused.
Wagner - the most demented thing I've ever seen on TV. Even Sharon Osbourne looked alarmed when confronted by him in the judges' house round - which is an achievement, given how much Botox she's had. Leonine, mad for bongos and 'ladies', with little to no grasp of any song he was singing, Wagner looked thoroughly confused every week when voted through to the next round. As were the viewers. Even Jedward looked more entertaining to me than Wagner. They had to have a double eviction, just to get rid of him. He'll definitely be on the Talk Talk sponsor ads next year and on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in some capacity.
Katie Waissel - surely the Grande Dame of hateable telly figures, Katie bestrode the world like a peroxided colossus. She was so irritating she ended up getting death threats, which, I admit, was a tad extreme. After all, she was just a middle class girl with a huge sense of entitlement and a belief in her own abilities that wasn't really reflected in her actual talent for singing. But there are loads of girls like that in Britain. Killing them all would be quite an arbitrary way of reducing the population and would take ages. She resorted to trying to boost her popularity by cutting her hair off and dying it brown, so that she looked like a Hobbit. This had the unfortunate side effect of making you realise she had disproportionately large ears, like a bat. I wanted to keep her in so that, closer to Christmas, they could re-christen her Katie Wassail, but I think that's a gag only I would've appreciated. After about four million increasingly plaintive 'sing offs', she was finally given the boot with Wagner. She'll probably end up replacing Christine Bleakley on Daybreak, or Christine-clone Alex on The One Show.
So this weekend, it's all over for the X-Factor pop poppets (a snore-off between cuddly Matt Cardie and good-but-searingly dull Rebecca?) and the Strictly guys and gals (it's Matt all the way for me; Kara is a brilliant dancer but seems to have no personality; Ssssssssssssscott tries too hard to be wacky and Pamela's piggy eyes annoy me, even though I think she's fine at dancing. Also, yes, I know she's married to BILLY CONNOLLY. Please stop telling me that). And just a week more of the Apprentices. Then I shall have to transition awkwardly into the 'goodwill to all men' frame of mind required for Christmas. Ah, it was such fun while it lasted.
This autumn, I have been spoiled rotten. There's been Strictly, the X-Factor, I'm a Celebrity AND The Apprentice! I've barely had enough hours in the week to fit them all in. I'm drowning in a sea of bile and internet gossip about all concerned. I'm keeping myself warm by stoking the fires of wrath generated by Katie Weasel, Stuart 'The Brand' Baggs, Gillian McKeith and the like. And the brilliant thing is that you're part of an instant community - every Monday sees most of the office chatting about X-Factor (a show which I generally avoid like the plague - it's just karaoke with bigger production values - but which this year has been off-the-scale bonkers). The Guardian does some fantastically funny liveblogs about all the shows bar I'm a Celeb (well, they might have done that too, but I could only take so much of Gillian in the end). And the MMMC and I have regular text battles when it comes to who we fancy on Strictly - he seems to have an alarming fondness for the professionals with fake boobs, whereas my heart belongs entirely to Matt Baker.
So, in terms of People to Hate, who's given it 150%, and who's been lacking in meal-winning stars?
The Apprentice - now an out-and-out comedy, with no pretence that it's in any way a reflection of business acumen or the current state of the business nation. The contestants spend all their time either inventing rubbish products (sausages made out of string, sawdust and minced-up CVs; strange things to enable you to read paperbacks on the beach - er, that's what your hands are for, surely?) or having to sell other people's rubbish products (dresses made of old ties; DVDs of kids pretending to ski or drive round Brands Hatch). The other available hours in the day are dedicated to spouting absolute crap in the board room and bitching about each other in the car when the teams split up to tackle different parts of the task.
This year's crew of eminent business brains (and Stuart) have been hateful numpties to a man (and woman) - although I have a sneaking fondness for Posh Chris the Investment Banker because I think he looks exactly like the director Chris Nolan, when I was at school with him. Also him telling Stuart to 'Fuck Orf' this week was hilarious and I applaud his restraint in not hitting him, when offered the chance.
Winner: Stuart, for this week's total cringe-fest in the boardroom, when he devolved into a simile/metaphor (my brain was so addled I've no idea which it was) about a field-full of ponies as an example of how much potential he had, which had me actually hiding behind a cushion and screaming, 'Oh God, STOP TALKING', but which LordSirAlun somehow fell for, causing Bambi-eyed Twiglet Person Liz to get the Fired Finger instead. I can only think that LSA has allowed Stuart to progress to the interview round because of its unlimited potential for pure comedy.
I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here - again, a show which I never usually watch because I think the idea of making people eat insects and be shoved into coffins with rats is inhumane and hateful, and the idea that it's peddled as prime-time entertainment shows how morally off-kilter we all are these days. But that was before Gillian McKeith decided to get involved. She was terrified of everything that moved, including her own shadow. She had no team spirit whatsoever. She was given to shrieking like a banshee and fake-fainting every time someone asked her to do more than tell them her name. She gave every impression of being a deranged witch, with no sense whatsoever of how massively irritating she was. 'You don't understand phobias!' she'd screech whenever one of the other contestants asked her why they weren't going to get anything to eat that night because she'd failed to even contemplate attempting another task.
There's only one question available here: why on earth would you go on this show if you're phobic of anything with more than two legs? Does your husband (who's, coincidentally, also your manager) want to cash in on your life insurance so badly that he'd actually finish you off on (semi-live) telly? It's a sneaky way of murdering someone, I'll grant you.
It gave rise to a brilliant comedy song, but I stopped watching almost as soon as I'd started, so Gillian did her best in the hate-stakes, but everyone else seemed OK. Especially eventual winner Stacey Solomon - you've got to love a girl who's just so cheerful all the time.
Strictly Come Dancing - generally speaking, other than finding Tess Daly dead behind the eyes, and wishing that they'd send Bruce Forsyth to a farm in Wales and get someone who's not a billion years old as co-presenter, there are few hate figures to be found on Strictly. Some of them aren't very good (hello, Peter Shilton), some of them stick around, inexplicably, for ages, whilst not really improving (hello, walking mahogany wardrobe Gavin Henson) and some of them seem like they're actually getting quite a lot out of it, so you root for them (Patsy Kensit for me this year). But this year started well for those of us who love to hate, with odious little creep Paul Daniels dancing with poor Ola, who won last year, so got punished this year. I hate Paul Daniels. I've always hated him. And him dressed in spangles wasn't going to change that. But luckily he was shoved off the Strictly floor, and has disappeared into obscurity once more.
Then, the megalith that was Ann Widdecombe became every reality TV producer's worst nightmare (or wet dream, depending on whether you're trying to uphold standards at the BBC, or you just want unlimited coverage for your show across all media outlets). She refused to try; her routines revolved around moving her arms by twenty degrees max, and being hauled around the floor by a rictus-wearing Anton du Beke (perhaps being punished for requesting a payrise this series or something?) She saw off dancers who were pretty good, and trying hard, who really wanted to stay. She refused, once the joke wore thin after week three to quit (like John Sergeant) and seemed to believe that she was hilarious. I got so worked up with hating her, and everyone who was voting for her, that I nearly blew a gasket.
Please, next year, can we not have a 'comedy' contestant on Strictly? Because it's really painful to watch, and you can't underestimate the viewing public's idiocy when it comes to voting for people like that to stay in.
Talking of which, the X-Factor has beaten all-comers this year with its Top Ten of hateable freakazoids. In no particular order, there's been:
One Direction - Justin Bieber clones who can't carry a tune around in a bucket, poor lambs. They will probably be ludicrously successful, despite having no USP whatsoever. I await the 'drink and drug shame' stories, whilst also feeling rather sad for them. Let's hope a couple of them manage to earn a bit through a two-year stint in Les Miserables.
Mary Byrne - a woman who believes that bellowing every single song somehow makes it better. Is in no way 'relevant', as Simon would say. She doesn't even have terrible hair and a tragic backstory like Susan Boyle (who can actually sing). She will probably be fine for the next five years, 'singing' on cruise ships and will front a collection of chiffon-sleeved black tent dresses for 'the more mature lady' in the back pages of You magazine.
Cher Lloyd - a girl who looks as though she'd first bully you out of your lunch money, then steal your boyfriend for good measure. Grow yourself some eyebrows and eat a pie, love. Then stop rapping because it hurts my ears. The judges, for some reason, adore Cher and seem to think she is edgy and a pop sensation. I remain bemused.
Wagner - the most demented thing I've ever seen on TV. Even Sharon Osbourne looked alarmed when confronted by him in the judges' house round - which is an achievement, given how much Botox she's had. Leonine, mad for bongos and 'ladies', with little to no grasp of any song he was singing, Wagner looked thoroughly confused every week when voted through to the next round. As were the viewers. Even Jedward looked more entertaining to me than Wagner. They had to have a double eviction, just to get rid of him. He'll definitely be on the Talk Talk sponsor ads next year and on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in some capacity.
Katie Waissel - surely the Grande Dame of hateable telly figures, Katie bestrode the world like a peroxided colossus. She was so irritating she ended up getting death threats, which, I admit, was a tad extreme. After all, she was just a middle class girl with a huge sense of entitlement and a belief in her own abilities that wasn't really reflected in her actual talent for singing. But there are loads of girls like that in Britain. Killing them all would be quite an arbitrary way of reducing the population and would take ages. She resorted to trying to boost her popularity by cutting her hair off and dying it brown, so that she looked like a Hobbit. This had the unfortunate side effect of making you realise she had disproportionately large ears, like a bat. I wanted to keep her in so that, closer to Christmas, they could re-christen her Katie Wassail, but I think that's a gag only I would've appreciated. After about four million increasingly plaintive 'sing offs', she was finally given the boot with Wagner. She'll probably end up replacing Christine Bleakley on Daybreak, or Christine-clone Alex on The One Show.
So this weekend, it's all over for the X-Factor pop poppets (a snore-off between cuddly Matt Cardie and good-but-searingly dull Rebecca?) and the Strictly guys and gals (it's Matt all the way for me; Kara is a brilliant dancer but seems to have no personality; Ssssssssssssscott tries too hard to be wacky and Pamela's piggy eyes annoy me, even though I think she's fine at dancing. Also, yes, I know she's married to BILLY CONNOLLY. Please stop telling me that). And just a week more of the Apprentices. Then I shall have to transition awkwardly into the 'goodwill to all men' frame of mind required for Christmas. Ah, it was such fun while it lasted.
Snow ho ho?
So, the weather update: Edinburgh is having the WORST WEATHER IT'S HAD FOR 50 YEARS. Yes, that's half a century. Thanks a lot, Scotland. I've been lovely about you and spend all my time saying to everyone I know how great Edinburgh is, and this is my reward? Traversing the streets like an arthritic snail, in an attempt not to go flat on my arse on the 3-inch thick ice? Giving myself chronic back ache by hunching my shoulders up against the wind and the threat of going flying? Reverting to the 80s by buying a snood? (Which, inexplicably, when wet, smells of horses, despite being made not even of wool, but is 100% acrylic).
All of this wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to leave the city. But my job means I have to go down to London for meetings. The last one necessitated spending six and three quarter hours on a train from Berwick Upon Tweed to Kings Cross (this should have taken about four hours). Then I had to do battle with a tube strike the next day. On the way back, we were storming along - relatively speaking - till they decided, with no explanation as to why, to kick us off the train at Darlington. Then when I eventually got to Edinburgh, I had to wait an hour for a cab. So I was in transit from 8.30am, when I left my hotel to go to Kings Cross, till 7.15pm, when I finally arrived home. And now I've found out I have to go down for another meeting on Tuesday morning - just when the weather's going to get horrendous again.
I love the way that the Government says, whenever the 'Britain in chaos' headlines have gathered enough momentum, and economists have worked out how much we're losing per day because of the snow (£1.2 billion this year, apparently), that there's no point spending money on infrastructure to avoid some of this, because 'we rarely have weather this bad'. Um, 1/ Large swathes of the country have been brought to their knees for the last three years, by my reckoning and 2/ Winter happens every year. Unless the shiny new coalition government are going to somehow rearrange the seasons so that we just have Spring, Summer and Autumn, followed by Spring again, it's pretty likely that there will be snow at some stage between December and March. Or probably May, judging by this last year.
How much would it really cost to sort out the rail network, for example? Versus how much you're losing in terms of people not being able to get to work, or spending three hours getting across London, then getting to work and pretty much having to set off for home again?
Or here's a nifty idea: why don't the Government phone up some chums in, say, Canada, and ask them how they manage to keep everything going? And then, you know, copy them? Because they have winter every year. Loads of it. And they look at our bits of snow, and our world-headline-creating grinding of a whole nation to a halt and they laugh. Not even behind their be-mittened hands. In our faces. Because we're idiots.
It's nice to have student riots to distract us from all this (and their riot fires to keep central London warm), but it will not make me any happier when I inevitably spend literally twice as long as I need to on a train from Edinburgh to London and back. And no, I can't risk flying, because I've seen what happens to planes at airports when it snows: you're left on an Easyjet for three hours, going nowhere, and then shoved back into the, now ironically named, departure lounge and left to go feral in Duty Free. I'm not risking that. At least if you sit on an East Coast train for long enough, you get given a packet containing two free biscuits. (It's a measure of how depressed we all were on that journey that we all went, 'Oh, wow, thanks!' when given these delicacies, and actually meant it sincerely).
All of this wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to leave the city. But my job means I have to go down to London for meetings. The last one necessitated spending six and three quarter hours on a train from Berwick Upon Tweed to Kings Cross (this should have taken about four hours). Then I had to do battle with a tube strike the next day. On the way back, we were storming along - relatively speaking - till they decided, with no explanation as to why, to kick us off the train at Darlington. Then when I eventually got to Edinburgh, I had to wait an hour for a cab. So I was in transit from 8.30am, when I left my hotel to go to Kings Cross, till 7.15pm, when I finally arrived home. And now I've found out I have to go down for another meeting on Tuesday morning - just when the weather's going to get horrendous again.
I love the way that the Government says, whenever the 'Britain in chaos' headlines have gathered enough momentum, and economists have worked out how much we're losing per day because of the snow (£1.2 billion this year, apparently), that there's no point spending money on infrastructure to avoid some of this, because 'we rarely have weather this bad'. Um, 1/ Large swathes of the country have been brought to their knees for the last three years, by my reckoning and 2/ Winter happens every year. Unless the shiny new coalition government are going to somehow rearrange the seasons so that we just have Spring, Summer and Autumn, followed by Spring again, it's pretty likely that there will be snow at some stage between December and March. Or probably May, judging by this last year.
How much would it really cost to sort out the rail network, for example? Versus how much you're losing in terms of people not being able to get to work, or spending three hours getting across London, then getting to work and pretty much having to set off for home again?
Or here's a nifty idea: why don't the Government phone up some chums in, say, Canada, and ask them how they manage to keep everything going? And then, you know, copy them? Because they have winter every year. Loads of it. And they look at our bits of snow, and our world-headline-creating grinding of a whole nation to a halt and they laugh. Not even behind their be-mittened hands. In our faces. Because we're idiots.
It's nice to have student riots to distract us from all this (and their riot fires to keep central London warm), but it will not make me any happier when I inevitably spend literally twice as long as I need to on a train from Edinburgh to London and back. And no, I can't risk flying, because I've seen what happens to planes at airports when it snows: you're left on an Easyjet for three hours, going nowhere, and then shoved back into the, now ironically named, departure lounge and left to go feral in Duty Free. I'm not risking that. At least if you sit on an East Coast train for long enough, you get given a packet containing two free biscuits. (It's a measure of how depressed we all were on that journey that we all went, 'Oh, wow, thanks!' when given these delicacies, and actually meant it sincerely).
Monday 6 December 2010
The Weather Outside is Frightful
Everyone keeps telling me that the weather in Scotland is 'not usually this bad this early'. The MMMC told me that, and backed it up with a plea for me 'not to relocate' (chance would be a fine thing - I can't move much further than my front door at the moment). Yes, there is an absolute f*ckload of snow here.
I've never really dealt with a lot of snow before; I've never been skiing, for example, which is the only time you'd particularly need seasonally appropriate footwear for longer than two days. 'Dealing with snow' in London means skidding your way to the bus stop/tube station and then getting on whatever transport eventually appears. Then spending hours on it, wedged up against irate strangers, as you take six hours to traverse a distance that would normally take you twenty minutes. You arrive home wanting to kill nearly everyone, traumatised by the idea that you might have to do it all again tomorrow, and wondering why you have to go into work at all. The snow doesn't generally hang around for long, it just turns to ice on the pavements and filth on the roads.
The white stuff in Edinburgh, however, is totally different. I've bought actual walking boots in order to cope. (A friend of mine has been teasing me since I moved here about the fact that at some stage I'm going to find myself clad from head to toe in Goretex. My waterproof chrysalis starts here). The pavements are totally covered, and there's more arriving daily. Walking through it is actually fine, as it's really powdery at the moment, so it's OK. But I'm dreading that stage where most of it melts, and then it's just thick ice.
When I came up here for my second interview, my prospective boss asked me if I had any questions. 'Yes', I answered, 'I do. When it snows, do they grit the pavements properly?' She howled with laughter and said it was the most bizarre thing she'd ever been asked. 'But I want to know', I said, 'because they don't in London, and I've got a real horror of falling over and breaking a hip'. She laughed some more and then said, 'Yes, of course they do.'
Reader, she lied. They bloody don't. And today, they cancelled every bus in the city at about 2.00pm. All of them! Going nowhere! What the hell do you do if you can't walk home? I'm going to be spending a shitload on taxis for the next four months, I can tell you.
I've never really dealt with a lot of snow before; I've never been skiing, for example, which is the only time you'd particularly need seasonally appropriate footwear for longer than two days. 'Dealing with snow' in London means skidding your way to the bus stop/tube station and then getting on whatever transport eventually appears. Then spending hours on it, wedged up against irate strangers, as you take six hours to traverse a distance that would normally take you twenty minutes. You arrive home wanting to kill nearly everyone, traumatised by the idea that you might have to do it all again tomorrow, and wondering why you have to go into work at all. The snow doesn't generally hang around for long, it just turns to ice on the pavements and filth on the roads.
The white stuff in Edinburgh, however, is totally different. I've bought actual walking boots in order to cope. (A friend of mine has been teasing me since I moved here about the fact that at some stage I'm going to find myself clad from head to toe in Goretex. My waterproof chrysalis starts here). The pavements are totally covered, and there's more arriving daily. Walking through it is actually fine, as it's really powdery at the moment, so it's OK. But I'm dreading that stage where most of it melts, and then it's just thick ice.
When I came up here for my second interview, my prospective boss asked me if I had any questions. 'Yes', I answered, 'I do. When it snows, do they grit the pavements properly?' She howled with laughter and said it was the most bizarre thing she'd ever been asked. 'But I want to know', I said, 'because they don't in London, and I've got a real horror of falling over and breaking a hip'. She laughed some more and then said, 'Yes, of course they do.'
Reader, she lied. They bloody don't. And today, they cancelled every bus in the city at about 2.00pm. All of them! Going nowhere! What the hell do you do if you can't walk home? I'm going to be spending a shitload on taxis for the next four months, I can tell you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)