weather

For weeks, I had very little in terms of a life. I've spent virtually all of my time in the library writing, sans rowing and friends and adventures and anything that would be worth writing about (and dangit, I can end my sentences in prepositions if I want). My Mansfield Park paper got to make its merry way to the Exam Schools on the 16th for its due date, and since then I have lost zombie status. The side effect of all of this writing is that I have absolutely not felt like writing when I didn't have to: hence, the recent dearth of blog posts.

Recent news: snow.

It snowed perhaps 8 inches one day--which is just as astonishingly much in Oxford as it would be in Atlanta, really--and the country essentially shut down. English people have a curious and unique relationship to weather: on the grand scheme of worldwide weather, England occupies a niche whose greatest variance "mostly cloudy with light rain" to "somewhat sunny with occasional sprinkling". The weather here is profoundly uninteresting, and Englanders have the benefits of not knowing natural disasters or heavy rain or extreme heat or cold. This does not, of course, stop them talking about the weather; in fact, they talk about the weather all the more, as if to prove to the world that it is in fact interesting. People walk around all day, cheerfully remarking, "horrible weather, innit?" to anyone they pass. The weather isn't that horrible--it's cloudy, yes, but it is barely sprinkling and one does not even need an umbrella--but I guess it's England-horrible, and Britons are cognizant enough of their mild weather to be cheerful about it. 

Since I didn't have anywhere to be, however, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Sophie and I had an entire day devoted solely to the snow, in which we got soaked and freezing but didn't care. Snow all over us, gamboling and prancing like five-year-olds, we took photos all over town until sunset and even after. 

Fortunately, the snow did not affect my family's flight--though lots of people here were stranded for quite a few days, unable to get flights out of Gatwick and Heathrow. I know, I know: it doesn't seem like that much snow to necessitate the absolute closure of two gigantic airports. But give them a break...they don't know what horrible weather means, after all.