London is Closed for Business

February 2, 2009 at 2:45 PM | by juliab | Comments (0)

What the Blitz and terrorists have failed to do, the weather has done. London is on its knees today (or at least buried up to its knees) under a whole seven inches of snow.

Three of the five London airports are shut, mainline trains are down, only two of the 11 underground trains are running properly and all 5 million buses have been taken off the roads.

And because of (read: thanks to) that, there�s barely anyone about. Ever diligent, we made it into work this morning, to be confronted with tumbleweed blowing around the office. London Underground staff were using commuter paper Metro to mop up the water this morning, while afternoon paper thelondonpaper* reduced its print run from 500,000 to 150,000 to compensate for the lack of readers about.

When we say �about�, of course, we mean �at work�. Because everyone else seems to have made it perfectly easily to their nearest open space to construct snowballs/men or go tobogganing. We�ve even seen pictures of some people skiing and boarding down the street.

There�s no postal service, no special deliveries, and every kind of meeting appears to have been summarily cancelled. The only people on the underground are eastern European tourists looking confused as to what the fuss is about. They have a point � how come we can�t cope with weather conditions that everyone else seems to manage with? It�s -12 degrees in Toronto today, after all.

But anyway, London�s shut, and will be tomorrow as well, according to the powers that be. So don�t expect us to get back to you till Wednesday. We seem to be thinking of it as a public holiday.

*Disclosure: JuliaB is a contributor at thelondonpaper.

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