Winter Wonderland

Well wasn't that exciting? A couple of months too late, maybe, but exciting nevertheless. Perhaps we should put Christmas back by a couple of months (bearing in mind that Christ was probably born sometime in July anyway, at least according to a Blue Peter report on the subject that I saw when I was twelve), so that we might actually hava a chance of getting a white Christmas. Honestly though, I haven't seen it snow like that around here since, ooh, 1991. Back then, it was my fourteenth birthday, I was due to sit a biology exam, school was cancelled, I had a nice long birthday weekend - it ws defintely one of the happier episodes of my secondary school education. This time around, it was, incredibly, my thirtieth birthday (I'm actually finding it harder to come to terms with than I had expected). Although I got in to work on Thursday, unlike several of my London-based colleagues, because the transport system in the city itself seemed less able to cope than the suburban commuter routes, I worked at home on Friday. This was partly because I didn't want to get stuck in London on a Friday night before a weekend of celebrating, and partly because I had something I really wanted to get finished, and had been totally distracted on Thursday by a problem with the office printer.

I would have been okay if I had gone in, to be honest. The trains coped admirably, certainly much better than expected. I understand it got a bit messy further north (one of my colleagues, due in from Leeds at 10am, turned up at about four in the afternoon), but on my line there was a full service, albeit running with about ten minute dealys. It was heartening, actually, after seeming to be in the eye of the storm regarding most of the recent transport problems in London (not trying to elicit sympathy but look at the evidence - Kings Cross Fire, Blustery Thursday, Overhead Cable problems (Grrr!), etc).

So nothing of note happened this week, commuting-wise. Turning thirty has been traumatic enough in itself, so it's probably a good thing. I did take in a very good exhibition on housing development at the V&A on Wednesday, and visited the Tudor section at the National Portrait Gallery. I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds portaits eerie. I mean, why have they always got to look so miserable? Even photographic portraits are invariably either stern-faced or focusing on some point just above the camera, probably in the middle distance. What's wrong with just smiling and saying "cheese"?

Not really in this blog's regular sphere of interest, but I needed to gt it off my chest.