Snow and strikes, oh my

Although they were both incredibly chaotic, I was less impressed with the snow than the tube strike. On the first morning of the tube strike I woke up early, dreading the walk to work that I was being forced to do by the commie tube workers. It's not an outrageous distance, a couple of miles, but nothing I'd really, like, choose to do at eight in the morning. To be fair, the only thing I'd choose to do at eight in the morning is be either fast asleep or dancing to Niagara Flow in someone's kitchen. But as I lay in bed and attempted to make the arduous journey to consciousness, I heard honking. Lots of it. This propelled me out of bed and out the door to hang over the railing. Since I live in a housing project, there's a lot of hanging from railings so I didn't exactly stand out.

Outside there was gridlock. Major gridlock. And honking. Loads of honking. As someone who thrives on the misery of others, I found this motivating enough to put on a pair of sensible shoes and hit the streets. And I found a London that was like no London I had seen before. It was a London much like New York, actually. The streets were jammed with people who were elbowing each other and not bothering to say "pardon." On Westminster Bridge there were two double-decker buses broken down in the middle of the bridge. Hundreds of people milled around them, some angrily sitting on the curb sulkily smoking cigarettes or threatening to throw themselves off the side of the bridge. Women, unequipped to commute by foot in high heels, staggered around looking shell-shocked. Men would ride by unsteadily on bikes--two of them that I saw fell off. It sort of reminded me of those zombie/rapture movies where everything just shuts down and people are forced to conquer the crippling effects of modern technology and fend for themselves. It was complete and utter (manageable chaos). Definitely my kind of buzz.