white Tuesday

London has given us this piece of peace again. Our neighbours didn't think twice about the opportunity for a family moment, nor did the kids in the yard think twice about switching their football shoes for their winter gloves. Students were on a break, calling to celebrate the snow, accompanied on their way by the random trouble-seeker who was just loving it all. Trainee policemen in the red-brick block house opposite were collecting snow on their window sills and having fights in their office. New Cross was silent, there were no worries, just a boom in the sledge economy. 1 Billion pound loss for one day of pure humanity, loss of self, a day also for the anguished job seeker somewhere who might have thought what a great idea it would be to create a spontaneous sledge sellers for such occasions. Silence then means looking at alternatives round the corner.. of that simple human moment.
I left my place yesterday evening and the whole way I was enjoying the crunching rythm of my walking shoes on the ground. Not a helicopter, not a single police-car, not a single shout. It was like the peaceful nature of an Icelandic recession had reached the shores of the Thames by some bizarre Siberian trick. Even the Guardian, this morning, was following its country's smiling feature and forgetting the fires of Reykjavik.
Around that corner you can see the dismantled feature of news making: joy and history only rarely mesh, but who am I to refuse the beauty of the rising sun on a white Tuesday in the London suburbs?