Literally within moments, everything turned white - including my mirrors and dashboard - and I was given the choice of riding blind with a foggy snowy visor or putting the visor up and riding almost blind with foggy snowy glasses, plus added bonus of stinging cheeks and snow in my eyes. I actually had to stop singing 'American Pie' to myself so that 100% of my brain could concentrate on keeping me alive. Steam rose from my headlamp.
It was pretty nasty. Nobody seemed to have thought of gritting my route home - it's only the bloody A2 - so the way ahead disappeared much of the time and I couldn't tell where road ended and pavement began. I had to stop just south of the Sainsbury's at New Cross Gate to wipe my specs, and did wonder at a couple of points whether I'd have to abandon the scooter and hope it became too covered in snow to be nickable.
I must say, though, that the weather brought out the biking camaraderie so often lacking in London. We were all nodding and pulling funny faces at each other like anything.
When I got home, I found inch-deep drifts on those portions of me which are horizontal when driving. There was snow in my pockets, and my pants were soaked. (That's pants in the Brit sense, gang.) I was delighted, however, to find that I was the first person to enter our car park since the snowfall, and made some pretty tyre tracks and bootprints on the virgin whitestuff.
I will have to skip karate, unfortunately, as I'd either have to drive there and be unsafe or wait for a bus and be freezing. Alternative plans involve (1) curling up to conserve body heat and (2) eating lots of food with a high fat content. I have already made soup from an onion, a carrot and a pepper. Cold weather brings out the peasant in all of us - though I doubt a proper peasant would have put ginger and Tabasco in the soup.
