January 28, 2013, by Rosamund Aubrey

When icicles hang by the wall

The cloisters’ roof is wearing a snowy lace fringe with delicate icicles as befits a venerable 1797 house, even though the cloisters are 21st century. Like their medieval predecessors they are glazed and while we don’t sit there creating beautiful illuminated manuscripts we can admire electronic copies in the kiosk. The snow fringe remains while outside the world starts to look green and the birds are again tentatively starting to sing.

It has been the right kind of snow for tobogganing and not the wrong kind of snow for trains, it has graced the trees and freezing fog has coated every branch and twig with frosted icing. After the two very cold winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11, we have been able to enjoy our minimalist winter while the BBC has reminisced with a documentary on the bitterly cold winter of 1963. Some countries have proper winters every year, while the UK slips, slides and grumbles through the ice and snow, we sometimes even celebrate our occasional deep freeze.

The first frost fair was in 1683 when the Thames was frozen for some 9 weeks, it was shallower and wider then so froze more readily. Londoners, and this was Restoration England, were never ones to miss a chance to have some fun and turn a few pennies. A road crossed the river from Temple Steps to Southwark and carts opted for this faster route over the ice. Within days, booths and stalls had sprung up either side of the road to take advantage of the passing trade. They sold “…clothes, plate, earthenware, meat, drink, brandy, tobacco, and a hundred sorts of commodities, including souvenirs such as this glass mug now in the V&A, a rare survivor. There is no record of public executions, but there was fox-hunting, bear-baiting, football, and ox-roasting.

Would we have such a good time if this were to happen now? I don’t think so, we are equally licentious, yet our focus on work is more akin to the dour Commonwealth. If the Thames had frozen over 25 years earlier there would not have been fun, only commerce. Today winter sports holidays are de rigueur, but in the UK tobogganing on anything but the gentlest slopes seems to have declined dramatically. No tweets, YouTube and blogs from 1683, but it does makes you wonder how people survived as well as had fun; in the 1947 winter the UK was running out of food, much of it still rationed, and the government was facing a crisis. It was colder in 1683 than the big freeze of 1963, but supplies were dropped to isolated communities – no helicopters in 1683 – I wonder what the death toll was.

Are the recent cold winters the result of climate change? We don’t know, although the melting of Arctic ice due to climate change is thought to be implicated. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of some extreme weather events. In 2012 there was a severe drought in the US and then Hurricane Sandy; in Australia temperatures almost touched 50C with devastating wildfires made worse by dried out vegetation which flourished in the 2012 floods. And in the UK in 2012 drought warnings were followed by the second wettest year on record – but the Met Office put this down to natural variations. So in the UK we can comfortably predict our weather will remain unpredictable and perhaps we should try to enjoy our brief snow flurries more imaginatively.

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-who! Tu-whit! Tu-who! — A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-who! Tu-whit! Tu-who! — A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Love’s Labour’s Lost 1598

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