Romanticizing the past

Tuesday, 19th November 1996

What I Was Reminded Of This Morning.

Going to work at Brick Lane Market at six o'clock one still-dark winter Sunday morning, the train for some reason stopped at Baker Street. Passengers were advised that there would be no service for another hour. Turning up late for stalling out wasn't popular, so reckoned I'd leave Baker Street and think of something else.

Cold, sleepy, worried and fifteen, on a freezing day when the sane world was in bed, I stepped out of the station onto the Marylebone Road, and I saw the snow.

It wasn't normal London snow, the kind you hoped would settle but never did, or the kind that there's too much of and gets in the way. And, you know, I'd seen snow before and snow was snow. But this was different. Christmas was just around the corner. The length of Marylebone Road, stretching off in both directions from the West Way to King's Cross, the roofs, the buildings, the lampposts, the bus shelters, the dustbins, the pavements, the road itself, all covered in six inches of picture-postcard perfect snow that still fell in festive arrays, filling the sky. There wasn't a car in sight, nor any evidence of them passing. I'd walked out of Baker Street into a London that only existed in movies, the world of Peter Pan and Father Christmas, or the London of Dickens, toy shop windows, where it is always snowing but the cold makes you smile, and everything is always and forever blanketed with snow, snow, beautiful snow.

I stood there and, for a few frozen, priceless minutes, took it all in before the first taxi of Sunday morning arrived and ferried me away, on time, to Brick Lane.