SNOW!

As the blizzard swallowed up all of the little houses in old London town and isolated towns in parts of Kent and delayed people getting to work and forced a number of commuters from Brighton to sleep on a train throughout the night, Natalie was traipsing through the snow in Essex buying fags for her nan.

It was very cold, and just as i always do, i had managed to leave going to see my nan until a day that it snowed. Not only that but i couldn't go a different day because my nan had ran out of cigarettes and milk and the sheltered housing that she lives in is never properly gritted outside (the local council do know how to deal with snow, don't they) I usually refuse to buy my nan cigarettes- but as i was going to be the only one seeing her in a couple of days i felt as if i had too (I got id'd as well- proves how often i buy these types of things). She also warned me before i got there that people would be panic buying milk so she wasn't fussed which type she had- as long as i got some. She's right- people do panic buy milk in a crisis- but it doesn't make sense "we have no food but as long as we have milk in our tea everything is dandy!" The trains weren't too bad in the end either, i managed to get to Essex on Monday and back to London on Tuesday, usually anything is a reason to stop the trains in Essex but i think this time it was obvious that Kent was hit the worst and they were still running a service (In a town in Kent a news reporter measured the snow as being a '4 pints of milk carton' deep!- that's accurate milk crisis measuring for you)

Anyway, at my nan's we had a good chat about my upcoming exhibition in the Opt-in space. I'm making a piece of work relating Christmas in the war to Christmas in the present recession so i wanted to see if there was anything she could give me tips on. All i found out really was how awful Christmas was if you were evacuated- she told me one story about how for Christmas one year she had to sit in silence all day with her evacuee family while the other children played and then had to be grateful for a pair of ankle socks she had been given. A little different from the Children nowadays with their Wii's and DS's. I think i might make a point of that in the work. Also she gave me a funny idea involving ladies stockings. I'm unsure if I'll use the actual information she gave me in the work. But it is a good insight into the past that i can definitely reflect on in my performance.

I'm helping in the Christmas fayre tomorrow, however if the snow doesn't ease up I'm not sure if it will be going ahead? I'm supposed to be doing hook the duck, face painting and a cake raffle (picture of the cake i made below- it is Chelsea college in the snow!) I've also made some Christmas cards- hopefully they will sell well- if not I'll be a little embarrassed, and I'm also to run the Tombola before Anika gets out of her seminar and help Joe set up. I feel a long day of fundraising ahead...