Britain’s recent deep freeze has got me thinking about ice. One could hardly think of anything else during the worst of it, when negotiating one’s way to the Tube was a delicate balancing act on the un-gritted pavements. (Note to my American readership: Britian doesn’t stockpile enough grit to keep all roads and pavements clear, and there is no law that residents must shovel the walk bordering their property. Hence: mayhem.) I found it scientifically interesting that the financial men in suits, who flock each morning to Canada Water station on their daily pilgrimage to Canary Wharf, were the worst affected; something about the slick soles of their buffed Italian leather shoes, perhaps. Ice is a great leveller: it doesn’t matter how tightly you clutch your Prada briefcase – you’re going to look as ridiculous as the next person with your mincing and skidding.
But ice isn’t all bad. Personally, I’ve been waiting for six years for the ponds in Russia Dock Woodland to freeze over so I could skate. And at last the day arrived. It was the first morning with temperatures above zero degrees centigrade in nearly a fortnight and the air was fresh with that almost imperceptible mildness your skin can detect when the switch flips.
I’m not an idiot: I wasn’t about to take my life into my hands like the person who left a long, extensive trail of footprints one late (and, one can only assume by the act itself, along with its meandering trajectory) drunken night along the virgin expanse of Greenland Dock.
This vast body of water – deep enough for ocean-going liners in its day – had been frozen over for about two weeks at that point, but the ice was friable with trapped air and couldn’t have been more that a few inches thick, to judge by the cross-section revealed when some kind soul bashed out a large oval by the Moby Dick for the terns, seagulls, swans, coots, grebes, cormorants and ducks that call the Dock their year-long home. Such a foolhardy act surely qualifies this (dare I guess) gentleman for the At-Risk Survivor category of The Darwin Awards.
No, I chose my pond carefully – just three feet deep at the center, therefore braving only the possibility of wet trousers and a bit of humiliation. It was supremely wonderful to skate in a meadow, despite pretty difficult going – the surface was knobbly and the ice encased twigs, leaves and even a few exploded bulrush heads: where’s that Zamboni when you need it?
photo credit: rpg
Forward movement and backwards crossover maneuvers were fine, but there was something odd about the consistency of the ice that made it almost impossible to do anything requiring a friction-mediated launch, like a waltz jump or forward spin. Could it be that with the temperature above freezing, the blades of my skates were melting the ice, but the water could not re-freeze behind them? Or perhaps the ice was simply not hard enough for my toe picks to acquire the right purchase?
Looking into it later, the slipperiness of ice is a lot more complicated than I thought. Apparently physicists and chemists have shown that the surface of ice has a “quasi-fluid layer” that makes it slippery even when ice skates, shoes or hockey pucks are not applying pressure: in other words, ice is slippery even when we’re not around to play on it. (Forests and trees, anyone?)
I do in some ways sympathize with the urge to trespass upon more dangerous ice: there is a painfully strong allure to an unblemished sheet of gleaming platinum blue stretching in all directions. It’s the sort of pull the ancient Asian race that decided to brace the Bering ice bridge and colonize America might have felt. Maybe it’s just a step in human evolution but, amongst my fellow Rotherhithe residents at least, the urge to throw stuff onto it seems even stronger. There was only one set of footprints on Greenland Dock, but a veritable menagerie of hurled objects: bricks, cans, life rings, bags, bottles, traffic cones, even a Tesco’s shopping trolley.
It’s Southwark Council’s fault for paving the local roads in easily prisable bricks
But it’s all over now. It’s raining in London, and all of the snow has melted away.
A snow-cadaver in Bloomsbury, yesterday.
The only ice left in town is the stuff I had to scrape yesterday afternoon before departmental cocktails, from the third-floor -80 freezer: a rotating chore that I loathe.
Meanwhile, out in slightly cooler Zone 2, the ice of Greenland Dock this morning was just a fragile, puddled shell with many incursions of open water for the birds to enjoy. A few of the bricks are hanging in there, half-canted like the Titanic in progress, but I also noticed a number of suspiciously brick-shaped holes. I am happy to see the water again, full of motion and shards of reflected light. I know spring is a long time away, but there are glimmers of it in the air now and it fills me with a secret glow of happiness.
I can attest the urge to throw things onto the ice. In my case, it would have been to try to see how thick it was, not having ready access to sophisticated radar equipment.
That tiny pond hadn’t frozen over in at least SIX years?
And I’ll stand on 3 inches of ice. Well, maybe 4. I need to find the photos of our old houseboat and people skating past it, but I think my mom has them. (Pre-digital, so only one copy per photo. So inconvenient!)
I kept having the urge to leap off the embankment spread-eagled and make a human-shaped hole in the ice, just like in the cartoons. Yes, I know that’s weird.
No, no freezing ponds for 6 years. We only got one winter with snow cover at all, and that was last year. But it wasn’t cold enough for long – there was a bit of ice on that pond but it wouldn’t bear weight.
Which is pretty amazing considering how far north we are.
Everyone complains about the weather here. But what you furriners don’t realize is that it’s all ironic.
Right, so you’re saying that the heavy rains we had in every other winter is ‘better’ weather than snow?
What I mean is we never have particularly ‘bad’ weather. A bit of snow, a bit of rain, a couple of sunny days. None of it’s so bad.
I don’t think I’ve ever been skating on a natural surface – only man-made ice rinks. Huh. Now that I think about it, that’s really strange.
Glad it’s warming up now! We’ve been having a few warm days too, and it’s wonderful.
Zamboni for Jenny:
( video of same )
While here in Santiago I’m broiling heat 34 ° C, I jealous you Jenny and Richard.
Duck’s broiled
Photo: Ducks Travel Pods
i stupidly thought it might be a good idea to go out to greenland dock at 7.30 the other morning, too. a tub of neutrogena later and my hands still haven’t recovered from it all…
bq. I can attest the urge to throw things onto the ice.
Some bright spark in Westminster decided to ignore the Coucil’s recycling facilities and to dispose of their Christmas tree by throwing it into Grand Union Canal.
Grand Union Canal, morning of 7 January 2010
For a minute there Erika I thought someone had thrown an entire train onto the canal, before I realized what I was looking at.
Lovely photo, Joe.
Alyssa, I grew up in Ohio where the winters are hard and deep. Most of our local lakes would have ice cover for months on end, and since I loved skating it seemed like an idea to own my own skates. Once you own skates, you’re always looking for a chance to use them. It’s a really amazing feeling outdoors, especially when there isn’t anyone else around. I get cross at crowded rinks with all those six-year-old boys in hockey skates practically zooming under your legs.
I’ve always wanted my own Zamboni, too, but oddly enough my parents never let me.
Joe, that’s a lovely photo. Are we neighbors? You’ve captured that weird half ice cover that I can currently see on the Dock outside my window. The sun is shining, so I reckon this is the last day of it.
Erika, your tree trumps our bricks.
Take care. One of the greatest tragedies in London’s history (but oddly neglected by most history books) resulted from skating on thin ice. In 1867, over 40 people lost their lives when the ice on Regent’s Park lake gave way. I can’t find much about it online, but here’s a bit of info.
It’s one of my worst nightmares – I think there was an opening scene in some famous horror film (probably from the early 80s) with a kid stuck under ice. Can’t remember which one it was but I still have bad dreams about it.
Anyway, that’s why I stick to ponds that are only a few feet deep and a few meters across!
Not you liked the photo of the ducks, Jenny?
In Chile exist is an old proverb that says when it’s hot in Chile fall roasted ducks.
I adored the ducks, Alejandro. I was wondering how far they would slide if you chucked them out onto the ice.
In America we have a proverb that says, Chile today, hot tamale.
Actually I meant that in Chile make very much heat.I left the topic, sorry.
Anyway I like ice skating is a very special sensation.
Really, my dear Jenny, you look like a red-necked swan, dancing on the ice, soon for your migratory flight epic.
Thanks Richard, Jenny. Not quite neighbours, but not far away down in Deptford/New Cross.
The East London Line might be ready sometime this century.
Oh, steady on!
Very beautiful this morning – lots of fog, all the ice shattered into millions of pieces and slightly submerged so that from a particular angle, all the birds look as if they are standing or walking on water:
Seagulls in the distance, hanging out on the ice archipelagp
Is a love morning, Jenny.
Very beautiful post Jenny (sorry I’m late). Were you going for the Dutch painting look with your skating activities?
That Dunckley chappie (Hi Joe!) is quite the photographer – I had a glance at his flickr photostream – it’s pretty awesome.
One of my former labmates was from Siberia. My English friend and I met her on the street one icy day, as we were slipping and sliding all over the place with much giggling. My friend did the splits while crossing a side-street, making all the cars wait while she pulled herself up. Our Russian friend was walking perfectly normally down the hill towards us, laughing her head off. She showed us her secret: coarse sandpaper glued to the soles of her shoes.
I threw money at the problem instead and bought a contraption consisting of rubber straps that go over your normal shoes, with metal studs (basically screw heads) on the bottom that grip snow or ice. They work pretty well.
I agree with Alejandro – you look very graceful on that rather lumpy-looking pond.
Also – is “prisable” a real word? If so, well done – never heard it used before.
Ooo photos of ice – can I play?
Glenora, Ontario, sometime just before 2010 began
Amazing reflections, Richard. The buildings look real but the landscape resembles a painting, not a photo. It’s an interesting effect. Did my skating look Dutch, Stephen?
I couldn’t find ‘prisable’ in any online dictionary, although the Merriam-Webster unabridged said I could pay to view the entry – which was enough to tell me it might be a word, which was good enough for me! (Of course, I might very well have been paying for an entry telling me how not to use the word ‘prise’.)
Cath, are you really wearing crampons on your commute? That’s awesome.
Not crampons per se – they wouldn’t get you up a glacier – but after weeks of sliding around on snow and ice last winter, I decided I needed something better than just plain ol’ hiking boots! We’ve only had a day or two of snow this year though, although hopefully that’ll change soon (24 days until the Olympics start!)
In the icy winter last year, I literally slid down the hill near my place even while wearing my hiking boots. Of course, I wasn’t the only thing to slide down that hill – some poor sap slid sideways down the hill in their car.
I’m looking at Cypress and Grouse as we speak and seeing no real snow. Olympic snowboarding on a mud run? Looks like it might be a reality!
Cypress will no doubt revert to its usual crusty iciness in time for the snowboarding, aerials, ski jumping, and moguls. They have tarps over the snow at higher elevations and will be using bulldozers to push it down to the competition levels. Plus every snow making machine in the province (and allegedly Washington State, too) is at either Cypress or Whistler right now (I noticed that the machines were missing from Sun Peaks at Christmas and asked my brother-in-law, who works for the resort. He confirmed this rumour – everyone sent everything they have to the Olympic venues).
At least Whistler will be fine! My husband is working there this week and reports having to spend the first hour of each day digging the previous day’s work out of the snow!
Can one really snowboard on mud? I think I might pay to see that.
I’ve seen making skiing on the sand dunes, is strange.
Thanks, Jenny. That photo is actually processed far less than you might think. The overcast somehow helped to tame the colours and bring out the reflections. I have no idea how exactly but I was happy to see it fall out of my camera, for sure.
“Far less than you might think”! Naive me, I always assume photos are unprocessed until stated otherwise. Thanks for shattering my idealism.
Glad to be of service. Unprocessed photos? This ain’t Nature, you know…
Eva> Lovely Torontian zamboni… reminds me of the best team in the world (ok, best in my heart).
Jenny> I loved those “snow throwers” or what ever they could be called. The snow always looks more fluffy when they go at it. (although, it does hurt a bit trying to run in it like in a movie 😉 ) I was too old to ask my parents about one though….
Eva, what’s a snow thrower?
Jenny> ahh.. it’s called a snow blower in English, not a “thrower”… should’ve known, I’m sorry for the confusion. It sort of “throws the snow upwards (second photo on the right in the wiki entry) and away and makes it like a proper snow storm 🙂
Dangerous things. They frighten me almost as much as gas-powered chainsaws. Being Canadian, I am ashamed to admit this.