"THE GREAT FREEZE"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16914, 1 April 1929, Page 8

"THE GREAT FREEZE"

BITTER COLD IN BRITAIN

LONDON, February 14

Usually it is because of lat-k of matter that weather becomes a topic, but the spoil of wintry bitterness that has ushered in the Lenten season in England transcends all other subjects. Well it might. In common with the rest of Europe, we have shivered in the grip of ipy airs ever since February began—shivered in a way that takes the weather clerks' search for colder days back through 40 years. It has been a dry cold The "air, which seemingly has just glided off an iceberg moored in the Thames, contains no hint of moisture, and it has even been too cold to snow. One day this week was the coldest February day for 40 years, and the coldest day of any mouth' for 20 years. It was little comfort to read that it was many degreej: warmer in Iceland and Spitsbergen . There have been some freakish results of this attack of frost. Vessels have arrived at the London docks with their rigging and superstructures coated with ice .like Arctic explorers' craft. Various parts of the Thames estuary have been frozen at low tide, so that people have been able to walk on ice where a few ' months hence they will be swimming. The Thames has threatened to freeze, especially in its upper reaches. Thousands of household water pipes have burst. Icicles have formed where the water of ornamental fountains usually splash. Boys have been skating and sliding on the frozen surfaces of the basins o.f the Trafalgar Square fountains. Mechanism of trains has frozen, and expresses arriving in London from Scotland have brought icicles hanging from the corridors connecting the carriages with frozen snow and frost covering the footplate of the engine and the driver's clothes frozen stiff. Firemen lighting outbreaks also have had their 1 uniforms frozen and have seen the water directed at the flames changed to icicles. Salt has had to be scattered, on pavements and roadways. It has been "the gieat freeze." Yet in face of all the discomforts that the extreme cold imposes, the Londoner's typical humor remains undimmert. Blue, bleak, outdoor workers give the lie to an impression of them as frozen humanity by sparks of wit, andto no other workers does the bus driver take second place. The construction of the London double-decker bus gives the driver little protection from the weather. Perched oil a seat in front of the lower comoortment, he is guarded only by the jutting cover of the upper deck, and a leather apron suspended slantwise on his left side. Yet rain or cold never diminishes their good spirits. ! experienced in instance of their high humor on the "•oldest dav of this cold week. The bus had halted in front of a window of an Oxford street emporium in which is disnlnyed a, working model of the proposed Channel tunnel, complete with a. lifelike representation of the heaving stretch of water between Dover and Calais. To the knot of people curiously surveying this model, came the voice of my busdriver, ehaileving with cold: "S say •natev, is anybody swimmin' it?"