What goes around comes around

The Thames has frozen over down by our part of Teddington Lock for the first time since the Big Freeze of 1963, when the first of four inches of snow arrived on Boxing Day 1962, and lasted through to March of the following year. Still the coldest year on record, the baltic weather prompted surreal scenes including a man cycling on the Thames near Windsor Bridge and a milkman delivering his round on skis, as snow lay on the ground for 62 consecutive days in the south of England.

The year went on to be quite eventful, and ironically as the UK’s transition period expired in January 2021 and we exited the EU, also in January 1963, General de Gaulle said ‘Non’ to the United Kingdom’s application for accession to the Common Market, referring to incompatibilities between continental Europe and Britain.

This sense of “What goes around comes around”, is a curious notion and an often used advertising message once adopted for a powerful Stop the Iraq War campaign in 2003 by the New York based agency Big Ant. Posters featured images of American troops pointing riffles at an unseen enemy but because the posters were cleverly wrapped around the columns of buildings, the impression they created was of the soldiers about to shoot themselves, and by implication the United States too. A good point, well made.

In the time it has taken to write, edit and post this missive, Teddington Lock is now ice free and not for the first time a young seal has been sighted.

By Paul Warrington