Bizarre millennial plans to freeze the Thames, and then slide the Queen along it.
"300 years ago, they danced on a frozen Thames. Is this the way that we'll mark the millennium?" So ran the headline on the 1 February 1999 edition of The Guardian. Spoilers: No.
The article by Janine Gibson revealed plans to freeze over the Thames on the eve of the Millennium using "very modern technology". We're told that "event organisers want to transport the Queen along the frozen surface to Greenwich to perform the Dome's opening ceremony". How, exactly, the Ice Monarch would cometh is not discussed, and so we are forced to picture some kind of corgi-pulled sleigh.
The Thames, of course, has frozen over many times before. Our ancestors would take these rare opportunities to hold frost fairs on the ice, with food, drink, dancing and even an improbable elephant during the final 1814 fair. Alas, warmer temperatures and a faster river mean we're unlikely to see a solidified Thames again.
But could its flow have be arrested in 1999 with "very modern technology"? According to the Guardian, "The Thames could be frozen by one of two methods, both involving pipes placed under the water to maintain the low temperature once the surface has iced over. One way is to add chemicals to the water to artificially lower the temperature. A second involves use of metal conducting rods near the water's surface."
Look, I'm no cryogenic engineer but freezing even a small part of the Thames, which is wide, fast-flowing and tidal at Greenwich, would seem an enormously expensive undertaking, if indeed it is possible at all. Risky, too. An unseasonably warm day, or choppy conditions would compromise the surface. I'm no expert in Royal Protocol, either, but I'd imagine that immersing Her Majesty in a frigid chemical ice bath would not earn anybody an OBE.
Incredibly, the story was not some 'and finally' column on page 17, but went alongside the newspaper's lead image:
The prominence of the story in a major newspaper actually led to a question in the House of Commons later that day. Peter Ainsworth MP, during a discussion on access to the Millennium Dome, asked the government if what he'd read in the papers was true. "Does that not take the idea of cool Britain a little too far?," he quipped.
"That was one of the hon. Gentleman's better jokes, but they are not terribly good and I hope that they will improve," replied tourism minister Janet Anderson. "That article is pure speculation and I assure the hon. Gentleman that there are no plans to freeze the Thames."
The plans, probably nothing more than rumour, soon melted into obscurity. I can find no further references to a gelid Thames or Her Glissading Majesty. Indeed, the scheme was inverted. We were instead promised a "River of Fire", with flames and fireworks travelling along the central Thames to mark the Millennium. That proved to be a spectacular flop. The Queen, meanwhile, travelled to the Dome by regular boat. The idea of getting her to sleigh along the frozen Thames was so far-fetched, they might as well have asked her to parachute out of a helicopter. Now that would never happen.
