Snow and Mr Shelley

Outside our back door, an hour ago, this was the view:

All very pretty but we're just not used to it, are we?

I went outside to go over to my mother's house - you can see it in the background, past our little snow-covered Clio. My parents' house was built in the grounds of ours: we bought our house from them in 1999.

I'd forgotten about the silence. It's that particular kind of silence that you get with snow. The whole of outside is covered in that silence at the moment.

When I was small, I loved the snow - we used to go sledging every year in Roundhay Park, Leeds, careering wildly, with dozens of others, down the slopes into the Arena. Our sledge was built by the Communist, and, like everything he built, had more solidity than grace - - but hey, it worked!

I don't think Olli's ever been sledging more than three or four times - we just don't have snow any more. Or not much, anyway.

Of course this snow decided to fall the night before I am going to take Stephen to the airport - he's going to Helsinki for a few days for work. I expect there'll be snow there, too. But they're used to it in Finland. Here, one more centimetre and it'll be WHITEOUT HELL in all the papers.

As old Shelley wrote in Ode to the West Wind:
"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

Hmm. If you want an answer, Percy, I'm afraid that it's probably going to be YES.