In the Grip of Winter

Scene through the trees

Days short and cold, nights long and colder. White snow and grey ice on all sides. Chilly winds blowing hither and thither. Gloomy skies end to end. Sun a distant memory. Warmth a distant feeling. That in short may be the winter that lies before us. I dare say there will be days when the sun will pay us a brief and diffident visit, but it will not linger and it will not warm. It will be essentially a visual thing, but its appearance will nevertheless be welcome. It will be a ray of sunshine in a bleak and foreboding winter's landscape. And the sky might even turn from its now dirty grey to a clear cheery blue. Something to remind us of the all-too short summer which never fails to disappoint at these latitudes in spite of the global warming which is apparently upon us. It would seem that the more we are threatened with global warming, the colder it gets in this part of the globe! No doubt the boffins can explain this in suitably scientific language. Whatever the case, last year's winter was harsh and this year's winter promises to be harsher still. As a child I loved the snow and was not much bothered by the cold. Now, many moons removed from childhood, I cannot cope so easily and I would rather be sweating than shivering, though I dislike both. Yet, for all that, there is a certain wondrous quality about snow that leaves children open-mouthed and impresses itself upon grown-ups, be it favourably or unfavourably.

White lies the green field now

For my part, I love to watch snow coming down and I love to see it blanketing everything and I marvel at the eerie silence it creates. It may be an oft-repeated truism that it creates a magical scene, but it is none the less true. What I don't much care for is a snowfall that is of short duration, falls mainly at night when we're all abed and quickly turns to ice and slush the following day, which frankly is just a nuisance and little else; in other words, when we get all the inconvenience of it without any of the beauty, harsh though this beauty may be. In such an instance, I would rather not have it at all! Either it snows 'properly' or it should not snow at all! That's how I look upon it. No half measures, thank you. But this is what it tends to be here down south. More a token snowfall. No doubt those in other parts of the country who have more than their fair share of the stuff and where it lingers for days, if not weeks, on end, would chastise me for my levity and shallowness, but there it is. Still, the winter is yet young and we may yet get our sustained snow and sustained chaos and I may yet have cause to eat my shallow words!

Return of the Big Chill

Fountain frozen over in icy cold weather

This was Trafalgar Square in London at the beginning of this year 2010, the fountains frozen over and an icy cold gripping everything, and this will doubtless be the scene again before the year is out. It has already snowed across large swathes of the country, mostly to the north and west, but the cold snap is already making itself felt in the rest of the country, snow or no snow. Its accomplices are sleet, frost and ice and its after-effects are the widespread disruption to transport services. And this has already occurred on the roads, railways and at airports. It can only get worse as winter sets in and icy blasts from the north sweep across the land, freezing everything up. There's a certain desolate majesty in this picture of the iced-up fountain, the play of the lights on its surface and the lit-up art gallery buildings in the background, but make no mistake, it's not where you want to be as day gives way to dusk and the deserted square succumbs to the unremitting all-embracing chill. The few brave souls that venture out for one reason or another will not linger in the open for long. An eerie silence descends upon the Square and a bitter chill takes hold. It's going to be a long bone-chilling night.

A new day dawns with a blanket of snow

Daylight brings some slight relief from the piercing icy chill of the night and the mood lightens. Everywhere is a picture-postcard scene of a snow-white landscape painted by Nature's brush. Beautiful it is, but its beauty belies the harshness of its nature and its effects. As for the phone booth in the picture, how quaint does that look? Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, rising out of the ground in all its brash redness, it somehow manages to introduce a reassuring note of security in an otherwise unremittingly white wilderness, with its promise of instant communication. Friends, family and emergency services are just a phone-call away should one get into difficulties on the road. Now how useful this is in a world where only new-born babes don't have a mobile phone, I don't know, but I rather suspect this red phallic symbol is more ornamental than utilitarian. More a throw-back to a bygone era than a practical modern communication option, it stands there defiant in all weathers, refusing to acknowledge the ubiquitous existence of the cellphone! And offering at the very least the sanctuary of its shelter as well as a phone service, assuming of course it hasn't been vandalised! Still, call me a soppy sentimentalist if you will, but I'd rather have it there than not.

Return of the Snow Years

After some years with virtually no snowfalls at either end of the year, the time when snow once used to fall unfailingly, the old pattern has returned and this past winter duly brought us snow, as it has done in the last few years, though never on the scale of a few notorious winters in the 1960s and 1970s. We're also getting very low temperatures and for lengthy periods, uncharacteristic for the time of year. It would seem that global warming has brought us local cooling, indeed, local freezing. The more global warming the planet gets, the colder the weather gets here!

In no time the street and our gardens were transformed into a winter wonderland of snow. It started coming down in the late afternoon, as the light was waning, intensified and carried on through the night. When I looked out of the window in the early morning with an air of expectation, I was not disappointed. There was already a thick white blanket of crisp snow covering everything and it was still coming down.

The amazing thing about snow is that it alters the nature of sound once it begins to settle. It muffles everything, so that sounds are quieter and gentler, even on the traffic-laden roads. In my back garden an eerie silence took hold, it was almost like another world where everything was muted, and the thicker the layer of snow got the more marked was the silence. It felt other-worldly.

It continued to snow into the afternoon. The sky was a mournful grey, which added to the feeling of 'other-wordliness', a strange surreal landscape that could not fail to leave you broody and sullen. From my desk where I worked I was able to look out of the window and watch it all happening and from time to time I could not resist opening the window slightly and breathing in the cool fresh air that was so invigorating.

As evening fell, it was all over. Everything was still and a piercing cold reigned. The next morning was a vista of white but there was no fresh fall of snow. However, the fallen snow was to linger on for some days to come, gradually turning into slush and ice or disappearing altogether. The side-roads and pavements became treacherous with ice and now we only wished that it would all go away! Our gardens and parks, however, continued to slumber under their largely undisturbed covering of snow for a few more days and the inevitable snowman suddenly sprung up in the nearby park.

Awestruck

There are some sights which are so beautiful, so wondrous, that they leave you staring at them open-mouthed. That's the effect the picture below has on me. This pure white wilderness, stretching as far as the eye can see, seemingly untouched by man, is a scene of absolute peace and calm. You can almost feel yourself breathing in the exhilaratingly cold fresh air deep into your lungs. The scene has a reassuringly permanent and unchanging quality about it. How long it will be before the hand of man brings an end to its changeless permanence is anyone's guess but that will be a sad day.

I feel a similar but different effect when I look at this second photo. The similarity is in the clean fresh purity of the scene, the difference is the movement taking place here. A powerful churning sea flows between the ice. You can almost sense the force of the body of water pounding against the mass of the ice floes. There is beauty here as in the previous image but there is also motion, force, energy. This scene does not have the reassuring permanence of the other one. There is no calm here. It is just a matter of time before the ice is broken up, worn down, and swallowed by the water.

Two powerfully striking scenes, both awesome in their own way. The first is a vast open landscape that transmits an air of permanence and total tranquillity. The second, equally awesome, is a depiction of the powerful forces of Nature, the foaming sea tirelessly pounding the ice that we know will eventually yield to the surging waters. In both instances we are awestruck by the beauty and energy of the natural world, a world which we are now all too aware is under threat from man's deleterious activities from one end of the planet to the other.