Tuesday 7th February

Well, I hope you liked my little beginning yesterday, just a snippet of my new story.  I am having to make this one up completely, whereas last time I had to only elaborate a bit, most of Catherines Story was real, although I know that Adrian would insist that he made it all up, that’s not really correct, I told him nearly all of it myself.  Anyway, he is history, and will NOT appear in the pages of my new book, at least if I have anything to do with it.  As you know he kept shoving his way in last time, and ended up even having his name on the cover, when I had written most of the book myself, as you must know by now.

But I wanted to write about the disappearing snow.  It always saddens me how quickly, especially here in London the snow dissolves, and this year more so than ever.  It didn’t start snowing till Saturday afternoon, and had stopped by the evening.  We had just one whole day to enjoy this deep lushness, to savour its pristine whiteness, its blanketing denseness, the silence of its descent, blowing this way and that, rising and falling and all the time the light refracting off its surfaces as each flake twists and turns before finding its own allotted place in the snowy landscape.  And am I alone in hating the grit, this muddy and salty brown sludge that does remove the worst of the snow from pavements and roads, but feels so gritty under your shoes, and leaves a brown-sludgy mess everywhere, can they not come up with some-thing a bit cleaner to help melt the snow.  Not that this time around it has needed much help, it was mild all day on Sunday, and in London at least it hardly got below freezing during the night, so already by Monday, most of the pavements were clear.  And now there are just a few desolate little patches of snow, rapidly thinning and melting.  And even those few splendid snowmen with twigs for arms and carrots for noses, that parents had helped their children build on Sunday are little foot high pyramids of ice today, the branches fallen and the carrot nowhere to be seen.  At least the foxes will have had something to eat.  .