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THERE IS BEAUTY IN DISORDER
WoS
Snow Day!
It never snows in Bath. The
city's geographical and topographical location means that it's sheltered
from most extremes of weather (except the sweltering summer heat that
gets trapped in the huge natural bowl formed by the surrounding hills,
with no breeze to cool it down), and as a result I've lived here for 19
years now and seen lying snow precisely twice, and one of those didn't
make it to the next day.
(The only time there WAS
proper serious snow was the first week I got here, January of 1991. With
nowhere to live yet, I was staying at Amiga Power's editor's house while
he and most of his housemates were away on a skiing holiday.
Unfortunately, the day they left the boiler broke down, leaving the
house with no heating or hot water in the coldest temperatures recorded
in Bath for a century, and the repair man took 10 days. I had to come
home from work every night and go straight to bed fully clothed to avoid
dying of hypothermia, and it was one of the most miserable weeks of my
entire life.)
Click the pics
for bigger versions as usual.
So no matter whether or
not the entire rest of the country is up to its elbows, we here in
Bath take snow forecasts with a pinch of salt (which might be part
of the problem, to be fair). Even as the entire nation ground to a
spectacular halt earlier this week, Bath was struggling to muster a
frost. So when your reporter woke up to an unprecedented four inches
this morning (missus!), it was time to get the hell out there at
7.45am and assemble evidence for coming generations.
Barring some
entertainingly inept commuter driving on the five-minute walk from
my house to Victoria Park (oh, and encountering a postman delivering
the mail in shorts on the way home, though tragically
I couldn't get a picture of him as the camera battery was dead by
then), no particularly amusing events occurred on the two-hour
walkabout, so let's just shut up and let the
pictures get on with it.
There was a veritable snowman army in Victoria Park. This was
the Efialtes.
The small end of the duck pond took on a pleasing raindrop quality.
The park contains several miniature jungles.
Excellently, this early the pond was still part-frozen, and the
ducks left trails in the surface slush.
No traffic cones can halt the resourceful traveller.
The memorial statue of Alfred Hitchcock was completely covered.
Why house roofs aren't made of
thatch any more.
I accidentally dropped my
Flake in front of the camera here, sorry.
If I'd thought, I could have
simply looked OVER the bridge to get a shot of the stream. Tch.
It took ages to shake all the
snow off one side of this tree to bring a bit of colour to the shot.
These must be the green shoots
of recovery we've been hearing about.
All these shots were taken
with my new cameraphone. Quality macroing/autofocus, 9.23/10.
Nice fez.
Unspoilt by progress.
The Botanical Gardens feel a
bit like Scotland. Sniff.
During the walk I found some
Starburst in my coat pocket.
The Pathway To A Lot Of Snow
Down The Back Of Your Neck.
Possibly something to do with
Shakespeare. Can't remember.
Not even trying, frankly.
The Shrine of the Squirrel
God.
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