Silver Street in the Snow

I'm in the town centre the morning after a heavy - by local standards - snowfall. I'd have loved to stay home taking pictures of the completely carpeted and untouched lawn, or possibly using that carpet to make a snowman army, but unfortunately there were things to do that I couldn't escape.

It's only mid-morning, but already I've made the 30 minute walk here, sat an exam, queued up and sorted out my stuff at the bank, and collected my mail, and this added to the fact I've been up since 4.30am with the usual pre-module nerves has left me with equal feelings of exhaustion and accomplishment.

Losing some amount of willpower on the way to the bus stop, I decide to allow myself breakfast from Nadia's after all. The hot bacon roll tastes sufficiently of reward to pick me up while I think about my pass/fail chances and whether or not histopathologists should really be allowed to extend their "Q1: Identify this pink blob" mentality into all the modular exams.

When the roll is finished I stand by the stop sipping coffee and wondering which foot the toes will drop from first. I imagine what it would be like to have one or two rolling around in my shoes and getting caught underfoot like stowaway pebbles. Unfortunately I've never been fond of feet at the best of times, and the new image doesn't help much. I let it go. Hot coffee in the snow is a beautiful thing.

I look through the railings I'm leaning against just in time to see a group of tiny children, in reality probably about half the size their layered weather-protection is making them, charge across the untouched snow on that side. The eldest two, a boy and girl both maybe four years old, seem confident that they've seen this stuff before and immediately start chucking powdery fistfuls of it at each other. The younger ones step in experimentally, jump up and down, or try to lift it open-palmed only to repeat the action a few seconds later when it all falls off.

The woman with them reminds them that they came out to build a snowman. Within one minute a ring of very short people has formed around a small-but-growing pile of snow, the oldest boy continuing his snowball-hurling with new purpose. There are happy squeals and disturbingly huge grins on such small heads. The possibility does occur to me that this may be a frozen rictus due to the wind - the only part of me that isn't numb now is the hand holding the coffee.

I'm not the only one to have noticed the children at this point: I glance off to the left in time to see a girl, probably an undergrad, taking a picture through the railings. As I'm wondering whether the children's minder might take offence at the voyeurism, a man on my right does the same with a much larger zoom lens model. Holy crap. That's quite a brave move in a society obsessed with paedophilic predation. The woman hasn't noticed, though, and unfortunately the bus is approaching.

Once onboard I immediately prop my feet on the hot air vent to defrost, and by the next stop reperfusion injury has fully kicked in to the extent that I may as well be wearing a miniature iron maiden on each foot. This still hasn't cleared by the time we reach my stop, so I try to bluff it out with my usual hop-dismount from the bus and am promptly reminded that pins-and-needling feet have no sense for self-positioning. I end up ankle-deep in a mini snowdrift on the grass verge with the happy coincidence that my feet are once again numb and needle-free.

When I reach the flats, the family upstairs are out on the lawn. The earlier perfect blanket has been replaced by wide lanes of exposed grass and a giant snowman three times the height of the little girl still patting snow on to it.

So... damn. No sleep, no pedal sensation, no garden picture and no snow-army... I guess I'll settle for a nap.